tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72582248408555238642024-02-18T21:08:44.269-08:00Israel Issues Watchdog...................................................for Australian friends of Israel.Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.comBlogger564125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-50362660594679850292019-06-04T22:21:00.002-07:002019-06-04T22:21:55.891-07:00Transferring this Blog to Facebook<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Dear Reader</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>This Blog has been superseded by Facebook.</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i> I don't intend to post here any further because it is much easier to post on Facebook.</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>To continue to stay informed of items of interest to Australians who support Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, selected by me, go to the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/israelissueswa">Israel Issues Watchdog Facebook Page</a>. By clicking "Like" (at the top-left of the page), postings there will be added to your News feed on Facebook.</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Thanks for your interest....</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Warm regards</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Steve Lieblich</i></b></span>Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-32284856567965875092019-05-20T01:07:00.001-07:002019-05-20T01:07:57.714-07:0070th anniversary of Australia’s formal diplomatic relationship with the State of Israel <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><i><span style="color: #212121;">Statement by Steve Minnikin at Queensland State Parliament, 3 April 2019</span><span style="color: #212121;">:</span></i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mr MINNIKIN (Chatsworth—LNP) (7,06 pm): I would like to officially acknowledge the 70th anniversary of Australia’s formal diplomatic relationship with the State of Israel and affirm our deep friendship with the people of Israel. This year marks a special occasion between two democratic countries: our own, Australia, and the State of Israel. On 29 January 1949 Australia formally recognised the State of Israel, establishing diplomatic relations between our nations which has lasted 70 years. Israel is a young country, but has achieved so much. From Nobel Peace Prize winners, world first discoveries, lifesaving technologies to music and the arts, Israel is often referred to as the miracle nation. Our two countries have much in common, from the democratic values we both hold to our pioneering, innovative spirits. These are also values and history that are reflected for us here in Queensland.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Our common history with Israel goes back way before the formal diplomatic relations to World War I when young Queenslanders played a crucial role in the Allied forces’ campaign in the Middle East, particularly the legendary Light Horse Brigade, which fought in crucial battles against the Turks in Beersheba in Israel. Queensland was also recipient of Holocaust survivors following World War II, many of whom have added greatly to the fabric of our state. I want to acknowledge the contribution by these resilient survivors and their families to the economic and cultural life of Queensland.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In areas such as water, science and innovation, defence industries and many other sectors, Queensland and Israel have been collaborating to solve some of the major challenges facing our state. In fact, just a month or so ago, three of the world’s leading water experts from Israel visited Queensland to share ideas and know-how designed to tackle the severe drought using some state-of-the-art technologies developed in Israel. In May it will be a Queenslander, Kate Miller-Heidke, who will be representing Australia in the popular song contest, Eurovision, being held in Tel Aviv.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Our glorious state of Queensland and the miracle State of Israel are connected, not just through friendship, but also a commitment to the rule of law, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, a free press and support for its citizens to innovate. Since 2014, I have had the honour to convene the inaugural Queensland Parliamentary Friends of Israel, a group established in a true bipartisan manner. This group remains active and I thank all those members who participate and encourage all members to interact where they can. The charter of the group includes fostering cultural links and opportunities between Israel and Queensland; encouraging the development of friendly relations and ties between the Queensland parliament and Israel; and enhancing interaction between Queensland and Israel through meetings and discussions with Israel’s representatives and the Israeli and Jewish communities in Queensland.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Today I would like to formally acknowledge the 70th anniversary of Australia’s diplomatic relations with this highly valued and mutually respectful friend. Given recent events around the world, we need cultural understanding more than ever.</span>Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-24603039664294911012019-05-20T00:57:00.001-07:002019-05-20T00:57:06.989-07:00The Hawke Years, 1983-1991<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>In honour of Bob Hawke, we revisit this extract from</i></b></span><br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="color: #26547c; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 21.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A Distant Affinity:
The History of Australian-Israeli Relations<o:p></o:p></span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="single-author"><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://jcpa.org/researcher/dr-colin-rubenstein/" moz-do-not-send="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #0072c6; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Dr. Colin Rubenstein</span></span></a>, </span><a href="http://jcpa.org/researcher/tzvi-fleischer/" moz-do-not-send="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #0072c6; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Tzvi Fleischer</span></span></a></span><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;"><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;"></span></em></div>
<article class="post-19822 article
type-article status-publish hentry category-israel-2
category-diplomacy-peace-process category-world-jewry
tag-australian-israeli tag-history tag-jewish-community
tag-relations" id="post-19822" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: block;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">
Jewish Political
Studies Review 19:3-4 (Fall 2007)</em><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAZeTQjRBeW377zm4fyLFiI8J9NGJ04-YB6saWP7JUT4RfO4WsCM1THFtyd7HLj162YRGXxIxvtOF390JCXLMzu63QM7Ig8wVL6NTJBYzj6t4irM5FR1qOfhmAlJ7c-NcoG5IRycpFBquf/s1600/hawke.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="328" data-original-width="289" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAZeTQjRBeW377zm4fyLFiI8J9NGJ04-YB6saWP7JUT4RfO4WsCM1THFtyd7HLj162YRGXxIxvtOF390JCXLMzu63QM7Ig8wVL6NTJBYzj6t4irM5FR1qOfhmAlJ7c-NcoG5IRycpFBquf/s400/hawke.png" width="351" /></a></div>
<o:p><br /></o:p>
</article>
<h3 style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.375rem; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 2rem 0px 1rem; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Hawke
Years, 1983-1991<o:p></o:p></span></h3>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 1rem; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">The man who defeated Fraser
in the March 1983 election was already well known for supporting Israel and
other “Jewish” causes such as Soviet Jewry. Former trade union leader Bob Hawke
had developed a strong affinity for Israel during a 1971 (and subsequent 1973)
visit to the country, forming good relations with officials from the Histadrut
trade union movement, along with what has been called a “platonic love affair”
with Golda Meir. Both Jerusalem and a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum
profoundly moved him.[77]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">Following the visit Hawke
became involved in pro-Israeli activity. He attacked Whitlam for his policies
during the 1973 war, delivered speeches and wrote a booklet arguing Israel’s
case, and fought anti-Israeli segments of the ALP and union movement. He also
became an internationally recognized champion of the campaign to free Soviet
Jews.[78]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 1rem; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">Although Hawke’s ardor for
Israel cooled somewhat after the Israeli Labor Party was defeated by the
right-wing Likud in the 1977 election, he came to office with both Jewish and
non-Jewish Australians well aware of his pro-Israeli history. Nevertheless,
Israeli-Australian relations proved more complex and disputatious during the
eight years of Hawke’s prime ministership than might have been expected.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 1rem; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">Hawke formulated an original
plan for peace in the late 1970s whereby Israel would withdraw to the 1967
boundaries but would have the right, if attacked from the vacated territories,
to counterattack and permanently retain any land it recaptured.[79] Throughout
his political career Hawke aspired to play a mediating or peacemaking role in
the Middle East.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">The Middle East policy of
Hawke’s government, at least until about 1988, largely mirrored that of the
Fraser years though with perhaps some more receptivity to Palestinian and Arab
approaches, especially regarding the role of the PLO. During the election
campaign, Hawke reiterated what had essentially been the Fraser government’s
policy in the early 1980s: support for Israel’s right to “secure and recognized
boundaries” but also for the “right of the Palestinians to their independence
and the possibility of their own independent state.”[80]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 1rem; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">In September 1983, shortly
after taking office, the Hawke government announced changes in Australian policy
including support for the establishment of an Arab League office in Australia
and allowing Australian ambassadors to meet PLO representatives “in their range
of political contacts.” However, when Jewish leaders met Hawke to express
concern, they were reassured that the Arab League would not be allowed to use
any office to engage in activity relating to a boycott of Israel or firms
trading with Israel; that there was no change in Australia’s policy of not
recognizing the PLO as long as it denied Israel’s right to exist; and that
Australia would continue to avoid supporting one-sided UN resolutions proposed
by “those countries seeking to delegitimize Israel.”[81]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 1rem; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">In December 1983, Hawke had a
confrontation over Israel with Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi during a
British Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in New Delhi. He
successfully insisted on changes to a clause in the final communiqué calling
for the withdrawal solely of Israeli forces from Lebanon, demanding that it
call for all foreign forces to leave, especially Syria’s.[82]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 1rem; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">The Hawke years also saw the
first visit by a serving Israeli president to Australia and, reciprocally, the
first visit by a serving Australian prime minister to Israel. President Chaim
Herzog’s visit took place in November 1986; Hawke made a three- day trip to
Israel in January 1987. Herzog’s visit was ceremonial but successful.
“Australia,” he said, “has stood by our side on many occasions in the difficult
years preceding the establishment of the State of Israel and since its
establishment.”[83] Welcoming him, Hawke said that the “friendship between our
countries goes back to the foundation of the modern state of Israel.”[84]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 1rem; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">Hawke also had a positive
visit, and was welcomed by Israeli newspapers recalling the role of Australian
soldiers in Palestine during both world wars. He clearly continued to feel a
connection and again was emotional after visiting Yad Vashem. Israeli leaders
asked for Australian help in reaching out to Asian and Pacific nations, and for
progress in establishing direct air connections to Australia.[85] At his final
press conference, Hawke reiterated Australian policy on the need to resolve the
Palestinian problem and expressed hope that mutual Israeli-PLO recognition
might soon be achievable.[86]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 1rem; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">Australia’s UN voting during
the Hawke government was somewhat less pro-Israeli than during the Fraser
years. Australia preferred more to vote with the majority of Western nations on
Middle Eastern issues, whereas the Fraser government had been more willing
sometimes to be in the minority.[87]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 1rem; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">One major achievement at the
United Nations in this period was the Hawke government’s role in the successful
campaign to rescind the 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution. Australia began
intense involvement in this effort in October 1986 when Hawke introduced a
motion to the Australian parliament deploring the resolution and calling for
its annulment. With bipartisan support, this passed almost unanimously. The
U.S. Congress followed suit shortly afterward. Throughout the late 1980s and
early 1990s, Australia made it a priority in its routine relations with
neighboring Pacific and Southeast Asian nations to solicit their support for
repealing the resolution, finally achieved in December 1991.[88]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">However, the late 1980s also
saw increasing Australian-government criticism of Israel, especially concerning
its handling of the First Intifada and its refusal to countenance talks with
the PLO after its 1988 declaration, which Australia (and the United States)
accepted as constituting recognition of Israel. On the former point, Foreign
Minister Hayden, visiting Israel in February 1988, said Israel’s “sometimes
arbitrary and violent” handling of the crisis caused “profound distress” and
added, “I must be honest: Australia cannot agree with this.” Hawke in
parliament proposed passing a bipartisan resolution expressing concern about
Israeli policies in the territories.[89]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">In April 1989, Australia’s UN
ambassador, Dr. Peter Wilenski (who was Jewish) delivered a very one-sided
condemnation of Israeli policies in the territories and even apologized to the
Saudi ambassador for Israel’s alleged mistreatment of people seeking to pray at
the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.[90] In March 1990, the Hawke government issued
a Middle East policy statement that for the first time insisted that East
Jerusalem was part of the West Bank, something that had always been ambiguous
in Australian statements previously.[91]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">Matters changed somewhat
following the outbreak of the Gulf crisis prompted by Iraq’s August 1990
invasion of Kuwait. Hawke quickly backed U.S. and UN action to reverse the
invasion and committed three Australian naval vessels to the military coalition.
Contacts with the PLO were also frozen in the wake of Arafat’s backing of
Saddam Hussein. Hawke also firmly opposed linkage, the argument advanced by
Iraq and some commentators that Israel should withdraw from the West Bank and
Gaza as part of a deal for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: #FEFEFE; box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 1rem; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 17.0pt;">However, probably Australia’s
greatest contribution to the war effort was through use of the Nurrungar and
Northwest Cape communication bases, run jointly with the Americans. These
provided real-time data on Iraqi missile launches, and crucial satellite
communication links.[92] After the war it was confirmed that Australia had
provided Israel with top-secret information from Nurrungar warning of the Iraqi
Scud launches against Israel, based on satellite infrared detections. Attacked
for this after the war by left-wing groups opposed to the bases, Australian
defense minister Senator Robert Ray said, “Essentially the [antibases]
coalition accuses me of allowing the Australian-American facilities at
Nurrungar to be used to give early warning time to citizens of Israel that
missiles are coming. If I am guilty of that…that is my proudest moment in
politics.”[93] The parliament also passed a resolution deploring the Iraqi
missile attacks on Israel. [94]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-51680147617875341632019-02-18T02:57:00.003-08:002019-02-18T02:57:36.179-08:00Australian Greens have two faces and one is the ugliest of bigots<b><i>From <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/greens-have-two-faces-and-one-is-the-ugliest-of-bigots/news-story/239ce115a2f964cc1bf14b63074cbb4c">The Australian, 13 February 2019, by JANET ALBRECHTSEN</a>:</i></b><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><img height="225" src="https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/3dd6dd68432587016ea243c40c705e61" width="400" /></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>If Greens leader Richard Di Natale is appalled by bigotry and genuinely believes in tolerance and respect for people of different faiths, he must flush out the anti-Semitism in his party.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>.. the [Australian] Greens ...is a party of bigotry at the organisational level, yet no Greens MP is brave or honest enough to expose the hypocrisy. On the one hand, Greens spout sweet-sounding words about morality, compassion and tolerance; on the other hand, the party endorses bigotry.</b></span><br />
<br />
There are a few good people in the party. Last year, NSW Greens upper house MPs Cate Faehrmann and Justin Field said the party had fallen victim to “extreme-Left ideology”. NSW Greens lower house MP Jamie Parker engages with the Jewish community too.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">But even the good people have allowed the NSW party to fall into a habit of bigotry. History warns us that silence emboldens bigots, and that bigotry is a necessary precursor to the sort of political fascism responsible for monstrous crimes against humanity.</span><br />
<br />
We can disagree over Israeli politics and policies, the future of the Middle East peace process, settlements, refugees and much more. We can condemn the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu too. It’s a free country. We get to speak our mind and choose who to associate with. But when a political party treats the members of a religious group as personae non gratae, refusing to meet them or speak with them, that is bigotry.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If the Liberal Party of Australia refused point blank to engage with credible Muslim groups, we would banish its members as bigots.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">If the ALP continually rebuffed efforts to engage with Christian groups, we would out its members as bigots.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">If the Nationals rejected overtures, over many years, to meet with a community on the basis of its members’ religion, race, sex or sexuality, we would vote them into political irrelevance as extremists.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet the Greens have a history of out-and-out organisational bigotry towards the Jewish community in NSW. A few turn up to mark Hanukkah in NSW parliament. But none of them have attended special events arranged by the Jewish community to build tolerance and respect.</span><br />
<br />
Last Friday in Allawah, in Sydney’s south, Jewish leaders arranged a regular Shabbat dinner for different community groups, one of many dinners where people meet, eat and talk to other people from different walks of life.<br />
<br />
There was a Shabbat dinner for Liberal Party leaders and members last year and another a few months earlier that included members of the LGBTI community. There was a dinner the year before for Labor politicians, members of Young Labor and union leaders. Another one included many members from the Chinese community and other civic groups. Yet another dinner involved people and groups who help settle new immigrants.<br />
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You get the picture. You would be hard-pressed to find more genuinely inclusive events. These are non-political. Yet still the Greens have, for years, refused to be part of these dinners.<br />
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At last Friday’s dinner, guests included Labor and Liberal politicians, state and federal, councillors, leaders from the local Anglican church, a leader of the Sikh community, the chairman of Advance Diversity Services, a leader from the Korean community and the president of a local Rotary Club too. But no Greens politician.<br />
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In his closing remarks, Vic Alhadeff, who leads the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and started these dinners, glanced around the room at the broad array of people, thanking them for laying down their arms to be there and on “the degree of stillness which we have collectively achieved in removing ourselves from our frenetic, hectic lives”.<br />
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The purpose of the dinners is simple yet important, “engaging as Australians … and using the opportunity to explore our commonalities, beliefs and shared values”.<br />
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Not to command agreement or to proselytise. To speak to one another as respectful human beings.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Many Jews might be drawn to genuinely green policies about the environment. Yet the Greens’ extremism towards Jews precludes engagement. That is not tolerance. That is anti-Semitism.</b></span><br />
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It is hypocrisy of the highest order, given that the Greens readily condemn the bigotry of others. Last year, the party’s federal leader Richard Di Natale slammed senator Fraser Anning for using the language of the Nazis when he referred to a “final solution to the (Muslim) immigration problem”. Di Natale said such language was “vile, racist, bigoted and has no place in our society”. Agreed.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The bigotry of the Greens has no place in Australia either. Sadly, the NSW Young Greens have learned the oldest hatred from their party organisation. A few years ago, they refused to attend a conference held at NSW Parliament House by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students. Labor and Liberal students attended.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There are plenty of reasons not to attend a bolshie student conference, but refusing to speak to or be near Australian Jewish students is anti-Semitism. As the AUJS said at the time, the boycott, under the cloak of the Palestinian problem, reduces all Australian Jewish students to one political issue 12,000km away. Not all Jews share the same views on any issue.</span><br />
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In recent months, neo-Nazi cowards hiding behind the Antipodean Resistance label have posted vile, bigoted and racist posters around Sydney and Melbourne. near schools, synagogues and other buildings.<br />
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They are the likely beasts who painted Nazi swastikas on a promenade wall at Sydney’s Bondi Beach at the weekend. Their active recruitment of more bigots is a moral monstrosity.<br />
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But let’s not kid ourselves. The organisational bigotry within the Greens is a slyer form of anti-Semitism.<br />
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On Holocaust Remembrance Day in April 2017, the NSW Young Greens posted a Venn diagram on Facebook stating that Liberals and Labor love “locking people in concentration camps”.<br />
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They’ve learned from their Greens elders to engage in abhorrent Holocaust minimisation, likening offshore processing to determine refugee status to concentration camps where millions of Jews were murdered.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">If Di Natale and other Greens are appalled by bigotry and vile, racist behaviour, if they genuinely believe in tolerance and respect for people of different faiths, they need to flush out the anti-Semitism in their party.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Until then, the next time a Greens politician brags about their progressive credentials, remember the organisational bigotry by the Greens towards Australian Jews.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Right now, a vote for the Greens — primary or preference — is a vote for bigotry.</b></span>Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-79557977408361407382019-02-13T18:51:00.000-08:002019-02-13T18:51:29.852-08:00The University of Sydney sacks academic Tim Anderson<b><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Tahoma, Verdana;"><span style="background-color: white;">From </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Tahoma, Verdana;"><a href="http://www.jwire.com.au/the-university-of-sydney-sacks-academic-tim-anderson/?fbclid=IwAR3IRAqofQmPL2oRFIAmYFf8rgrSi85CMt3U8iVIvVI4LR2E6Drvs_UV6WA">J-Wire, </a></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Tahoma, Verdana;"><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://www.jwire.com.au/the-university-of-sydney-sacks-academic-tim-anderson/?fbclid=IwAR3IRAqofQmPL2oRFIAmYFf8rgrSi85CMt3U8iVIvVI4LR2E6Drvs_UV6WA">February 14, 2019</a>:</span></span></i></b><div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman;"><i>Tim Anderson</i></span><div style="clear: both; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; height: 18px; line-height: 18px; text-indent: -5000em;">
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The University of Sydney has dismissed controversial academic <b>Tim Anderson</b> following the suspension of his employment in December.<span id="more-94611"></span></div>
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An employment review panel voted for Anderson’s dismissal by a 2-1 majority. Anderson has announced that he intends to legally challenge his dismissal.Anderson was found to have circulated lecture materials to his students in 2018 which, according to a letter from the Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Stephen Garton, contained an “altered image of the Israeli flag” featuring a “cropped swastika.” The materials were allegedly used in a course on ‘Human Rights and Development’.</div>
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The Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim commented: “The University did the right thing both in terms of principle and its own interests. Anderson has been an enthusiastic apologist for the regimes in Syria and North Korea which have systematically murdered their own people, while likening Israel, a genuine western democracy, with Nazi Germany. These sorts of statements fall squarely within the working definition of antisemitism adopted by the 31 democratic nations of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).”</div>
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Mr Wertheim noted that the IHRA working definition gives examples that “may serve as illustrations” of antisemitic statements, including:</div>
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Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.</div>
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Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.</div>
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According to Mr Wertheim, much of the material distributed by Anderson concerning Israel and international affairs amounts to “little more than propaganda”.</div>
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“This material has been presented with a gossamer-thin veneer of what passes for‘scholarship’ among the University’s small number of anti-Israel academics, in an attempt to make it seem respectable to the public and impressionable students. Anderson is entitled to his own outlandish views, but he does not have the right to impose them on students, or to compromise the reputation of the University and its wider academic community for maintaining high intellectual standards.”</div>
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Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-8617143514558715062019-02-06T20:59:00.001-08:002019-02-06T20:59:58.133-08:00Amnesty International has lost its moral way with regard to Israel<h1 style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i>The following article has been published in The Australian, 31 January 2019, by Alex Ryvchin:</i></span></b></h1>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Amnesty International has unveiled a new campaign to pressure digital tourism companies such as <a href="http://booking.com/" style="margin: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Booking.com</a>, Expedia, Airbnb and TripAdvisor to delist properties held by Israelis living in the West Bank, and calling on governments to pass legislation that would result in the total boycott of those living in Israeli settlements.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is just the latest attack in a long war waged by Amnesty and other once-respectable human rights organisations intent on turning public opinion against Israel and bringing about its economic and political isolation.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The origins of this lie in an infamous non-governmental organisations forum of the UN World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001. The conference lives long in the memory for the appalling racism that marred an event convened for the very purpose of combating such conduct. Posters displayed Jewish caricatures and Nazi icons, and participants circulated copies of the anti-Semitic fabrication, <i style="margin: 0px;">Protocols of the Elders of Zion</i>. US congressman Tom Lantos called it “the most sickening display of hate for Jews since the Nazi period”. The UN’s human rights commissioner, Mary Robinson, told the BBC “there was a horrible anti-Semitism present”.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Against this backdrop, the conference of more than 1500 representatives of international NGOs adopted a resolution that defined Israel as a “racist, apartheid state”, and called for the launch of a “global solidarity campaign” targeting governments, UN agencies and civil society to achieve the “complete and total isolation of Israel”.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This co-ordinated attack on Israel’s very existence and legitimacy, including through various forms of boycott, divest and sanctions campaigns on campus, and among trade unions, government and civil society, became the vehicle through which new generations of thought leaders would be exposed to the characterisation of the Jewish state as a uniquely wicked, unjust project that had to be unwound for the good of humanity. Amnesty was a key player in Durban and in the adoption of the resolution, and has been at the forefront of the campaign ever since.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In 2002, following an Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin in response to the Passover massacre in Netanya, in which a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered 30 civilians during a celebratory feast, Amnesty accused Israel of carrying out war crimes and massacres of Palestinian civilians. The allegations, promptly reported by the BBC and other news outlets, placed the Palestinian civilian death toll at more than 500. But 52 Palestinians died, the majority of them combatants, along with 23 Israeli soldiers, in fierce urban combat.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">False allegations of a massacre made by Amnesty lubricated the machinery of the political campaign against Israel, leading to street protests, campus hearings, reams of condemnations and anti-Israel resolutions across civil society and government.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In 2015, Amnesty was forced into a humiliating admission that it had lobbied the Australian government to accept murderous Lindt Cafe terrorist Man Haron Monis as a genuine refugee.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Last April, Amnesty’s secretary-general called Israel’s democratically elected government “rogue”. In 2010, the head of its Finnish branch called Israel a “scum state”. Its British campaign manager has likened Israel to Islamic State and been condemned for his attacks on Jewish parliamentarians.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps as revealing as Amnesty’s fixation on Jews living on the “wrong” side of a long-defunct armistice line has been its relative silence on the disturbing trend of rising anti-Semitism. In April 2015, Amnesty UK rejected an initiative to “campaign against anti-semitism in the UK”, as well as “lobby the UK government to tackle the rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Britain” and “monitor anti-Semitism closely”. It was the only proposed resolution at the annual general meeting that was not adopted.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The skewed morality revealed by Amnesty’s obsession with Israel reflects a broader decline in the non-governmental sector. Whereas groups such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch once led the struggle against Soviet tyranny and actively defended the rights of political prisoners, today they serve an increasingly narrow political agenda, one aligned with anti-Western, anti-capitalist forces. Amnesty’s apparent contempt for Israel, its ho-hum attitude to anti-Semitism, and its inordinate condemnations of democracies all stem from this malaise.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course, the settlements are a point of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Indeed, the parties identified settlements as a final status issue in the historic Oslo Accords signed between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel in 1993. It was agreed that the questions of which settlements will be annexed to Israel and which will be dismantled or transferred to Palestinian sovereignty are to be resolved in direct negotiations in the context of a final peace agreement. But the pursuit of peace is not aided by Amnesty’s political manoeuvres and attempts to isolate Israel, which perpetuate conflict by other means.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="margin: 0px;"><i style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Alex Ryvchin is the author of The Anti-Israel Agenda — Inside the Political War on the Jewish State (Gefen Publishing), and co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.</span></i></span></div>
Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-13187849932903422042019-01-02T01:29:00.000-08:002019-01-02T01:31:49.533-08:00Christian Zionists welcome Australia’s support for Israel ...with reservations...<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><i>From Bridges for Peace, <span lang="EN-US">December 21, 2018:</span></i></b></span><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">Pro-Israel Christian Zionists welcome Australia’s support for Israel and recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel – but also express some concerns <u></u><u></u></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">On Saturday 15th December Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison announced the Australian government's new foreign policy on various Middle East issues, including the Israel-Palestine conflict. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2b2b2b; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Following an extensive review process since the Prime Minister’s announcement in October that he intended to review Australia’s policies on certain issues, the Prime Minister reaffirmed Australia’s unwavering support for the right of the State of Israel <i>“to </i></span><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">exist within secure and internationally recognised borders”. He went on to state that </span></i><i><span style="color: #2b2b2b; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">“</span></i><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Australia’s national interests are well served by our productive and increasingly diverse relationship with Israel. Australia has always been one of Israel’s greatest friends and I intend for that to remain the case. This is underpinned by our nation’s shared values, including our commitment to democracy and the rule of law.”</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><u></u><u></u></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The Prime Minister <span style="color: #2b2b2b;">condemned in the strongest possible terms “</span><span style="color: #333333;">the biased and unfair targeting of Israel in the UN General Assembly”, which has become “the place where Israel is bullied and where anti-Semitism is cloaked in language about human rights. It is where Israel is regularly accused of what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks called the “five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide.”</span><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The government also restated its position that</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">regards Hamas as “terrorists who use the Israel-Palestinian conflict as an excuse to inflict terror”, an</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> “<span style="color: #333333;">condemns Hamas’ activities in the strongest possible terms”.</span><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Regarding the Israel-Palestine dispute, the Prime Minister emphasized that Australia’s policy is guided by two principles: its “commitment to a two-state solution” (“<i>a secure Israel and future Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security within internationally recognised borders</i>”), which it regards as “<i>the only viable way to resolve the Israel-Palestine dispute”</i>, and Australia’s “longstanding respect for relevant UN Security Council resolutions”. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Accordingly, the government has decided that “</span><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Australia now recognises West Jerusalem, being the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of government, is the capital of Israel</span></i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">”.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The Prime Minister stated that </span><span style="color: #2b2b2b; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">"<i>furthermore, recognising our commitment to a two-state solution, the government is also “resolved to </i></span><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">acknowledge the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a future state with its capital in East Jerusalem</span></i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">”, <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2b2b2b; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">As a result, Australia will establish a defence and trade office in Jerusalem, and only move the embassy in support of and after final status determination". </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The new policy was immediately condemned by the opposition and by many in the Islamic world, and rejected by the PLO. Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat even called on Arab and Muslim countries to sever all diplomatic ties with Australia because of the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Representing a broad collective of pro-Israel Christian Zionists, Christians for Israel and Bridges for Peace welcome the announcement. The government should be commended for boldly reasserting Australia’s deeply-rooted support for the State of Israel. Recognising West Jerusalem as Israel's capital is seen to be a step in the right direction, and will hopefully lead to the moving of the Australian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in due course. This recognition is an appropriate acknowledgement of Israel's sovereign right to determine its own capital city, and simply reflects the reality on the ground that all institutions of government are located in Jerusalem. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">However many of this <i>collective voice</i> representing Christians who stand for Israel have some concerns about the government’s distinction between "East" and "West" Jerusalem. The Australian Government's "acknowledgement of Palestinian aspirations for Statehood with East Jerusalem as capital", and the statement that the moving of the embassy will only occur as and when a State of Palestine has been established pursuant to negotiations will not assist the negotiations or make a Palestinian state more likely, because they do not address the main causes of the problem: the structural promotion of terror by the Palestinian Authority, the continued refusal of the PLO to recognize Israel as a Jewish State, the ambitions of most Palestinian groups to destroy the Jewish State and replace it with an Islamic State, and the failure of the Palestinians – notwithstanding billions of dollars of foreign aid - to create the conditions necessary for statehood. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">It is a great pity that the government has recommitted itself to the “Two State Solution” as the “only viable way to solve the dispute”. The reality is that the Palestinian claims are irreconcilable with the legitimate rights of the State of Israel. Negotiation about Palestinian statehood is a dead-end street. The Oslo agreements do not require the creation of a Palestinian state, but leave open the question whether Palestinian self-determination can be satisfied by alternative means. This would have been an ideal opportunity for the Australian government to have played a leading role in helping the parties to explore alternative solutions that will guarantee both Israel’s security and the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for autonomy. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Further, the “acknowledgement” of Palestinian claims to “East Jerusalem” also prejudices Israel's position in its negotiations concerning the territorial status of Jerusalem, which is a final status issue under the Oslo agreements. Israel's position is that the whole of the city of Jerusalem belongs to the sovereign territory of the State of Israel on its establishment in May 1948. It is only because of Arab aggression that the city was divided between 1949 and 1967. The UN Security Council demanded in 1980 (UNSC Resolution 476) that foreign embassies in Israel be moved from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, following Israel's reunification of the city after the 1967 Six Day War. In Israel's view, UN Security Council Resolution 476 is based on an erroneous belief that "West" Jerusalem does not belong to the State of Israel. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Israel’s claim to sovereignty over the unified city of Jerusalem is based on the San Remo resolution (1920) and the Mandate for Palestine (1922), pursuant to which the whole city of Jerusalem became part of the State of Israel on its establishment in 1948. Further, it is important to emphasise that UN Security Council resolutions on this issue are not binding. It is also significant that Resolution 476 conflicts with the earlier Security Council Resolution 242 (November 1967), which (amongst other things) implicitly acknowledged that Israel has legitimate territorial claims to at least part of the territories captured in 1967, and its right to secure borders. The PLO and Israel have agreed (in the Oslo Accords) that the principles laid down in Resolution 242 form the basis for their negotiations. It is entitled to assert its claims to territorial integrity in its negotiations with the PLO. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">While we commend the government’s commitment to the international “rules-based order”, in our view it gives too much weight to Security Council resolutions. While Security Council resolutions are important and should be treated with respect, Security Council resolutions under Chapter VI of the UN Charter are not binding, and the Council has in any event no jurisdiction to limit or compromise the territorial integrity of individual states.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">For several years, Christians for Israel and Bridges for Peace have been facilitating grass roots initiatives on behalf of a much wider collective voice of pro Israel Christian Zionists liaising with the Australian government and Members of Parliament in Canberra to encourage the Australian government to recognise the unified city of Jerusalem as capital of Israel. In 2017, a petition with over 8000 signatures was delivered to the Australian Parliament </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">requesting the Australian Parliament to take immediate action to move our embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the “eternal and indivisible capital of Israel”.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The petition was endorsed by </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Senator James Paterson, who in his maiden speech in 2016 stated</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">: </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">“I do not believe that the international community can continue to refuse to recognise their capital city of choice and the clear reality on the ground. It would be a symbolic but important step for Australia to formally recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city and to move our embassy there.”</span></div>
Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-29876120897677569802018-12-18T04:48:00.000-08:002018-12-18T04:50:33.102-08:00Labor to pursue recognition of "Palestine"<b><i>From The Australian, 18 December 2018:</i></b><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">Now it’s time for the resolution on Israel and Palestine.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">The resolution notes that conference:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">1. Notes previous resolutions on Israel/Palestine carried at the 2015 ALP National Conference and the 2016 NSW Labor Annual Conference;</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">2. Supports the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders;</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>3. Calls on the next Labor Government to recognise Palestine as a state; and</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>4. Expects that this issue will be an important priority for the next Labor Government.</b></span><br />
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<img alt="Image result for penny wong" height="224" 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" 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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>Penny Wong moves the motion.</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i>“I want to acknowledge that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is an issue of great importance to many in our party,” Senator Wong says.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i>“It is of great importance because Labor is a friend of Israel. I am a friend of Israel.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i>“It is of great importance because Labor is a friend of the Palestinians. I am a friend of the Palestinians.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i>“It is of great importance because we, in Labor, not only deal with the world as it is, we seek to change it for the better.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i>“And so all who have come to this debate do so in the hope of contributing to peace and to a just and lasting resolution of the conflict between these two peoples.”</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">Senator Wong says the resolution makes clear Labor intends to continue to support the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>“And it recognises the desire of this conference to recognise Palestine as a state,” Senator Wong says.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i>“We recognise that a just two-state resolution will require recognising the right of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples to live in peace and security.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i>“Labor will continue to call on both sides of the conflict to refrain from any actions that hamper peaceful outcomes for both the Israeli and Palestinian people.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i>“And we will continue to ensure that any decision we take contributes to peaceful resolution of the conflict and to progress towards a two-state solution.”</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>Senator Wong says Labor’s approach was largely bipartisan until recently...</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>Senator Wong commends the resolution to the conference, saying it makes clear Labor’s commitment to progressing lasting peace and a two-state solution.</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><br /></span>
<img alt="Image result for tony burke" height="224" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS1afBD2eHcUuDDkeR-ewTokKmtCLVzvH-ImuXzUMEFWl6H-qFI" width="400" /><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>Tony Burke seconds Senator Wong’s motion.</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>“We have reached a point where the arguments to wait have become thinner, and the arguments to act have become stronger,” Mr Burke says.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>The motion passes on voices, with cheering and clapping from the floor.</b></span>Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-38087090674022602672018-11-15T03:35:00.001-08:002018-11-15T03:35:22.085-08:00Australia’s position on the Iran “nuclear deal” and Jerusalem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNjqDD1P8OoCWZgU8qr3wFdoYuzRP2WynnpTzxiGOyaxzlJIMBFIPkewqbzWka-rUFX3j6p6ySq2Gpr4edtpIm1RM-in2EdBPPIHhjR6381GBpu9NhYxTdeOWyZjEmOHuT23DLC6GlGcfB/s1600/JCCWA+letterhead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="185" data-original-width="619" height="118" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNjqDD1P8OoCWZgU8qr3wFdoYuzRP2WynnpTzxiGOyaxzlJIMBFIPkewqbzWka-rUFX3j6p6ySq2Gpr4edtpIm1RM-in2EdBPPIHhjR6381GBpu9NhYxTdeOWyZjEmOHuT23DLC6GlGcfB/s400/JCCWA+letterhead.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><u>Statement on Australia’s position on the Iran “nuclear deal” and the prospect of formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel </u></span></b><br />
<br />
Our community wholeheartedly supports the prospect that the Australian government will review its position on the Iran “nuclear deal” and the prospect of formally recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocating its embassy there. This would be congruent with fundamental Australian values, promote peace and serve our national interests.<br />
<br />
Moving the Australian Embassy to West Jerusalem, inside the 1949 Armistice Line, in no way prejudices the outcome of future peace negotiations unless one entertains the prospect that Israel’s long-standing sovereignty in the city is to be removed. Recognising that this is no prospect at all in fact promotes the cause of peaceful co-existence in the region.<br />
<br />
Our community overwhelmingly supports modern Zionism as the political movement for the self-determination of the Jewish people. The wider Australian community is also supportive of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.<br />
<br />
The intractable, century-long Arab-Israel conflict is regretfully perpetuated by an apparently persistent Arab ambition to destroy Israel as a Jewish nation, which they pursue by demands for a purported “right of return” to Israel within the 1949 Armistice Line, incitement to terrorism, and by paying stipends and pensions to convicted terrorists. (See Appendix 1 for further detail.) Objection to the Jerusalem move are motivated by the same destructive ambition. (See Appendix 2.)<br />
<br />
Formal Australian recognition of the obvious fact that Jerusalem is the seat of Israel’s Parliament and all its national institutions recognises the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish nation. Until the Arab side reconciles itself to this, there is little hope of any resolution. Thus, such a move would support Arab-Israel peaceful co-existence. The US move in this direction is clearly intended to discourage continued Arab intransigence and refusal to negotiate. Australia should support it.<br />
Some Arab and Muslim diplomats have criticised the prospect of Australia recognising Israel’s capital, and implied that bilateral relations and trade may be negatively affected. However, trade between the US and Arab and Muslim states, in the 8 months after the US announced in December 2017 that it would move its embassy to Jerusalem, have increased, not decreased. US exports to Egypt have increased by 93.7%, to Qatar by 85.5%, Morocco 22.9%, Lebanon, 16% and to Indonesia by 37.9%. Despite grandstanding and rhetoric by individual diplomats, nations continue to pursue their national interests.<br />
<br />
Federal Trade Minister Simon Birmingham correctly pointed out that you “don’t… expect that two nations will always agree in terms of foreign policy positions as they relate to a third nation. But that shouldn’t get in the way of a strong bilateral relationship.”<br />
<br />
And Greg Sheridan, in The Australia, 15 November 2018, also said: “Islamist politicians will not like any pro-Israel statement … some Indonesians will object to it. … so be it. It would be completely wretched, and damaging to our national interests, for the Morrison government to back away now from doing anything on the Jerusalem front.”<br />
<br />
In relation to the Iran issue, Arab states will applaud Australian reconsideration of its support for the nuclear deal and any increased diplomatic efforts to contain Iranian hegemonic ambitions. It’s no secret that virtually all the Arab states are alarmed by the Iranian threat.<br />
<br />
Finally, as the Australia-Israel & Jewish Affairs Council has pointed out: Australian reconsideration of both the Iran and Jerusalem issues will be well received by our most important strategic all: the USA – a critical national interest consideration at a time when Australian security and economic concerns vis-a-vis North Korea and China loom larger than ever.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Ref515469973" style="text-align: justify;"><b><u><span lang="EN-US">Appendix </span></u></b></a><b style="text-align: justify;"><u><span lang="EN-GB">1 </span></u></b><b style="text-align: justify;"><u><span lang="EN-US">– </span></u></b><b style="text-align: justify;"><u><span lang="EN-GB">Arab </span></u></b><b style="text-align: justify;"><u><span lang="EN-US">Incitement to Terror</span></u></b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">Arab terror attacks in Israel result from explicit calls by the Arab
leaders to “spill blood.” Arab children have been taught to idolize the murder
of Jews as a sacred value and to regard their own death in this “jihad” as the
pinnacle of their aspirations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The P</span><span lang="EN-GB">alestinian </span><span lang="EN-US">A</span><span lang="EN-GB">uthority</span><span lang="EN-US"> incites
antisemitism, glorifies martyrdom and encourages terrorism, by awarding
generous lifetime pensions to terrorists and their families, on a sliding scale
– the more Jews they kill, the higher the pension. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">An apprehended terrorist told interrogators in Israel last year:
"I've accumulated large debts... I decided to do something serious, such
as committing murder... and then my family will get money (i.e., from the PA)
and will live comfortably... "<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">In June 2017, PA District Governor, Laila Ghannam, praised the
"Martyrdom " of a 17-year-old terrorist who was shot and killed while
throwing Molotov cocktails at Jewish civilians, praising the fact that rather
than obtaining matriculation this summer, the terrorist "achieved the
highest Martyrdom". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The PA’s incessant incitement perpetuates the conflict and grooms the
next generation of terrorists by naming streets, public squares and even
children's soccer tournaments after terrorists. In May 2017, the PA inaugurated
the Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Center, named after a terrorist leader in the murder
of 37 civilians including 12 children, in the Nablus district. In April 2017,
Safa, the daughter of Abdallah Barghouti, a terrorist who prepared explosives
for attacks in which 67 were murdered, read a letter to her father at her
school assembly saying: "Father, I am very proud of you".<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US">The apathy shown by the international community to this death-culture,
and the unbalanced </span><span lang="EN-GB">way</span><span lang="EN-US"> subsequent violence is often treated by the international media is
doing long-term, and possibly irrevocable, harm to the Arabs themselves, more
than to anyone. Yet there is little international opposition to the
exploitation of Arab children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: HE; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br clear="all" style="mso-special-character: line-break; page-break-before: always;" />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="text-align: justify;"><u><span lang="EN-US">Appendix </span></u></b><b style="text-align: justify;"><u><span lang="EN-GB">2 </span></u></b><b style="text-align: justify;"><u><span lang="EN-US">– </span></u></b><b style="text-align: justify;"><u><span lang="EN-GB">The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem</span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">In relation to the
Jerusalem issue, it is instructive to review an essay by historian Daniel
Pipes, published in 2001 about the history of Muslim "interest" in
the holy city. The following is from the conclusion. (The link for the full
essay is </span><a href="https://www.meforum.org/articles/other/the-muslim-claim-to-jerusalem"><span lang="EN-GB">https://www.meforum.org/articles/other/the-muslim-claim-to-jerusalem</span></a><span lang="EN-GB">.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“...Politics, not religious
sensibility, has fueled the Muslim attachment to Jerusalem for nearly fourteen
centuries; what the historian Bernard Wasserstein has written about the growth
of Muslim feeling in the course of the Countercrusade applies through the
centuries: <i>‘often in the history of Jerusalem, heightened religious fervour
may be explained in large part by political necessity.’</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“This pattern has three
main implications. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“First, Jerusalem will
never be more than a secondary city for Muslims; ‘<i>belief in the sanctity of
Jerusalem... cannot be said to have been widely diffused nor deeply rooted in
Islam.’</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Second, the Muslim
interest lies not so much in controlling Jerusalem as it does in denying
control over the city to anyone else. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Third, the Islamic
connection to the city is weaker than the Jewish one because it arises as much
from transitory and mundane considerations as from the immutable claims of
faith...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“In modern times, some
scholars have come to the same conclusion: ‘<i>Jerusalem plays for the Jewish
people the same role that Mecca has for Muslims,’</i> writes Abdul Hadi
Palazzi, director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic
Community...”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: justify;">
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Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-47947897090852609882018-11-13T18:44:00.001-08:002018-11-13T18:44:06.799-08:00Australians do support recognising Jerusalem<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 2.25pt; mso-outline-level: 1; vertical-align: bottom;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><i>From <a href="https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/11/australians-do-support-recognising-jerusalem/">The Spectator Australia, 10 November 2018, by <o:p></o:p></a><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;"><a href="https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/11/australians-do-support-recognising-jerusalem/">Peter Wertheim</a>:</span></i></b></span></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal;">
<img height="268" src="https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/11/werheim_10_nov_post.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=820&h=550" width="400" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.75pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 15pt;">The brouhaha that followed the federal government’s announcement that
Australia will consider moving Australia’s Israeli embassy to Jerusalem
continues to sputter along. Immediately following the announcement the ABC
reported, correctly, that Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi had
expressed concerns about the announcement to Marise Payne. But the ABC also jumped
the gun and reported, incorrectly, that Indonesia was considering putting the
proposed Indonesia Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership on hold. The
latter proposition was swiftly and emphatically denied by Indonesian Trade
Minister Enggartiasto Lukito who confirmed that the deal remains on track to be
signed this year. The deal is as much in Indonesia’s interests as Australia’s.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.75pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Whilst the Palestinian cause is a highly emotive one within the 56
states of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, including Indonesia and
Malaysia, none of these states has a record of putting its concerns for the
Palestinians ahead of its own national interests. States rarely place sentiment
above their national interests. The Indonesian Trade Minister’s
statements should not have come as a surprise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.75pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">A second tack taken by critics of the announcement was given voice by
the Palestinian Authority’s envoy to Australia, Izzat Abdulhadi, who claimed
that moving the Australian Embassy to Jerusalem would be ‘contrary to
international law’ and would thus make Australia ‘an international pariah’. To
support the claim, Palestinian spokespeople frequently cite UN Security Council
Resolution 478 which they say is a decision binding on all States under Article
25 of the UN Charter. However, 478 only applies to action taken by Israel to
assert its sovereignty ‘in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied
since June 1967, including Jerusalem’. Israel’s government precinct is located
in the western part of the city, which has been part of Israel’s sovereign
territory since 1948. It is not located in the part of Jerusalem ‘occupied [by
Israel] since June 1967’. The US Embassy is located in the western part of the
city, as would any other embassy, including ours.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">A third criticism was the assertion that most
Australians are opposed to moving our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. A Roy
Morgan SMS survey undertaken on December 14-15, 2017 was dusted off to support
this claim. It asked the question: <i>Do you support or oppose President
Trump’s recent decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel?</i> The
survey found 76 per cent of Australians opposed the Trump announcement and 24
per cent supported it. Implausibly, there were no ‘Don’t know’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">The wording of the question suffered from several
defects. It linked recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital with Trump, who on
any view is a polarising personality. It also mis-characterised Trump’s
decision. Trump did not ‘declare’ Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel; the US
recognised it as already <i>being</i> Israel’s capital.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.75pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">There is no way of knowing which of those who answered ‘No’ did so
because they did not like Trump personally, or were put off by the controversy,
or were misled into believing that Trump was ‘declaring’ Jerusalem to be
Israel’s capital, rather than because they were opposed in principle to
recognising the reality that Israel’s seat of government has for decades been
in Jerusalem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.75pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">Israel’s parliament, ministerial offices, Supreme Court, President’s
residence and PM’s residence have all been located in the western part of
Jerusalem since the early days of the state. This is not part of the area that
Israel captured during the 1967 war and is not designated by the UN as
‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’. It is not a part of the city that has been
the subject of negotiations for a two-state outcome. Locating an embassy in the
uncontested western part of Jerusalem would in no way pre-judge the future
status of the contested eastern part of the city captured by Israel in 1967. It
is ironic that some of those who argue against a unilateral embassy move on the
false premise that it would pre-judge a permanent status issue in the
Israel-Palestinian conflict, namely the future status of the eastern part of
Jerusalem, are the very people seeking to commit Labor at its National
Conference in December to extend unilateral recognition to a Palestinian state.
That move would necessarily pre-judge a whole raft of issues, including east
Jerusalem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">My organisation, the Executive Council of
Australian Jewry, was keen to test the veracity of the Roy Morgan survey. We
commissioned YouGov/Galaxy to conduct a poll asking: <i>In 1949, Israel
designated Jerusalem to be its capital city, and has its parliament there. Do
you think Australia should recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? </i>The
survey was conducted in February among 1,205 Australians. The demographic
distribution of the sample as between age, gender, marital/parental status,
geographical location, income level and educational attainment reflected the
results of the 2016 census as published by the ABS. The margin of error was
plus or minus 2.9 per cent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.75pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">The results paint a very different picture to the published Roy Morgan
findings. A key finding of the YouGov survey was that when the question of
Jerusalem was framed as one of whether to ‘recognise’ (rather than ‘declare’)
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and was asked without mentioning Trump or the
US, Australians supported recognition by a margin of almost two to one (40 to
21 per cent). Based on party preference, those supporting recognition
outnumbered those against in every group except the Greens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.75pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;">My organisation, the peak representative body of the Jewish community,
has long supported recognising the reality that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital
and moving the embassy there. Of course Jerusalem strikes an emotional chord
for all Jews. It has been our people’s spiritual and political capital since
the dawn of the Iron Age 3,000 years ago. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.75pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But <b>we also believe it is in
Australia’s interests, and the interests of peoples of the Middle East, for
western nations to back the region’s only real democracy, instead of cravenly
yielding to threats of retaliation or, worse still, conjuring up the spectre of
threats which don’t exist</b>. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.75pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Times, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The announcement of the Australian government that
it is open to considering whether Australia’s embassy in Israel should be moved
to Jerusalem was made four days before the highly-significant by-election for
the Federal seat of Wentworth. The timing of the announcement led to a storm of
criticism. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; margin-bottom: 15.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #333333;">Yet </span><b>when the issue of recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is
considered on its merits, without being accompanied by the hoopla of Australian
(or US) domestic politics, the idea enjoys far more support than opposition.
Its time will come.</b></span></span></div>
Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-55045215279818052472018-11-06T03:00:00.000-08:002018-11-06T03:00:13.314-08:00On the Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre<b><i>by Keith Buxton, on behalf of the Australian pro-Israel Christian community [</i></b><b><i>Minor adaptation of message by Eric Malloy, Bridges for Peace Canada (used with permission)]:</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
<img alt="Image result for keith buxton" src="http://libertychristianlifecentre.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Keith-Buxton.bmp" /><br />
<br />
As millions of Australians mourn the tragic deaths at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, we re-affirm our support and friendship and will continue to do all within our power to educate and act in support of our Jewish friends and the nation of Israel. We will continue to challenge and educate Australians who hold beliefs and take actions that are antisemitic in nature. As families mourn the loss and injury of loved ones, I recall the words of the Psalmist:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors! Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord! </i>(Psalm 31:14, 15, 24)</span></blockquote>
Antisemitic words and actions are on the rise in Australia. Most of this evil is perpetrated by far left or far right groups, organisations, and individuals, and by radical Islamists. Political, religious, business, academic, and social leaders are bombarded by lobbyists who are biased against or in outright opposition to Israel and the Jewish people. Many Australian colleges and universities welcome incendiary speakers and educators who spew hate for Israel and Jews, yet refuse to permit pro-Israel speakers and educators to be heard. Some so-called Christian denominations have consciously decided to join the Israel hate-fest and are a discredit to their Christian faith and the Bible that informs it. This hypocrisy fuels antisemites, Holocaust deniers, and radicals. Actions like the Tree of Life Synagogue tragedy are in large part rooted in these and other related factors. I appeal to Australian lawmakers, interpreters, and enforcers to take decisive action before it’s too late.<br />
<br />
Members of Parliament and other political leaders have the responsibility to address these evils, to legislate against them, and to enforce that legislation. In many cases, simply enforcing the existing legislation would help stem the tide. Those who participate in BDS and hate need a wake-up call. Clear-minded Australians will not tolerate it. Those who falsely claim “human rights” abuses need to be confronted and have their “story” debunked. Australian politicians need to sift through the rhetoric and stand firm on truth and true justice - not the injustice falsely peddled as justice. Prime Minister Scott Morrison needs to continue to take a lead on this, to do what is right because it is right, to reject voices that support antisemitic or anti-Israel libels and violence, and to be on the right side of history.<br />
MPs who are being lobbied need to fact-check. They need to be informed by reliable sources and to be reminded of self-evident, easily confirmed facts. Those who promote libels need to be identified and exposed for their lies. Those who falsely accuse Israel of apartheid need to observe the obvious: Israel is a free and liberal democracy, and it is many of her neighbours that actually practice racial segregation - against Jews. This is vividly evident with the Palestinian Authority who wants their version of “history” and national aspiration to be respected while denying the Jews theirs. Worse yet, many seemingly intelligent Australian and world leaders act as if this is acceptable. Those who protest by boycotting Israel in Australian institutions and society need to reconsider whether there is any wisdom in boycotting the source of vast breakthroughs in technology, medicine, education, agriculture, defence, emergency response, and human aid, not to mention giving medical treatment to victims of civil conflicts in Syria and Lebanon.<br />
<br />
Supporting Israel does not mean demonstrating hate for other nations and people-groups in the region. It’s time for people and organizations to get off the Israel hate-wagon and dialogue in a civil manner. Then maybe some of the fuel for these barbaric incidents would be gone. That sounds like a fair request.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-15071895522126585242018-10-17T23:09:00.001-07:002018-10-18T00:57:48.622-07:00The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Given the topical interest currently, in the prospect of Australia moving its Israeli Embassy to Israel's capital: Jerusalem; it is instructive to review <a href="https://www.meforum.org/articles/other/the-muslim-claim-to-jerusalem">Daniel Pipes' essay, published in 2001</a> about the history of Muslim "interest" in the holy city.</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Follow<a href="https://www.meforum.org/articles/other/the-muslim-claim-to-jerusalem"> the link for the full essay</a>. The following is from the conclusion.</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></b>
<img alt="Image result for jerusalem temple mount" height="225" src="https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/2014/11/blogs/economist-explains/20141122_gdm101.png" width="400" /><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Politics, not religious sensibility, has fueled the Muslim attachment to Jerusalem for nearly fourteen centuries; what the historian Bernard Wasserstein has written about the growth of Muslim feeling in the course of the Countercrusade applies through the centuries: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>"often in the history of Jerusalem, heightened religious fervour may be explained in large part by political necessity." </b></span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">This pattern has three main implications. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>First</b>, Jerusalem will never be more than a secondary city for Muslims; <i><b>"belief in the sanctity of Jerusalem... cannot be said to have been widely diffused nor deeply rooted in Islam." </b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Second</b>, the Muslim interest lies not so much in controlling Jerusalem as it does in denying control over the city to anyone else. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Third</b>, the Islamic connection to the city is weaker than the Jewish one because it arises as much from transitory and mundane considerations as from the immutable claims of faith.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Mecca, by contrast, is the eternal city of Islam, the place from which non-Muslims are strictly forbidden. Very roughly speaking, what Jerusalem is to Jews, Mecca is to Muslims – a point made in the Qur'an itself (2:145) in recognizing that Muslims have one qibla and "the people of the Book" another one. The parallel was noted by medieval Muslims; the geographer Yaqut (1179-1229) wrote, for example, that <b><i>"Mecca is holy to Muslims and Jerusalem to the Jews."</i> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In modern times, some scholars have come to the same conclusion: <b><i>"Jerusalem plays for the Jewish people the same role that Mecca has for Muslims,"</i> </b>writes Abdul Hadi Palazzi, director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The similarities are striking. Jews pray thrice daily to Jerusalem and Muslims five times to Mecca. Muslims see Mecca as the navel of the world, just as Jews see Jerusalem. Whereas Jews believe Abraham nearly sacrificed Ishmael's brother Isaac in Jerusalem, Muslims believe this episode took place in Mecca. The Ka'ba in Mecca has similar functions for Muslims as the Temple in Jerusalem for Jews (such as serving as a destination for pilgrimage). The Temple and Ka'ba are both said to be inimitable structures. The supplicant takes off his shoes and goes barefoot in both their precincts. Solomon's Temple was inaugurated on Yom Kippur, the tenth day of the year, and the Ka'ba receives its new cover also on the tenth day of each year. If Jerusalem is for Jews a place so holy that not just its soil but even its air is deemed sacred, Mecca is the place whose "very mention reverberates awe in Muslims' hearts," according to Abad Ahmad of the Islamic Society of Central Jersey.</span>Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-90315603286350104622018-09-13T01:12:00.002-07:002018-09-13T01:12:29.379-07:00Australian-Government suspends funding to Union Aid Abroad after further terrorism links are revealed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>From The Daily Telegraph, September 13, 2018, by <span style="background: white;">Sharri Markson,</span> <span style="background: white;">National Political Editor:</span></i></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-size: large;">THE federal government has suspended taxpayer funding to a union charity
after it was revealed a Palestinian organisation receiving aid employed a
second member of a listed terrorist group.</span></span><br />
<span style="background: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Union Aid Abroad — APHEDA, which was set up by unions and has been run by
federal Labor MPs including Ged Kearney, has received $21 million of public
funds, millions of which has made its way to a Palestinian organisation called
the MA’AN Development Centre.</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background: white;"> </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvhi-5jo0ebL8mdZvUXpfdOkLTfvvEp4u0O_1OUN6K4zJyVKJ8sqicPYV_V8kFygM7CbaSyu1Qi5h4I6kDaXm_9B7NTRNfG-vVay1SgU4JVefTrS01PHA1bLns8LKxCuyeBNVbY2uUJIHv/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="421" data-original-width="316" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvhi-5jo0ebL8mdZvUXpfdOkLTfvvEp4u0O_1OUN6K4zJyVKJ8sqicPYV_V8kFygM7CbaSyu1Qi5h4I6kDaXm_9B7NTRNfG-vVay1SgU4JVefTrS01PHA1bLns8LKxCuyeBNVbY2uUJIHv/s400/1.jpg" width="300" /></a><span style="color: #5856d6;"><br />
</span><i>Hamza
Zbiedat is a supporter and affiliate of terrorist organisation the PFLP and is
employed by the MA’AN Development Centre which receives APHEDA funding. </i><br />
<span style="background: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Daily Telegraph can reveal the MA’AN Development Centre is employing as
a field and media co-ordinator, Hamza Zbiedat, who is a supporter and affiliate
of terrorist organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(PFLP).</span></span><br />
<span style="background: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background: white;">The PFLP is on the official terror list of the US, the European Union and
Canada, as a result of its history of hijacking of planes, assassinations and
suicide bombings, while Australia has the group on its “Consolidated” list of
organisations subject to financial sanctions as a result of terror and security
threats.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-size: large;">Zbiedat, who was arrested by Palestinian Authority security forces on
October 14, 2017, is <b>the second PFLP affiliate employed the MA’AN Development
Centre</b></span>.</span><br />
<span style="background: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background: white;">In June, The Daily Telegraph revealed <b>the same organisation had employed
since 2012 a leader of the PFLP in Gaza</b>, Ahmad Abdullah Al Adine, 30, as their
Project Co-ordinator and Field Monitor.</span><span style="color: #5856d6;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was killed during the riots at the border of Gaza and Israel in May and he was hailed as a “martyr” at his funeral, which was attended by at least a dozen armed PFLP terrorists wearing balaclavas...</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #5856d6;"><br /></span></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgczs62_aJIf5fu0AJBM3bmpQ_rhKxLmI8h61nwqo_MhwEx8YuQ6DqagJCsktp6PVkmjphFiA2KKKYId2KyAGYfXE3tkeEM6z7c3djdm2YRw51lNklbA5GsBoUAJ7KU7N2iCvUklDXaSXeE/s1600/2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="535" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgczs62_aJIf5fu0AJBM3bmpQ_rhKxLmI8h61nwqo_MhwEx8YuQ6DqagJCsktp6PVkmjphFiA2KKKYId2KyAGYfXE3tkeEM6z7c3djdm2YRw51lNklbA5GsBoUAJ7KU7N2iCvUklDXaSXeE/s400/2.png" width="400" /></a><span style="color: #5856d6;"><br />
</span><i>Ahmed
Abdulla Al Adine, a leader of </i></span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of terrorist organisation the PFLP,</i><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </i><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and was employed by the MA’AN Development Centre which receives APHEDA funding. He </i><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was </i><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">shot by an Israeli sniper </i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">during the riots at the border of Gaza and Israel, on May 14, 2018. </span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<span style="background: white;"> </span><br /><br />
<span style="background: white;"> </span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaxnNkzdlEXRtgXnI_SAJGyAusFrsnDZEiVOXPWNIhRLXlSqBmKpHODZOjqTldfolSTh15SXSrec_ANeIvrhU-Cx8G0zHWFfIBq3rNVphxnv4lVMjeinVmTcABZVFvjws0PdL_6vUebtD2/s1600/3.png" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="387" data-original-width="516" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaxnNkzdlEXRtgXnI_SAJGyAusFrsnDZEiVOXPWNIhRLXlSqBmKpHODZOjqTldfolSTh15SXSrec_ANeIvrhU-Cx8G0zHWFfIBq3rNVphxnv4lVMjeinVmTcABZVFvjws0PdL_6vUebtD2/s400/3.png" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #5856d6;"><br />
</span><i>Ahmed
Abdulla Al Adine’s body is carried during his burial as he was hailed as a
“martyr”.</i></span><br />
<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At least a dozen armed PFLP terrorists wearing balaclavas attended his funeral.</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i>
<span style="background: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>After being alerted to the evidence ...the government
has now suspended all Australian funding to the Labor-aligned charity.</b></span></span><br />
<span style="background: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background: white;">In June, former foreign minister Julie Bishop announced an audit into the
funding, but did not suspend it.</span><br /><span style="background: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="font-size: large;">But shown the evidence concerning a second current employee, Ms Bishop, in
one of her final acts as foreign minister, halted funding to Union Aid Abroad —
APHEDA.</span></span><br />
</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic;"><span style="background: white;">“The former Foreign Minister initiated an audit of APHEDA’s Australian
aid-funded program in the Palestinian Territories on 27 June.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic;"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white;"><i>“The audit is due to be completed by the end of the year,” </i><b>Foreign Minister
Marise Payne’s spokesman</b> said<i>.</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic;"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic;"><span style="background: white;">“The former foreign minister suspended APHEDA’s Australian aid-funded
programs in the Palestinian Territories until the audit is complete.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic;"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic;"><span style="background: white;">“The Australian Government has zero tolerance of any diversion of aid
funding from its stated development purpose.”</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="background: white;">Union Aid Abroad — APHEDA’s executive officer Kate Lee did not respond to
questions about whether she had made any moves to investigate links between
MA’AN Development Centre’s staff and terror organisations since The Daily
Telegraph’s first report in June.</span><br />
<span style="background: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background: white;">Ms Lee would also not respond to questions about whether it was appropriate
funds went to an organisation that employees leaders and affiliates of a terror
group....</span></b></span><br />
<!--[endif]-->Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-25261611046352002972018-09-05T21:26:00.002-07:002018-09-05T21:26:29.379-07:00AIJAC will lodge a complaint about ABC TV story on Israel’s Nation-State Law<span style="font-size: large;">The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) is very disappointed at the one-sided and misleading report on the September 4 edition ABC TV’s “7.30”, covering Israel’s Nation State Law. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: HE; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU;"><img class="mcnImage" height="208" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/47a75d0045c18fe6d00cea3d9/images/58be2176-4954-42e1-b180-71c5220fcc3c.png" style="border-width: 0in; max-width: 1024px; outline: none; vertical-align: bottom;" width="400" /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"><i>ABC Israel correspondent Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">While the law is controversial, and is opposed by many Israelis of all religions and political persuasions, the report by “7.30” included some false statements and lacked context.</span><br />
<br />
In her introduction to the report, host Leigh Sales stated the law “defines the country as exclusively a Jewish state.” This is not true. While it does state that Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, and that the “right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people” this simply restates what is well known – that Israel is the state for the Jewish people, as set out in Israel’s Declaration of Independence and other Basic Laws, not to mention the original UN partition resolution. It does not mean Israel is now “exclusively” Jewish.<br />
<br />
Sales also claimed, “The so-called nation-state law is the latest in a series of policies seeking to enshrine Jewish supremacy amidst a surge in ultra-nationalist sentiment.” The claim of “Jewish supremacy”, that Jews have more rights than other Israeli citizens, is simply incorrect – all Israeli citizens have equal rights. The claim about “ultra-nationalist sentiment” is also a skewed and inaccurate representation of the reality in Israel and an inappropriate attempt by the ABC to pass a subjective judgement on this and other recent Israeli laws.<br />
<br />
Similarly, in his report, Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop claims the law “defines Israel as exclusively the nation state of the Jewish people,” and says, “Under a divisive new law, these two Israeli citizens are no longer equals. Because Mira Awad is an Arab, Israel is officially no longer her nation.” This is patently untrue. All citizens of Israel, regardless of religion or ethnicity, have equal rights. There are other basic laws – Human Dignity and Liberty and Freedom of Occupation (meaning jobs) – which have equal standing and which guarantee the human rights and equality of all Israelis. Rubinsztein-Dunlop’s implication that this law supersedes all those other laws is simply incorrect.<br />
<br />
Rubinsztein-Dunlop also states that the Nation State Law doesn’t contain the words “democracy” and “equality” in its definition of Israel, and while this is true, the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty states, “The purpose of this Basic Law is to protect human dignity and liberty, in order to establish in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” and then applies its protections equally to all.<br />
<br />
Rubinsztein-Dunlop states the law “puts Hebrew above Arabic as the only official language,” and while it is true that the law states, “The State’s language is Hebrew,” if Rubensztein-Dunlop wished to give the relevant context, he would have also noted that the law provides, “The Arabic language has a special status in the state; Regulating the use of Arabic in state institutions or by them will be set in law,” and that the clause making Hebrew the language of the state “does not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect.”<br />
<br />
It is also worth noting that all other Middle Eastern countries are specified in their constitutions or equivalent as Arabic or Islamic or both. In the Palestinian Authority, which demands that no Jews can live in any future Palestinian state, it’s both. In addition, many European and Asian countries have laws giving preferred status to the culture of the dominant ethnic group, religion or language, or defining the country by reference to them. Yet somehow it’s only when Israel, which the UN specifically established as a “Jewish state”, confirms that status that the ABC deems it worthy of a critical current affairs report.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">AIJAC Executive Director Dr Colin Rubenstein stated, </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>“Yet again, we have the unfortunate situation where the ABC has failed to properly cover a complicated issue involving Israel. There have been both sins of commission, with false statements and mischaracterisations, and sins of omission, where context crucial to give viewers a full understanding of the issues was totally lacking. The Australian viewing public and taxpayers are entitled to expect far better from their ABC.”</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">AIJAC will be submitting a formal complaint.</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-84965305770046917192018-08-16T17:04:00.000-07:002018-08-16T17:24:42.762-07:00Richard Wagner’s Jewish Problem<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i>I’m dismayed and perplexed that a Jewish
conductor recently performed a Richard Wagner opera in Perth and that some Jews
attended the performance.</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Music is obviously an expression of the
composer's feelings and worldview. That's why music is often described and
discussed in the context of the composer's frame of mind at the time and place
it was composed. </span>For this reason, I could not countenance
attending a Wagner performance. He promulgated many anti-Semitic views over the
course of his life. He frequently accused Jews of being a harmful foreign
element in Germany and called for the annihilation of Jewish culture. He conceived
the terms "Jewish problem" and "final solution," which Nazism
later adopted.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Wagner and his "Bayreuth Circle"
were the "intellectual" and "spiritual" fathers of
genocidal Nazism. Hitler and his regime were inspired by Wagnerian thought and
music. Hitler said that that "there is only one legitimate predecessor to
national socialism: Wagner" and venerated him, saying, "Whoever wants
to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner." He was so
enraptured with him that he is quoted as having said "Richard Wagner is my
religion."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><img height="400" src="https://assets.catawiki.nl/assets/2017/11/4/f/0/3/f033e4c9-845e-4844-9a04-ac2d4492f884.jpg" width="269" /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Wagner's first and most controversial
anti-Semitic essay was "<i>Das Judenthum in der Musik</i>",
originally published in 1850 in the Neue Zeitschrift under the pen-name "<i>K.
Freigedenk</i>" ("<i>free thought</i>") and later under his own
name. It that essay, Wagner expressed his fervent revulsion for what he
described as "<i>cursed Jewish scum</i>" and described Jews as "<i>hostile
to European civilization</i>" and "<i>ruling the world through money</i>."
He said that "<i>Judaism is rotten at the core and is a religion of hatred</i>,"
described the cultured Jew as "<i>the most heartless of all human beings</i>"
and referred to Jewish composers as being "<i>comparable to worms feeding
on the body of art</i>." He claimed that the German people were repelled
by Jews due to their alien appearance and behavior — "<i>freaks of Nature</i>"
with "<i>creaking, squeaking, buzzing</i>" voices — so that "<i>with
all our speaking and writing in favour of the Jews' emancipation, we always
felt instinctively repelled by any actual, operative contact with them</i>." </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">In the conclusion to the essay, he wrote of the Jews that "</span><i><span style="font-size: large;">only one
thing can redeem you from the burden of your curse: the redemption of Ahasuerus
– going under!</span></i><span style="font-size: large;">" </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">Music critic Barry Millington said that “<i>Anti-Semitism
is woven into the fabric of the music of Wagner</i>.”</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I ask those who claim that they can ignore
Wagner’s repulsive philosophy and focus in isolation on the music, to consider
the following example of his art explicitly expressing his anti-Semitism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">In Parsifal, Wagner’s final opera, Kundry,
is explicitly Jewish. Kundry is the archetypal Jew of medieval myth, the
wandering Ahasuerus, cursed to roam the world eternally for mocking Christ on
the cross. To music of an inexpressible weariness, she confesses: “<i>I saw
Him—Him—and laughed!</i>” For this sin of laughter, she is damned to wander “<i>from
world to world</i>,” seeking a redemption that always eludes her. Like the Jews
of <i>Das Judentum in Musik</i>, she longs for community but remains forever
outside it. Desperate for salvation, she is cursed to be nothing but a source
of corruption. When her salvation does at last arrive, in the grand
reconciliation of Parsifal’s third act, it is consummated by her death, thus
perfectly fulfilling Wagner’s chilling conclusion of <i>Das Judentum in Musik</i>:
“<i>one thing only can redeem you [Jews] from the burden of your curse: the
redemption of Ahasuerus—Going under!</i>”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Wagner’s second wife, Cosima recorded in
her diary on 28 March1881, that Wagner considered Parsifal “a retort to
Gobineau”, who had characterized the Germans as the “last card” of nature,
probably a reference to his despair that evolution was destroying his beloved,
superior "Aryan race..."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">After Wagner's death in 1883, Wagner's
family continued to promote his vile anti-Semitic ideology, and became a
central focus for Jew baiters and radical right-wing Germans. His daughter Eva
married Houston Chamberlain, an Englishman who crafted the ideology for Nazi
racism in his notorious book "The Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century." Bayreuth became a meeting place for fascists and extreme
right-wing Wagner fans that came to be known as the Bayreuth circle. Winifred
Wagner, the English-born widow of Wagner’s son Siegfried, said in the 1970s: <i>“If
Hitler were to walk in through that door now, for instance, I’d be as happy and
glad to see and have him here as ever…”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-24205500631282339782018-08-14T23:12:00.002-07:002018-08-15T00:21:26.038-07:00Katters Australian Party Senator Fraser Anning makes his first speech in the Senate chamber.<b><span style="font-size: large;">Katter's Australia Party senator Fraser Anning said in his maiden speech that Australia should ban Muslims from settling in the country and hold a plebiscite on whether to return to a European-only immigration system.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
<img alt="Image result for senator anning" height="224" src="https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/2c2ab4f8cd23864c8380cf3d02c4bdf7" width="400" /><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b>
<b>On Immigration, he had the following to say (emphasis added). The full text of his speech can be read below.</b></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The next critical problem that we need to address is immigration. Australia currently has the highest per capita immigration rate in the world. Last Tuesday, Australia's population hit 25 million—22 years ahead of previous government predictions. That means that since 1971 the population of Australia has doubled, with immigrants now around one-third of our population. The huge numbers of people allowed to flood into Australia in recent years are unsustainable, with immigration quotas apparently set by successive governments on a whim and without any regard for the necessary infrastructure that these people would require or the ability of those that came here to assimilate. Ethnocultural diversity, which is known to undermine social cohesion, has been allowed to rise to dangerous levels in many suburbs. In direct response, self-segregation, including white flight from poorer inner-urban areas, has become the norm. I believe that immigration to our country should be a privilege, not an obligation-free right provided to anyone from the Third World who demands it. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>First</b>, 457 visas, which simply steal jobs from Australians, should be abolished unless expressly approved by the immigration minister. This will create more jobs for Australians and end the massive rorting of these for backdoor permanent immigration.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>Second</b>, 'family reunion' must be restricted to the husband or wife and/or dependent children within a family. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>Third</b>, student visas should be drastically reduced in number. This will create more university places for Australians, whose parents have actually paid for the universities with their taxes in the first place. Those studying here who decide to apply to immigrate should be required to return to their country of origin after their qualification and to apply as part of the general migration program. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>Fourth</b>, net immigration must be reduced to a level which can be supported and, therefore, must be set following detailed modelling and planning for the associated necessary accommodation, facilities and infrastructure. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>Fifth</b>, but most important of all, diversity should be managed to remain compatible with social cohesion and national identity.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>We as a nation are entitled to insist that those who are allowed to come here predominantly reflect the historic European Christian composition of Australian society and embrace our language, culture and values as a people. In order for us to remain the nation that we are now, those who come here need to assimilate and integrate. Those who are most similar to the mainstream majority in terms of ethnicity, culture, language and values most readily do so. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>Historically, however, the one immigrant group here and in other Western nations that has consistently shown itself to be the least able to assimilate and integrate is Muslims. The first terrorist act on Australian soil was in 1915, when two Muslim immigrants opened fire on a picnic train of innocent women and children in Broken Hill—and Muslim immigrants have been a problem ever since. To paraphrase the words of Sir Winston Churchill: The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power.</i> </b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>The influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those that follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. I believe that the reasons for ending all further Muslim immigration are both compelling and self-evident. The record of Muslims who have already come to this country in rates of crime, welfare dependency and terrorism is the worst of any migrants and vastly exceeds any other immigrant groups. A majority of Muslims in Australia of working age do not work and live on welfare. Muslims in New South Wales and Victoria are three times more likely than other groups to be convicted of crimes. We have black African Muslim gangs terrorising Melbourne. We have ISIS-sympathising Muslims trying to go overseas to fight for ISIS and, while all Muslims are not terrorists, certainly all terrorists these days are Muslims. So why would anyone want to bring more of them here?</b></i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Finally, it should go without saying that, as a nation, we are entitled to require that those who come here not only have useful work skills and qualifications but also the commitment to work and pay taxes. In truth, it appears that many of those who claim to be asylum seekers are actually just welfare seekers who only come to Australia to live on welfare in public housing at the expense of working Australians. In the days of Menzies, immigrants arriving here were not allowed to apply for welfare and that attracted exactly the right sort of hard-working people this country needed. We should go back to that and ban all immigrants receiving welfare for the first five years after they arrive. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The <b><u>final solution</u> </b>to the immigration problem is, of course, a popular vote. We don't need a plebiscite to cut immigration numbers; we just need a government that is willing to institute a sustainable population policy, end Australian-job-stealing 457 visas and make student visas conditional on foreign students returning to the country they came from. What we do need a plebiscite for is to decide who comes here. Whitlam didn't ask the Australian people whether they wanted wholesale non-European migration when he introduced it and neither has any subsequent government. Who we allow to come here will determine what sort of nation we will have in the future, so therefore this isn't the right of any one government to decide. It's too important for that. Instead, we need a plebiscite to allow the Australian people to decide whether they want wholesale non-English speaking immigrants from the Third World and, in particular, whether they want any Muslims or whether they want to return to the predominantly European immigration policy of the pre-Whitlam consensus. I for one will be very happy to abide by their decision....</i></blockquote>
<b>Anton Block, President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry made the following statement about Senator Anning's speech:</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Regardless of his intentions, Senator Anning's choice of words would have been deeply unsettling for Jewish Australians, especially Holocaust survivors. For them the words "final solution" in reference to an 'alien' group are a chilling reminder of how the process of dehumanisation begins. They know from personal experience where it can end. Senator Anning should have been aware of this history.</span></i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">It has long been the ECAJ's position that prospective migrants to Australia should be assessed on their individual merits, and not according to their skin colour, ethnicity or religion.</span></i></blockquote>
<div>
<b><i>The Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) condemned the remarks by Senator Fraser Anning yesterday</i></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">AIJAC, August 15, 2018</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) today condemned remarks made by Senator Fraser Anning in his maiden speech to the Australian Senate yesterday.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"Our overwhelmingly successful Australian multiculturalism and our robust, non-discriminatory immigration policy are rightly hallmarks of our diverse and inclusive society," </i>said AIJAC Executive Director <b>Dr. Rubenstein</b>, a former member of the Council for a Multicultural Australia.<i> </i></span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;">"Senator Anning's counter-productive, crude rhetoric deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms. In particular, his reference to a 'final solution' to Australia's immigration policy in such a forum is beyond deplorable and beneath the dignity of our Parliament. Even his Parliamentary colleague Bob Katter MHR, in his rambling, ill conceived defence of Senator Anning, called the term 'one of the worst statements in all of human history.' Now that he has unequivocally become aware of its ugly meaning, we call on Senator Anning to offer a full and unreserved apology for his use of the term...” ...</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;">"It is also very disappointing that Bob Katter has so strongly backed Senator Anning's sentiments, and used this opportunity to cast a shameful slur at Josh Frydenberg, a proud and outspoken Jewish Member of Parliament. This represents language and sentiments that do not belong in our Parliament," </span><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Mark Leibler</b>, AIJAC National Chairman, added.</span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;">"Both Senator Anning and Mr. Katter should also reflect on the commendable bipartisan, almost universal, condemnation of Anning's discriminatory, outdated views among his Parliamentary colleagues," concluded Leibler.</span></blockquote>
<i><br /></i>
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<b><u>Full Text of Senator Anning's Speech:</u></b></div>
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"Thank you, Mr President. I am pleased to advise that this is finally my first speech. On 6 February 1890, Sir Henry Parkes, the man who was to become the 'Father of our Federation', spoke to assembled delegates at the Federation Conference in Melbourne. He said: And, in this country of Australia with such ample space, with such inviting varieties of soil and climate … and with a people occupying that soil unequaled in … nation-creating properties, what is there that should be impossible? … … … … we know the value of their British origin.</div>
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We know that we represent a race … for the purposes of settling new colonies, which never had its equal on the face of the earth. The crimson thread of kinship runs through us all. The founding father of our Federation knew that it was not simply a bounteous land that makes a nation, but the common threads of inherited identity that unite its people. And what he was telling delegates and, through them, us today was that a great nation can only be the consequence of the people it comprises. I come from the bush, born to a cattle-grazing family in far north-west Queensland. I went to school in Brisbane and then returned to the bush where I met and married the love of my life, Fiona, the girl next door—200 kilometres away! We subsequently had two beautiful daughters who, with their husbands and now our two grandchildren, live in the United States, and we miss them. Although my family had been graziers for over a 100 years, having settled in the Charters Towers area in the 1860s before there was a Charters Towers, in my early 20s, drought and predatory banks drove my wife and I off the land. Thereafter, Fiona and I spent our working lives as our children were growing up in and around regional towns over the years covering the length and breadth of the state. I've been a grazier, a builder's labourer, a pilot, a light aircraft manufacturer, a gas industry worker and a hotelier. Most recently, before entering the Senate late last year, my family and I ran a hotel in Gladstone. Like most blokes from the bush 40 years ago, I was a committed National Party supporter. I was always a Joh (Bjelke-Petersen) man and, to this day, I regard the Joh era as Queensland's golden age. It was only the fact that the National Party abandoned Joh's legacy and moved to the left 25 years ago that led me to switch to One Nation. But that didn't work out so well. I am consequently very happy to have joined Katter's Australian Party, a genuinely democratic party in which senators and members get to vote first and foremost in accordance with their conscience and their constituents' wishes. KAP to me represents a continuation of the conservative values, commitment to rural and regional development, opposition to migration without assimilation and a focus on economic nationalism of the Joh era Nationals, which strongly reflects my own beliefs. It is a party in which loyalty isn't a one-way street and where leadership is more than a cardboard cut-out. As a conservative Christian, I strongly support traditional social values, but, as an Australian nationalist, I also believe in Australia and Australians first. I believe in low taxes and personal responsibility and in the virtues of hard work and thrift, reward for effort and the freedom to do and say what you think. I also believe in the right of people to raise their kids in accordance with their own values, without a bunch of nanny state meddlers and cultural Marxists trying to re-engineer them. I believe that the key role of government is to provide laws for the enforcement of contracts, to provide physical security for businesses and individuals and to build infrastructure. I believe that the priority for government expenditure is not obligation-free handouts but nation building: providing the facilities and infrastructure which businesses and farmers need to develop and grow, which then provides for secure, well-paid jobs. I believe that ordinary working people have the right to expect a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, to keep what they have worked for, to get ahead and have a decent life, to be able to provide for themselves in old age, and to have enough to help their kids have an even better life than themselves. I believe that the unfettered ownership of private property and the right to own and use firearms, including for self-defence, are the God-given rights of free people everywhere. And I believe, as the American revolutionaries did, that government is usually the problem not the solution and that, in order for people to be free, the power of government needs to be constrained.</div>
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I remember Queensland as it was in the sixties, seventies and early eighties, when working blokes could get good, well-paying jobs actually making products for us to buy; when people could start small businesses and not be strangled by red tape; when car rego, stamp duty and rates were affordable; when electricity was the cheapest in the world; when, through statutory and orderly marketing, farmers were not bled white by rapacious corporations or forced to sell to Chinese carpetbaggers; when you could say what you thought without being charged with a crime; and when we could all enjoy our leisure time without all the nanny state restrictions and prohibitions.</div>
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Fifty years ago Australia was a cohesive, predominantly Anglo-Celtic nation. Most people thought of themselves as Christian of some sort, although most of us didn't go to church all that often. Everyone, from the cleaners to the captains of industry, had a shared vision of who we were as a people and our place in the world. Until the late 1960s, prior to the rise of Whitlam in the Labor Party, there was a broad consensus between the Liberal and Labor parties on the kind of society we were and what we should be in the future. In the 1960s, both Liberal and Labor parties reflected a common framework of Judeo-Christian values, supporting the family as the basic unit of society. They both supported the principle that marriage was a union between a man and woman, and both parties recognised the sanctity of the lives of the unborn. Both major parties agreed that people should be free to live their own lives and say what they thought without fear of state sanction. Both sides of politics recognised the importance of our manufacturing industries as well as our farming and mining. Both parties recognised the importance of our predominantly European identity.</div>
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A key part of this great pre-Whitlam consensus was bipartisan support from both Liberal and Labor for a European based immigration program. The great Labor statesmen Ben Chifley, John Curtin and Arthur Calwell all strongly supported an immigration program that actively discriminated in favour of Europeans. Australia's greatest conservative, Sir Robert Menzies himself, said: I don't want to see reproduced in Australia the kind of problem they have in South Africa or in America or increasingly in Great Britain. I think— a European based immigration program has— … been a very good policy and it's been of great value to us … This continued until 1973 when Whitlam and his hard Left cronies adopted Soviet inspired UN treaties on discrimination and banned preferential selection of migrants based on their ethnicity. Yet the end of the pre-Whitlam consensus between the Labor and Liberal Parties has been much more than a political sea change. It has allowed the cultural conquest of our nation.</div>
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A tectonic shift has occurred in which the previously agreed social and political order has been overthrown in an insidious silent revolution. To understand fully what has happened to our country, I believe that we must look to the work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci's insight was to see revolution in cultural rather than economic terms, with 'cultural hegemony' as the key to supposed class dominance. The Marxist state, Gramsci argued, could be achieved by gradual cultural revolution—subverting society via a long march through the institutions. The tactics of latter-day Gramsci-inspired radicals were to disguise degeneracy as liberation and tyranny as compassion. Free speech could be eliminated by appeal to not 'offending' or 'saying things that were hurtful'. This, of course, subtly creates a subjective test by which all criticism of the cultural Marxist agenda can be silenced. It is my understanding that Gramsci himself coined the term 'political correctness' to describe obedience to the will of the Communist Party. However he made clear that its final purpose was to force concurrence with those things which individuals knew to be false. If an individual could be induced to agree and state to others something they knew to be utterly false such as black being white, then the party had achieved total moral and ethical surrender in the subject. Thus, to describe the so-called 'safe schools' and 'gender fluidity' garbage being peddled in schools as 'cultural Marxism' is not a throwaway line but a literal truth. Given that everyone knows there are only two genders, if you can be persuaded to agree to and advocate in support of the false claim that there are 'an infinite number of genders', then, without realising it, you have surrendered your political soul. Today, with so many unwittingly in lock-step, marching to the cultural revolutionaries' tune, options to oppose them politically are increasingly limited. So that's why I joined Katter's Australian Party, the only political force that seeks a return to the pre-Whitlam consensus. I want to see the defeat of the cultural Marxists and their ilk and a rolling back of the subversion of Australian culture and values that they have wrought. In terms of specifics, my political goals are: · to break the oligopoly power of the banks; to get a better deal for working families and farmers, to achieve major infrastructure development in Far North and Western Queensland; to reduce immigration levels and restrict entry to those who will best assimilate; to restore personal freedom and free speech; to make affordable homeownership a national priority; to counter the growing threat of China both outside and within Australia; to slash runaway government spending and, with it, taxes on productive enterprises; to build coal-fired power stations to return us to the cheapest power in the world; to slash the regulatory burden that is crippling the general aviation industry; an to take back our culture from the left-wing extremists.</div>
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My most immediate concern is saving agriculture in this country. Only this morning, we heard the appalling personal stories of 40 farmers and others whose family businesses were stolen and who were ruined by the criminal behavior of the major banks. This is the reason that I fought, along with my colleague Barry O'Sullivan, for a royal commission into banking. However, it has quickly become clear that the terms of reference are far too narrow and the ability of the commission to hear evidence far too limited. That is the reason that I moved earlier today to increase the time and resources of the royal commission, extend the terms of reference and consider dispute resolution processes. Those lenders and particular liquidators, receivers and administrators who have behaved contrary to any acceptable moral standard must be exposed and made to pay for their crimes. I'm happy to report that that motion got up. An incident having occurred in the gallery. However, this is only the first step. I also want to see a permanent end to the scourge of usury in rural lending. The banks' criminal treatment of so many farmers, which has led to the loss of family farms—owned for generations—and waves of rural suicides, must be ended once and for all. I believe that the solution is the re-establishment of rural redevelopment state banks, along the lines of the former Queensland Industry Development Corporation established by Sir Leo Hielscher, the internationally respected former Queensland Treasury undersecretary and the architect of Queensland's Joh-era prosperity. Like the QIDC, a rural development and reconstruction state bank would not be subject to APRA lending guidelines and would be able to make lending judgments based on long-term rural property viability and not just short-term variations of commodity prices or rainfall, just like old country bank managers used to do. The RDRSB would also be empowered to buy up existing so-called 'distressed' loans from banks, saving tens of thousands of farmers from hardship and ruin. In this way, the scourge of usury in rural lending can be ended for all time. In terms of rebuilding rural incomes, the abolition of statutory marketing boards 20 years ago has generally not seen any meaningful reduction in prices for consumers, just a net wealth transfer from farmers to middlemen and giant supermarket chains. This has driven many farmers to ruin and even suicide. I would like to see the reestablishment of orderly marketing of agricultural products via grower co-ops to allow collective bargaining by farmers for the sale of their produce. This would return to the farmers greater control of their own industries and a greater share of the retail value of their products. Collectively, these measures would go a long way to rebuild our crucial rural industries.</div>
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My next biggest concern is rural infrastructure development. First and foremost, my priority is water. Thanks to grossly inadequate water capture and storage, less than one per cent of the rainwater that falls on this continent is captured and used. Nowhere is this infrastructure failure more acute than in the bush. I want to remedy this. My first solution is to build the Bradfield scheme. In 1938, JJC Bradfield, the same civil engineer who designed both the Sydney Harbour and Story bridges, proposed a massive irrigation plan to turn the far northern rivers inland to irrigate vast areas west of the dividing range. The scheme involved diverting water from the upper reaches of the Johnson, Tully, Herbert and Burdekin rivers, which, fed by the annual monsoon, currently flow out into the ocean. Envisaged was the construction of a series of massive dams in north and western Queensland. It would also include raising the wall of the existing Burdekin Falls Dam by 14.6 metres, as intended in the original Joh-era plan, which would increase its capacity by nearly five times and droughtproof Townsville for the next century. Water accumulating was then proposed to be diverted through a tunnel under the Great Dividing Range. When completed, the Bradfield scheme would be the greatest nation-building project this country has ever seen, totally dwarfing the Snowy scheme, and would, at a stroke, ensure the prosperity of Australia for many generations to come. This would provide employment for many tens of thousands of people and would not only ensure our own food requirements are met but also provide food for many hundreds of thousands in other countries as well. To imagine the benefits of the Bradfield proposal, we only need to see what has been achieved in places like Israel and California, both places in which virtual deserts have been transformed into enormous food bowls which help drive their respective economies. My second infrastructure priority is ports. A key issue in determining the profitability of exports of mining and primary products is the distance they have to be carried to reach a port. In the UK, there is a port every 65 kilometres. In the most productive parts of India, its 57 kilometres. But in Queensland, it's 1,000 kilometres. Rather than taking the product to the port, the solution is to take the port to the product. Microports constructed along the Queensland coast every 60 to 80 kilometres would greatly increase the viability of exports. And it goes without saying that I'm an enthusiastic supporter of mining, including coalmine development in the Galilee Basin. I strongly support government building the required railway to allow mining in this area to proceed. It would be the salvation of Townsville. Of course, to more effectively manage our resources with regard to proposals like the Bradfield Scheme, multiple microport construction, Galilee Basin coalmines et cetera, we have to have the political will to remove the obstacles put in the way of progress by extreme left-wing Luddites. Only by following the example of true nation-building leaders like Ben Chifley, Bob Menzies, John Curtin and Joh can we hope to provide for the security and prosperity of generations to come.</div>
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The next critical problem that we need to address is immigration. Australia currently has the highest per capita immigration rate in the world. Last Tuesday, Australia's population hit 25 million—22 years ahead of previous government predictions. That means that since 1971 the population of Australia has doubled, with immigrants now around one-third of our population. The huge numbers of people allowed to flood into Australia in recent years are unsustainable, with immigration quotas apparently set by successive governments on a whim and without any regard for the necessary infrastructure that these people would require or the ability of those that came here to assimilate. Ethnocultural diversity, which is known to undermine social cohesion, has been allowed to rise to dangerous levels in many suburbs. In direct response, self-segregation, including white flight from poorer inner-urban areas, has become the norm. I believe that immigration to our country should be a privilege, not an obligation-free right provided to anyone from the Third World who demands it. First, 457 visas, which simply steal jobs from Australians, should be abolished unless expressly approved by the immigration minister. This will create more jobs for Australians and end the massive rorting of these for backdoor permanent immigration.Second, 'family reunion' must be restricted to the husband or wife and/or dependent children within a family. Third, student visas should be drastically reduced in number. This will create more university places for Australians, whose parents have actually paid for the universities with their taxes in the first place. Those studying here who decide to apply to immigrate should be required to return to their country of origin after their qualification and to apply as part of the general migration program. Fourth, net immigration must be reduced to a level which can be supported and, therefore, must be set following detailed modelling and planning for the associated necessary accommodation, facilities and infrastructure. Fifth, but most important of all, diversity should be managed to remain compatible with social cohesion and national identity.</div>
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We as a nation are entitled to insist that those who are allowed to come here predominantly reflect the historic European Christian composition of Australian society and embrace our language, culture and values as a people. In order for us to remain the nation that we are now, those who come here need to assimilate and integrate. Those who are most similar to the mainstream majority in terms of ethnicity, culture, language and values most readily do so. Historically, however, the one immigrant group here and in other Western nations that has consistently shown itself to be the least able to assimilate and integrate is Muslims. The first terrorist act on Australian soil was in 1915, when two Muslim immigrants opened fire on a picnic train of innocent women and children in Broken Hill—and Muslim immigrants have been a problem ever since. To paraphrase the words of Sir Winston Churchill: The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power.</div>
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The influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those that follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. I believe that the reasons for ending all further Muslim immigration are both compelling and self-evident. The record of Muslims who have already come to this country in rates of crime, welfare dependency and terrorism is the worst of any migrants and vastly exceeds any other immigrant groups. A majority of Muslims in Australia of working age do not work and live on welfare. Muslims in New South Wales and Victoria are three times more likely than other groups to be convicted of crimes. We have black African Muslim gangs terrorising Melbourne. We have ISIS-sympathising Muslims trying to go overseas to fight for ISIS and, while all Muslims are not terrorists, certainly all terrorists these days are Muslims. So why would anyone want to bring more of them here?</div>
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Finally, it should go without saying that, as a nation, we are entitled to require that those who come here not only have useful work skills and qualifications but also the commitment to work and pay taxes. In truth, it appears that many of those who claim to be asylum seekers are actually just welfare seekers who only come to Australia to live on welfare in public housing at the expense of working Australians. In the days of Menzies, immigrants arriving here were not allowed to apply for welfare and that attracted exactly the right sort of hard-working people this country needed. We should go back to that and ban all immigrants receiving welfare for the first five years after they arrive. The final solution to the immigration problem is, of course, a popular vote. We don't need a plebiscite to cut immigration numbers; we just need a government that is willing to institute a sustainable population policy, end Australian-job-stealing 457 visas and make student visas conditional on foreign students returning to the country they came from. What we do need a plebiscite for is to decide who comes here. Whitlam didn't ask the Australian people whether they wanted wholesale non-European migration when he introduced it and neither has any subsequent government. Who we allow to come here will determine what sort of nation we will have in the future, so therefore this isn't the right of any one government to decide. It's too important for that. Instead, we need a plebiscite to allow the Australian people to decide whether they want wholesale non-English speaking immigrants from the Third World and, in particular, whether they want any Muslims or whether they want to return to the predominantly European immigration policy of the pre-Whitlam consensus. I for one will be very happy to abide by their decision.</div>
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My next political objective is affordable home ownership. Home ownership is a vital social good. It not only steadily improves the net wealth of Australians but provides for a comfortable and secure retirement. It also provides an asset for us all to pass onto our children. However, thanks to foreign property speculators and spiraling demand from excessive immigration, housing prices have been absurdly inflated and, as a result, Australian home ownership levels are starting to fall. Today, first homebuyers see the dream of home ownership receding like a mirage. This disastrous state of affairs must be reversed. I would like to see a return to the policy of earlier decades in which those who were not permanent residents or Australian citizens were barred from buying residential property. In addition to a drastic immigration cut, I want to see a statutory cap on state government fees and charges, which currently make up 50 per cent of land cost, reducing them to no more than 25 per cent. In industry, I would like to see the re-establishment of Australian manufacturing via a collaborative relationship between pro-business unions and business leaders, as occurred in Germany in the aftermath of World War II. Konrad Adenauer's postwar German economic miracle, which ultimately led to both high wages and high profits for companies, is a model for the re-industrialisation of Australia and a means to return to widespread employment in secondary industry. While Australian wages mean that we cannot compete on price with Third World slave labour manufacturers, we should not need to. First, products of high quality and value can already be produced and sold successfully despite paying reasonable wages. A classic example of this is RM Williams. Second, to help re-establish Australian manufacturing, import restrictions on certain classes of goods should also be considered, following the example of Taiwan, which successfully transitioned from a rural tea-growing province to a manufacturing dynamo with high wage levels. As Australian icon Dick Smith has asked: are Australians prepared to pay a bit more for manufactured goods if it means that their kids will have a job? I think so. That is what I'm asking the Australian people to do so that we can rebuild our manufacturing industries and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in manufacturing. I also have fiscal objectives. I'd like to see a drastic cut in government spending and borrowing, but, with around 50 per cent of the budget now consumed by welfare, no spending reform is possible without welfare reform. The age pension should be quarantined from any cuts, however. Instead, reform needs to begin with working-class income replacement welfare. We constantly hear that Australia has less than six per cent unemployment when, in fact, this is simply false. If we count the legions of professional freeloaders who are of working age and have settled into a life without work, on pensions, we actually have around 20 per cent paid unemployment in this country. Welfare needs to be a safety net for those of us who are temporarily in need of income support. If people of working age receive a pension from the state, then they have opted out of the workforce permanently and expect everyone else to carry them for life. I believe this is unsustainable and totally un-Australian. Unless we are going to follow the path of Greece, we need to stop finding new ways to give handouts and start increasing workforce participation.</div>
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The best form of welfare is a job, and massive investment in nation-building infrastructure is the first step to helping to create jobs. Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, I want to see a cultural counter-revolution to restore a central role for traditional values, to redefine our national identity and to create a new social contract between the governing and the governed. So many of the anti-democratic controls on our liberty, on the restriction of free speech, on our ability to decide who comes to this country and on the outpouring of foreign aid have been driven by the gross abuse of the external affairs powers in section 51 of the Constitution. Since Whitlam—and clearly contrary to the intent of our founding fathers—the external affairs powers given to the Commonwealth to sign treaties with other nations has been abused to overrule other provisions of the Constitution and override other laws made by our own democratically elected representatives. I do not only want to withdraw from these UN treaties but want to counter the dictatorial intent of the successors of Whitlam with an amendment to section 51 of the Constitution. This needs to specifically prohibit the signing of any treaty contrary to any other provision of the Constitution or existing Australian laws.</div>
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More broadly, however, what we need is a cultural reconquest of our own country to take back Australia from Gramsci-inspired left-wing elites that have subverted the very basis of our society, for in the end what is Australia? What makes Australia a nation is not the happenstance of shared geography but what unites us: our common history, values, language and ethnicity, our common culture and our shared vision of our future as a people. Ethnicity is not just skin-deep. More than anything else, it is our ethnoreligious identity that defines us and shapes our national identity. Few nations are fortunate enough to have so condensed their national character in so short a space of time that, 60 years after Federation, all who lived here, from children to old men, from paupers to Prime Ministers, could have a shared understanding of who we were that crossed the political divide. But today all that is rapidly unraveling, and we stand now at the turn of the tide. The great cohesive vision of our nation's founding fathers, all that those who came before us struggled to build, all that our fathers and grandfathers fought wars to defend, stands at hazard as the stranglehold of the Gramsci-ite elites on our institutions, political organisations and the media continues to tighten. Now, on the brink of irreversible change, it is time for us to decide whether we as a people will rise up against this, hold fast to the crimson threads of kinship that define and unite us and strive once more for the light on the hill or concede the field to enemies of Western civilization and see all that we were and all that we might yet have become fall away to ruin.</div>
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Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-6570889970524907552018-08-13T01:11:00.000-07:002018-08-13T01:12:58.222-07:00Australia must face the new Iran reality<b><i>From the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), 13 Aug 2018, by Dr. Colin Rubenstein, Executive Director:</i></b><br />
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Following its May withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA )nuclear deal, the US Trump Administration is reimposing a series of sanctions on Iran, targeting Iranian trade in aircraft, automobiles, pistachios, and gold. In November, an additional round of sanctions will target exports.<br />
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Meanwhile the Trump Administration and the Iranian regime are certainly in a war of words at the moment, with President Donald Trump and Iranian President Rouhani exchanging threatening tweets, Trump offering a summit and being rebuffed by Iran, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flagging increased US support for Iranian protestors and dissidents, and Iran threatening to close the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.<br />
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This reality means that Australia should urgently clarify its stance towards Iran.<br />
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We know that Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Mike Pompeo discussed Iran at the July AUSMIN summit.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">While Bishop, commendably and appropriately, has been recently criticising Iran’s regional military aggression and ongoing missile development, <b>Australian diplomats are actively reaching out to Teheran’s commercial class and signalling a “wait and see” approach to the discredited JCPOA</b>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Australia needs a clear and consistent position– which should be based on Australia’s national interest in robustly addressing the threat posed by a belligerent, expansionist and irresponsible Iran</b>.</span><br />
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As smuggled intelligence documents revealed by Israel have shown, Iran’s nuclear program was further advanced than anyone thought. Further, since the signing of the nuclear deal, Iran has continued to pursue its strategy of non-compliance and incomplete disclosure of its nuclear capabilities and ambitions.<br />
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This means that, contrary to claims often heard, it is not true that Iran has complied with the terms of the JCPOA nuclear deal reached between Iran, the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany. That deal required Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to account for and document its past nuclear efforts. The archives Israel captured prove conclusively that not only did Iran fail to do so, it actively sought to conceal its nuclear expertise from IAEA scrutiny. These are clear violations of the JCPOA.<br />
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Meanwhile, the JCPOA agreement not only failed to do more than temporarily postpone a nuclear Iran but has effectively empowered Iran to step up its other menacing activities.<br />
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Much to the disgust of long-suffering Iranians, funds released under that deal have been used primarily to save the despotic Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and to aid the rebels in the murderous war in Yemen, to fund and direct terrorists, and to destablise most of Iran’s other neighbours - all developments definitely not in Australia’s national interest.<br />
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Furthermore Iran’s ballistic missile program is continuing - in contravention of UN resolutions.<br />
Meanwhile, even before US sanctions were restored, the economic pressure on the Iranian regime has been growing rapidly. Iran’s Rial is in free fall, inflation is estimated at 220%, multinational investors are fleeing in droves, and street protests against the dire economic situation have become frequent and nationally widespread.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">...Renewed pressure on Iran is the key to both changing these unacceptable arrangements on the nuclear issue, and to making new agreements to address the Iranian regime’s other rogue activities.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet even though Australia has only very limited economic ties to Iran, Australian diplomats have recently been actively encouraging further links, even as European and Asia companies have been pulling out en masse.</span><br />
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<img src="http://ia.sharif.ir/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_0541.jpg" height="300" width="400" /><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In July, Australia’s Trade Commissioner in Iran, Mounir Sankary, met with officials from Iran’s Sharif University, and the Australian Embassy in Teheran announcing the meeting, noted “Australian companies are keen on doing business with Iran.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">[At another meeting with Sharif University on 7 August 2018, Sharif reports: "Mr. Sankary expressed the importance of having strong relations with Iran and especially Sharif University of Technology and emphasized that his organization, Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) wholeheartedly supports joint efforts between Sharif and Australian universities."] </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Thus the Australian Government’s more critical stance of late must be backed up by our diplomats. Iran poses a serious threat for our allies and for international and regional order and Australia has a useful role to play in assisting US efforts to deter, counter and contain that threat. </b></span><br />
<br />Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-63611861750108953632018-08-03T00:03:00.002-07:002018-08-03T00:03:45.900-07:00Liberal friends rally for Israel<b><i>From the <a href="https://www.jewishnews.net.au/liberal-friends-rally-for-israel/80366">Australian Jewish News, 28 July 2018</a>:</i></b><br />
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<img height="274" src="https://www.jewishnews.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Groupshot_96708_1532672962628_tn.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<i>The launch of Victorian Liberal Friends of Israel. </i><br />
<i>Photo: Greg Every</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">MORE than 300 supporters gathered at Central Shule in Caulfield, as Victorian Liberals, including federal Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, relaunched Victorian Liberal Friends of Israel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In a muscular show of support, 16 state Liberal MPs filled multiple rows of the synagogue’s pews last Sunday night to hear calls for solidarity with Israel, rebooting a group initially founded by former Caulfield MP Helen Shardey.</span><br />
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Successor David Southwick, with Senator James Paterson and Goldstein MP Tim Wilson, are the patrons of the new group.<br />
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Referencing the anti-Israel stance of the Greens, Paterson said, “As you all know, Michael Danby is retiring [as MP for Melbourne Ports] and sadly there is a very real risk that the Greens … could end up winning the seat and representing the second-largest Jewish seat in Australia. We must not allow that to happen.”<br />
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Frydenberg said, “I stand before you as a proud Jewish member of the Parliament, but it’s not my Jewishness that defines my support of Israel … it’s about what Israel stands for, it’s about its values, it’s about its traditions, it’s about its culture, it’s about its history.”<br />
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“But nothing that Israel stands for we can take for granted,” he said, listing BDS, Iran’s “Shi’ite axis”, and the politics of “the divisive and despicable [former senator] Bob Carr” as challenges.<br />
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Referring to the Liberals as “a Zionist political party” several times, state Liberal leader Matthew Guy lauded the friends organisation as “a group for all faiths who call Israel home”, repeating his pledge that, if elected, he would locate a state trade office in West Jerusalem, “the undisputed capital of Israel”.<br />
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Former Australian ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma lamented “too much heat and not enough light” when Australians discuss Israel, “the only country in the Middle East that truly shares our values”.<br />
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Southwick emphasised the importance of a Victorian friends group. “When Israel is attacked, it comes home here in our state”, on campus and in attacks on shules.<br />
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Zionism Victoria president Sharene Hambur said, “So often media reports fail even to attempt to provide a balanced view, [so] groups such as the one being relaunched tonight play an incredibly valuable role.”<br />
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Christian Zionist Jill Curry noted some 8000 Christians petitioned federal Parliament last year to move Australia’s embassy to Jerusalem and more than 20 Australian Christian groups visited for the Beersheba centenary.<br />
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“I say to Israel and the Jewish community, there are many of us, you are not alone,” she said.Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-69706038738841496562018-08-02T23:59:00.000-07:002018-08-02T23:59:06.989-07:00Myths and Facts about Israel’s new Nation-State law<br />
<i><b>From an article by Colin Rubenstein (</b></i><i><b>AIJAC)</b></i><i><b>* published in the Jakarta Post, August 1:</b></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Israel’s new Jewish Nation-State law, passed in the Knesset on July 19, has been greeted with widespread condemnation abroad. Yet upon closer examination much of the criticism appears to be based upon misinterpretations and assumptions that go beyond the actual wording of the law.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The law, it must be stressed outright, is purely declarative in nature and carries with it no practical impact on Israeli life. Rather, it is an overwhelmingly symbolic reaction to those who object to the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Principally among them is the Palestinian leadership, who have vehemently rejected Israel’s reasonable demand to be accepted and recognised as a Jewish homeland in any future peace agreement...</span><br />
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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made this clear in his response to the law’s passage. “Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people, which respects the individual rights of all its citizens,” Netanyahu said. “In recent years there have been some who have attempted to put this in doubt, to undercut the core of our being. Today we made it law: This is our nation, language and flag.”<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><b>San Remo Resolution – 25 April 1920</b></span></i></blockquote>
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[emphasis added] </blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">It was agreed –<br />(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine...<br />(b) that the terms of the Mandates Article should be as follows:<br />...The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine... to a Mandatory.... The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on the 8th [2nd] November, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of <b><u>the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people</u></b>, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country...</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">The law simply enshrines among Israel’s Basic Laws the foundational sentiment embodied within <i>[the UK Balfour Declaration, the international San Remo Resolution, and]</i> Israel’s Declaration of Independence, namely, that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, where the Jewish people exercise their right to national self-determination. It then goes on to provide elevated constitutional status to existing laws regarding Israel’s flag, national holidays, use of the Jewish calendar, and the Hebrew language.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Similar constitutional provisions emphasising national self-determination and cultural expression can be found in numerous countries ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>...Allegations that the law is racist or harms the status of minorities in Israel are ...baseless. </b></span><br />
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... the law also does not... “downgrade” the status of Arabic in the country – it explicitly states that the clause identifying Hebrew as the official language of Israel “does not change the status given to the Arabic language before the Basic Law was created” and also insists Arabic services must be available for all government business.<br />
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A passage in the law that commends “Jewish settlement as a national value” also created controversy, primarily because the term “settlement” is ...associated with Jewish towns in the disputed West Bank. Yet the law’s phrasing in Hebrew simply mimics language of the pre-state Zionist movement regarding the national goal of rebuilding and restoring Jewish life in the land of Israel and it does not necessarily have any other connotations.<br />
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To be sure, radically anti-Zionist Arab lawmakers from the far-left Joint List party were always going to vehemently oppose any law of this kind – they object to any characterisation of Israel as a Jewish homeland, even though Israel has been explicitly such a homeland since 1948.<br />
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Even so, the offence voiced over the matter by Druze and Arab leaders does suggest mistakes in the drafting, debate, and execution of the legislation, something even some top government ministers have acknowledged and vowed to address.<br />
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These missteps are lamentable, because the controversy risks setting back hard-fought and sustained achievements by successive Israeli governments in recent years towards empowering and integrating Israel’s minorities and addressing both the discrimination and social gaps which affect them. <br />
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Thabet Abu Rass, co-director of the Israeli coexistence NGO Abraham Fund, told the Jerusalem Post earlier this year that the Israeli Arab community is “more integrated” and has “more mobility” in Israeli society than ever, with a record number studying in Israeli universities, producing more Arab doctors, nurses and pharmacists than ever before. Abu Rass noted, for example, that four out of 11 players on Israel’s national soccer team are Arab, while the Netanyahu Government had delivered on a 2015 promise to invest 15 billion shekels ($4.1b) into Israeli Arab communities – an infusion “unprecedented in scope”.<br />
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Veteran lawmaker Benny Begin of the ruling Likud party, son of the late Israeli PM Menachem Begin, who notably abstained on the vote over the law, told the Knesset it would have been both wiser and more constitutionally sound if the Basic Law had included a specific clause asserting that its provisions do not in any way diminish the legal, social, political or civil rights and equality of Israel’s non-Jewish minority. Opposition politicians, such as new parliament opposition leader Tzipi Livni, have said the same thing, with Livni suggesting she and her party would likely have supported the law if such a clause had been included in it.<br />
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Such a clause would have been advisable even though the new law does not supersede earlier Israeli basic laws which already guarantee these equal rights.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">... The ongoing national project that is Israel, Jewish and democratic, which existed before the passage of the law, continues unchanged...</span><br />
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<i>*Dr. Colin Rubenstein is Executive Director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) in Melbourne, Australia. Previously, he taught Middle East Politics at Monash University for many years. </i><br />
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Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-42097662582534151002018-07-23T22:49:00.000-07:002018-07-23T22:54:44.272-07:00Survey of Candidates in the Perth By-election<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Jewish Community Council of Western Australia Inc has now completed its survey of the opinions of candidates for the forthcoming by-election for the Perth Electorate, in relation to issues of interest to the community.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The following is a list of the candidates in alphabetical order. Ten of them responded </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">to our questionnaire</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">. Those in italics did not respond.</span><br />
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<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt; width: 62pt;" width="83"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ARIELLI</span></td>
<td style="width: 60pt;" width="80"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nicole</span></td>
<td style="width: 170pt;" width="227"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Animal Justice Party</span></td>
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<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ian</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Independent</span></td>
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<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">COLLINS</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Paul</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Independent</span></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">DU PREEZ</span></i></td>
<td><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Wesley</span></i></td>
<td><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Liberal Democrats</span></i></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">GORMAN</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Patrick</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Australian Labor Party</span></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">GRAYDEN</span></i></td>
<td><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jim</span></i></td>
<td><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Independent</span></i></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">HAMMOND</span></i></td>
<td><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A</span></i></td>
<td><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Science Party</span></i></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">HARFOUCHE</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gabriel</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Australian People's Party</span></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">JOUBERT</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ellen</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Australian Christians</span></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">MASON</span></i></td>
<td><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Barry</span></i></td>
<td><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Citizens Electoral Council*</span></i></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">MATHESON</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Julie</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Western Australia Party</span></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">MULLINGS</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ben</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Australian Mental Health Party</span></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">PERKS</span></i></td>
<td><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Caroline</span></i></td>
<td><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Greens (WA)**</span></i></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ROBINSON</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tony</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ALA</span></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SCOTT</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Colin</span></td>
<td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sustainable Australia</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="background-color: white;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The responses received are available as follows:</span></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #5d5d5d; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;" />
<ul style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0.5em 0px; padding: 0px 2.5em;">
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">in <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fr8crfwa42v1m9v/AACqtHYM-M0zfPACw7YctIkWa?dl=0" style="color: #949494; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">this DropBox file</span></a><span style="color: #5d5d5d;">; </span>and</span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">in <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JVtH0eU6dzfObQUrTG2o5t_hggRDLDpm" style="color: #949494; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">this GoogleDrive file</span></a><span style="color: #5d5d5d;">. </span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="color: #5d5d5d; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><i>Further information for voters:</i></b></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><u>*Citizens Electoral Council</u></b></span></div>
<div>
Voters should be aware that the The <b>Citizens Electoral Council</b> of Australia is a minor political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement, led by American political extremist Lyndon LaRouche, who three times ran for President of the USA, and was sentenced in 1989 to 15 years in prison for scheming to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and deliberately defaulting on more than $30 million in loans from his supporters. In 2011, the Party's leader in Australia, Craig Isherwood published an article in its "New Citizen" entitled : “Defeat the British Crown’s Green Fascist Dictatorship” Under that banner headline, the Citizens Electoral Council presented a purported <i><b>"indictment of the British Royal Family’s half-century long creation and personal direction of the world’s present “green” movement, as their chosen vehicle for global genocide."</b></i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><u>**Greens Party</u></b></span></div>
<div>
The Greens national policy on “Israel/Palestine” is anchored in a core resolution dated March 2010, which includes </div>
<div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>their demand for the Australian government “to halt military cooperation and military trade with Israel”</li>
<li>to “recognise the ongoing injustice that has been done to the Palestinian people and aim to rectify that injustice in a way that will allow both Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace”</li>
<li>calls for “the establishment of an international commission under the auspices of the UN to effect a settlement of the conflict” and only then “peace negotiations facilitated by the commission leading to a schedule for the implementation of all the goals”</li>
<li>calls for the deployment of “international” forces to protect Palestinians.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
The Greens have never issued a condemnation of an act of Palestinian violence or terrorism but Greens Foreign Policy spokesman Sen. Scott Ludlam has made many statements including condemnations of Israel. Among Ludlam’s statements have been baseless and inflammatory accusations copying Palestinian propaganda, such as his false claim in October 2015 that “Israeli military forces have repeatedly stormed the holy site of the Al-Aqsa mosque.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All Greens members of parliament also signed the strongly anti-Israel 2014 Canberra Declaration on Gaza.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In July 2014, amidst fighting between Israel and Hamas, the Greens National Council passed a resolution accusing Israel of waging war against civilians by putting “the might of its military force against the Palestinian people… this has not been proportionate to the Hamas rocket attacks.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
At its national conference in November 2015, the Greens passed a resolution formally recognising the State of Palestine “as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Greens leader, Sen. Richard Di Natale, is on record as <b>opposing Israel’s demand to be recognised as a Jewish state or homeland</b> under the widely used formula “two states for two peoples”. As the left-wing website New Matilda reported: “Di Natale’s office [said that] the Senator supported a peaceful two-state solution. ‘The establishment of a “Jewish state” (as opposed to an “Israeli state”) is not conducive to this outcome, and Senator Di Natale did not intend for his comments to be construed as such, and this is not Australian Greens policy.'” In this, the Greens closely align with the position of the Palestinian Authority, which staunchly rejects recognising Israel as a Jewish homeland in any peace agreement.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In August 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas, Greens Acting Leader Adam Bandt called on Australia to pressure the US to cut off arms supplies to Israel. “Australia cannot stand idly by while its ally arms one side of the conflict in Gaza,” said Mr Bandt in a press release. Bandt suggested Australia should suspend its own military cooperation with the United States as a form of coercion. “Australia could, for example, suspend the basing of US troops in Darwin until the United States pulls back from restocking the Israeli government and taking sides in the conflict,” Bandt said.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In March 2016, Sen. Ludlum attempted to push a motion to halt military cooperation and military trade with Israel, in a vote that coincided with the visit of former Israeli Defence Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz to Australia. Referring to Gantz’s role in Gaza conflicts, the news item on the attempted motion posted on the Greens website was titled “Don’t mention the alleged war crimes”.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A further issue in the Greens platform likely to concern many in Australia is its policy of removing clauses granting limited exemptions to religious organisations from anti-discrimination laws. This would likely impact significantly on Jewish schools and other communal institutions and concern has been expressed about this policy by Jewish community leaders.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Di Natale also controversially called for Australia to end its alliance with the US because of “the horrific consequences of US foreign policy.”</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-70545009385438127752018-07-23T01:21:00.001-07:002018-07-23T01:21:11.982-07:00Our ABC: Dancing to terror’s tune<b><i>From <a href="https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/07/dancing-to-terrors-tune/">The Spectator, 21 July 2018, by David Adler</a>:</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
<img alt="Image result for aviv levy funeral" height="250" src="https://static.timesofisrael.com/jewishndev/uploads/2018/07/Aviv-Levy-640x400.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<i>Staff Sergeant Aviv Levi, a platoon sergeant in the Givati Brigade, was shot and killed by a Hamas sniper on 21 July 2018.</i><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If when you woke on the morning of Sunday 15 July, you made the error of watching the ABC television news bulletin, you would have seen that the lead item began: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>‘The Israeli military has launched a wave of airstrikes against dozens of militant targets in the Gaza Strip.’ The bulletin included video clips of bombs exploding buildings, narrated as Israel’s targets in Gaza, and went on to describe ‘the operation is one of Israel’s broadest since the 2014 war.’ </i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Anyone not informed about events in the region could be forgiven for concluding Israel had just initiated a war and had done so with no clear provocation.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Omitted completely by the ABC was the critical contextual information that in the previous 24 hours Israeli citizens in the south of the country had been targets of over 170 rockets and mortars which in turn followed weeks of fire bombs delivered by kites, balloons and inflated condoms. These attacks were orchestrated against Israel by the proscribed terrorist organisations Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Hardly a trivial oversight.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The ABC did mention that three Israelis had been injured by a (singular) rocket in Sderot but failed to mention the sequence or anything of the scale and timeframe of the attacks against Israel. Or even who was to blame for their injuries.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Indeed, the ABC reporting was so biased and one-sided it could have been scripted by Hamas. </span><br />
<br />
Imagine, if you will, a meeting in the Hamas command-and-control centre which is actually located in the basement of Al-Shifa hospital – a gross example of terrorists using human shields. In the room made smoky by nagilas are large signs with slogans ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’. The only way to enter the doorway is to walk on flags of the USA and Israel painted on the floor.<br />
<br />
The purpose of this fictitious meeting is to draft instructions for the ABC in Australia. The meeting settles on a set of four instructions to guide the ABC for its news bulletins.<br />
<br />
Firstly, don’t mention that Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired over 170 rockets and mortars into Israel in the preceding 24 hours during the Jewish Sabbath and don’t mention the hundreds of firebombs sent out of Gaza into Israel in the weeks prior.<br />
<br />
Secondly, don’t mention that Hamas rockets deliberately aimed at residential areas hit a home, a children’s playground and a synagogue.<br />
<br />
Thirdly, the opening statement of the news bulletin must refer to Israel having launched an attack without any reference to preceding attacks initiated by Hamas.<br />
<br />
Fourthly, when video is shown on television for illustration, only show resultant destruction in Gaza and do not show any video evidence of destruction caused in Israel.<br />
<br />
The set of instructions concludes by explaining how the right sort of publicity internationally is so important to ensure that foreign aid keeps pouring into Gaza and that the voters in Western countries allow their governments to hand over many millions of dollars of their taxes without too much objection. The ABC is thanked for its unwavering commitment and support and is assured that the billions in personal net wealth of Hamas leaders, such as Khaled Mashaal and Musa Abu Marzook, is not really fleeced from foreign aid.<br />
<br />
Let me assure readers that the meeting alluded to above with the production of instructions from Hamas to the ABC did not occur. There was no need.<br />
<br />
While the fictitious Hamas instructions to the ABC seem ridiculous, the reality is that the ABC of its own volition willingly fulfilled each and every one of them. To be fair, the ABC was not alone in providing reports which were skewed to distortion. There were some prominent international media outlets which portrayed a similar picture. Simon Plosker of the website Honest Reporting begins his report of 16 July with the words ‘it all began when Israel fired back’. He then goes on to cite examples from the UK, Australia, Ireland, US and Canada. The ABC features as the Australian example.<br />
<br />
The ABC does deserve more vigorous scrutiny. In its anti-Israel bias it is a dreadful repeat offender. Former ABC Middle East correspondent Sophie McNeil attracted complaints of bias including selective editing of interviews. Michael Danby MP, perhaps in frustration, paid for advertisements to publicise what he identified as examples of selective reporting and bias by the ABC on issues affecting Israel. After Muslim academic Randa Abdel-Fatah ranted for minutes about the evils of Israel on Q&A, Greg Sheridan was repeatedly cut off when he tried to state an alternate view. Sharri Markson then made her assessment clear on 22 May this year, ‘we cannot pretend for a moment longer that the ABC is in any way impartial when it comes to the Middle East and Israel.’ The ABC has form, shameful form.<br />
<br />
By being publicly funded the ABC is supposed to have a higher degree of accountability. Section 8 of the ABC Act requires reporting to be ‘accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism’. On the issue of Israel, the ABC scores F.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">One can speculate as to causation. Is this an expression of anti-Semitism embedded in the ABC as Israel and Jewish identity are inseparable? Is this another example of the unholy alliance between the Left and Islam where breaches of normal civilised behaviours, in this case terrorism against Israel, are forgiven by the Left if the motivation is Islamic? Is it a lack of knowledge, understanding or negligence of those writing the copy for the ABC?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Whatever the answer, the effects of reports like that broadcast by the ABC last Sunday are dangerous. We have seen how desperate Hamas is for sympathetic media coverage, even pushing young children, women and disabled people into the front line to exploit any injuries or deaths.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">By framing its reporting completely out of context, painting Hamas as a victim of Israeli bombing and omitting the preceding massive quantum of rockets, mortars and firebombs from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the ABC dances to the terrorists’ tune. The ABC and other media outlets which reported in a similar manner deliver exactly the sort of publicity Hamas craves and they therefore become, unintentionally or otherwise, facilitators of terror.</span>Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-86114068004128950262018-07-23T00:15:00.002-07:002018-07-23T00:15:18.286-07:00Russia, Israel and the Trump-Putin Summit<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: verdana !important; font-size: 14px !important; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 26px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<b><i>From <a href="https://aijac.org.au/fresh-air/russia-israel-and-the-trump-putin-summit/">AIJAC, 20 July 2018, by Sharyn Mittelman</a>:</i></b></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: verdana !important; font-size: 14px !important; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 26px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<img height="225" src="https://aijac.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ed94cc9f5328cb42d43357-696x392.png" width="400" /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: verdana !important; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 26px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: large;">[At the] July 16 meeting in Helsinki between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin ..., the two leaders were ...apparently able to discuss ...a common concern for the security of Israel, especially with respect to the current situation in southern Syria. </span><span style="font-size: 14px !important;"> </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: verdana !important; font-size: 14px !important; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 26px; word-wrap: break-word;">
At a joint press conference President Putin said in his remarks:</div>
<blockquote class="td_quote_box td_box_center" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; border-bottom-color: rgb(30, 115, 190); border-left: 2px solid rgb(30, 115, 190); border-right-color: rgb(30, 115, 190); border-top-color: rgb(30, 115, 190); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 15px 23px 0px; position: relative; top: 6px;">
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; word-wrap: break-word;">
“Also, crushing terrorists in the southwest of Syria – the south of Syria – should be brought to the full compliance with the Treaty of 1974 about the separation of forces – about separation of forces of Israel and Syria. This will bring peace to Golan Heights and bring a more peaceful relationship between Syria and Israel, and also to provide security of the state of Israel.</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Mr. President paid special attention to the issue during today’s negotiations, and I would like to confirm that Russia is interested in this development, and this will act accordingly. Thus far, we will make a step toward creating a lasting peace in compliance with the respective resolutions of Security Council, for instance, the Resolution 338.”</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: verdana !important; font-size: 14px !important; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 26px; word-wrap: break-word;">
President Trump also discussed Israeli security in response to a question about Syria:</div>
<blockquote class="td_quote_box td_box_center" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; border-bottom-color: rgb(30, 115, 190); border-left: 2px solid rgb(30, 115, 190); border-right-color: rgb(30, 115, 190); border-top-color: rgb(30, 115, 190); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 15px 23px 0px; position: relative; top: 6px;">
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; word-wrap: break-word;">
“We’ve worked with Israel long and hard for many years, many decades. I think we’ve never — never has anyone, any country been closer than we are. President Putin also is helping Israel. And we both spoke with Bibi Netanyahu, and they would like to do certain things with respect to Syria having to do with the safety of Israel. So in that respect, we absolutely would like to work in order to help Israel, and Israel will be working with us. So both countries would work jointly....</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: verdana !important; font-size: 14px !important; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 26px; word-wrap: break-word;">
(You can read the complete transcript <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/transcript-trump-putin-press-conference-in-helsinki/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">here</a>.)</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: verdana !important; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 26px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<span style="font-size: large;">... both the US and Russia are committed to Israel’s security on the Syrian border, including implementation of the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement which established a zone of separation and force limitation between Israel and Syria. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: verdana !important; font-size: 14px !important; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 26px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Following the press conference, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a <a href="http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Spokesman/Pages/spokeUSA160718.aspx" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">statement</a> thanking both leaders:</div>
<blockquote class="td_quote_box td_box_center" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; border-bottom-color: rgb(30, 115, 190); border-left: 2px solid rgb(30, 115, 190); border-right-color: rgb(30, 115, 190); border-top-color: rgb(30, 115, 190); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 15px 23px 0px; position: relative; top: 6px;">
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commends the abiding commitment of the US and President Donald Trump to the security of Israel, as expressed at the meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The friendship between Israel and the US has never been stronger.</em></div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; padding-bottom: 16px; word-wrap: break-word;">
<em style="box-sizing: border-box;"> Prime Minister Netanyahu also very much appreciates the security coordination between Israel and Russia and the clear position expressed by President Putin regarding the need to uphold the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement between Israel and Syria.”</em></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: verdana !important; font-size: 14px !important; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 26px; word-wrap: break-word;">
While Israel’s close relationship with the US is well established, Israel’s growing diplomatic and military coordination with Russia is less well known.</div>
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Netanyahu was recently in Russia for a “private visit” where he watched the World Cup and met with President Putin. During the meeting, Netanyahu reiterated the Israeli position that Iran must leave Syria and made <a href="http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Events/Pages/event_putin110718.aspx.aspx" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">the following remarks</a>:</div>
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“It is clear that our focus is on Syria and Iran. Our view that Iran needs to leave Syria is well-known; it is not new to you. Several hours ago a Syrian UAV penetrated Israel’s airspace. We shot it down and we will continue to take strong action against any trickle [of fire] and any infiltration into Israel’s airspace or territory. We expect that everyone will respect this sovereignty and that Syria will strictly abide by the [1974] Separation of Forces Agreement. The cooperation between us is a central component in preventing a conflagration and deterioration of these and other situations; therefore, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to discuss these matters and, of course, all other issues. Truly, thank you.”</div>
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While Israel and Russia have had friendly relations since the end of the Cold War, Israeli engagement with Moscow has been taken to a new level since Russia entered the Syrian civil war in 2015 to back its client, the Assad regime. To add complexity, the Assad regime has also been backed by Iran and its militias, including the Shi’ite Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.</div>
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While Israel has had no desire to enter the Syrian civil war, it has provided humanitarian and medical aid to Syrians, and it remains determined to prevent a permanent Iranian presence in Syria – a red line has led to numerous reported Israeli strikes on Iranian bases and fighters in Syria. Given that Russia is in a loose alliance with the Assad regime and Iran in Syria, Israeli coordination with Russia is necessary at times to avoid unintended conflict with a superpower. Now that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appears to be cementing its victory in Syria, Israel is seeking to persuade Russia to rid Syria of Iranian influence, especially near its border.</div>
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Ultimately Israel understands that it is Russia largely calling the shots in Syria, as former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-helsinki-confirmed-netanyahu-was-right-all-along-to-invest-in-putin-1.6287819" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">wrote in <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Haaretz</em></a>:</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Israel’s Prime Minister </em><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-benjamin-netanyahu-1.5599046" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Benjamin Netanyahu</em></a> <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">has to be given considerable credit for his ability to maintain a respectful dialogue with Putin over the past three years, enabling Putin to understand Israel’s security red lines in Syria and its determination to enforce them.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">When Russia </em><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-russian-moves-in-syria-bode-ill-for-israel-1.5395782" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">deployed its military </em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">to Syria in 2015, and the Israel-Russia dialogue began in earnest, I was still serving as U.S. Ambassador to Israel. I occasionally received inquiries from colleagues in Washington, some puzzled, others irritated, asking why Netanyahu was ‘cozying up’ to Putin at a time when Russia was killing </em><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/dozens-of-syrian-refugees-approach-israeli-border-1.6287950" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Syrian civilians </em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">and engaging in aggression against Ukraine.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">My answer was quite simple: Israel is a small regional power, and all of a sudden, it found that it had a superpower operating in its backyard. Under such circumstances, Israel had no choice but to develop and sustain a productive dialogue with Russia, to ensure that Russia would not do harm to Israel’s security or curtail its freedom of action, as it surely could if it wanted to.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">I assured my colleagues that Netanyahu was not the least bit naive about who Putin was, and that the relationship he was building was utilitarian in nature, ensuring Israel would be able to act to defend its security in Syria. No more, no less. I still believe that today. But the atmosphere in which Israel must navigate its superpower relationships is changing dramatically.”</em></div>
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While Israel’s desire for a good relationship with Russia is understandable, Russia’s interest in Israel’s security appears less clear. Prof Hillel Frisch has attempted to explain it in an article titled <a href="https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/russia-needs-israel/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">“Why Russia Needs Israel”</a> published by BESA. He claims that President Putin seeks to create an alliance of minorities against the Sunni majority of the Middle East. He writes:</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Moscow’s view is clear. The major threat both within and without Russia’s borders is Sunni Islam: within, because the overwhelming majority of Russian Muslims are Sunni; and without, because a Turkey led by a Sunni fundamentalist leader with imperial Ottoman ambitions poses a greater threat than Shiite Iran – especially as most Russian Muslims are not only Sunni but broadly related to Turkic ethnicity. Hence Putin’s determination to preserve the strategic relationship with Iran in Syria and beyond, and hence his perception of Israel’s regional geostrategic importance. Israel understands the long-term sagacity of the Russian vision, but cannot allow it to be at the expense of its own short-term goals.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">For Israel, the Russian vision is plausible only if it works to rid Syria of the Iranian presence, joins forces to topple its Islamist regime, and – until that goal is achieved – helps wean the Alawite regime in Damascus away from Tehran.”</em></div>
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However, Israel has its own interests which appear to differ from Russia in important respects. At the moment they include closer cooperation with its Sunni Arab neighbours who are concerned by Iran’s regional aggression and the prospect of it gaining nuclear weapons – especially Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.</div>
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Israel, to its credit, has so far been able to balance its close alliance with the United States, good relations with Russia and growing ties with the Sunni Arab states. However, while Russia claims it is acting to distance Iran from the Israeli-Syrian border, Israeli military sources confirmed that arecent Syrian army campaign in the area of Daraa, near the border, saw cooperation between the Russians army, Syrian forces, Hezbollah, and pro-Iranian militias. According to Syrian opposition sources, the operation included meetings between representatives of the Russian army and commanders of pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias, which were held in areas just 30 kilometres from the Israeli border, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-says-russia-working-with-pro-iranian-militias-near-syria-israel-border/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">according to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Times of Israel</em></a>.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps when dealing with Russia it is best to remember President Putin’s own words from his joint press conference with President Trump:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>“As to who is to be believed and to who is not to be believed, you can trust no one, if you take this. Where did you get this idea that President Trump trusts me or I trust him? He defends the interests of the United States of America, and I do defend the interests of the Russian Federation.”</i></span></div>
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Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-29739414573996155242018-07-22T23:41:00.001-07:002018-07-22T23:41:09.964-07:00Perth by-election: responses to the Jewish Community UPDATE<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;">Further to the earlier report on our</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #5d5d5d;"> </span><a href="http://israelissueswa.blogspot.com/2018/07/perth-by-election-jewish-community.html" style="background-color: white; color: #47bbff;">Questionnaire to candidates in the Perth by-election</a><span style="background-color: white;">, we have received an additional response to our questionnaire, from</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #5d5d5d;"> </span></span><br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">ARIELLI, Nicole (Animal Justice Party)</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;">The response has been added to the others and is available as follows:</span><br style="background-color: white;" /></span></div>
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<ul style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0.5em 0px; padding: 0px 2.5em;">
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">in<span style="color: #5d5d5d;"> </span><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fr8crfwa42v1m9v/AACqtHYM-M0zfPACw7YctIkWa?dl=0"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">this DropBox file</span></a><span style="color: #5d5d5d;">; </span>and</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">in<span style="color: #5d5d5d;"> </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JVtH0eU6dzfObQUrTG2o5t_hggRDLDpm"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">this GoogleDrive file</span></a><span style="color: #5d5d5d;">. </span></span></li>
</ul>
Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-23512211205014304162018-07-22T02:48:00.000-07:002018-07-22T02:48:19.602-07:00Perth by-election: responses to the Jewish Community<span style="font-size: large;">Further to our <a href="http://israelissueswa.blogspot.com/2018/07/perth-by-election-jewish-community.html">Questionnaire to candidates in the Perth by-election</a>, we have 7 replies to our questionnaire, from the following candidates (in alphabetical order):</span><br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">BRITZA, Ian (Independent)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">SCOTT, Colin<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(Sustainable Australia)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">GORMAN, Patrick<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(Australian Labor Party)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">HARFOUCHE, Gabriel<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(Australian People's Party)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">MULLINGS, Ben (The Australian Mental Health Party)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">ROBINSON, Tony (Australian Liberty Alliance)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">SCOTT, Colin<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(Sustainable Australia)</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Their responses are available as follows:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">in <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fr8crfwa42v1m9v/AACqtHYM-M0zfPACw7YctIkWa?dl=0">this DropBox file</a>; and</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">in <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JVtH0eU6dzfObQUrTG2o5t_hggRDLDpm">this GoogleDrive file</a>. </span></li>
</ul>
Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7258224840855523864.post-51423621904584268692018-07-18T19:13:00.001-07:002018-07-18T19:13:20.939-07:00Union left push for Israel ‘genocide’ motion: ‘They prefer to back a regime of murderous thugs’<div class="w_tlc w_tg-tlc-storyheader" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 24px;">
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<span style="color: #232323; font-family: roboto condensed, open sans, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i><span style="letter-spacing: -0.9px;">From The Daily Telegraph, </span><span style="letter-spacing: -0.9px;">July 18, 2018, by Frank Chung:</span></i></span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A SENIOR union official has broken ranks with his colleagues to speak out against an “anti-Semitic” push to condemn Israel for the “genocide” of Palestinians.</span></h1>
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The resolution, which called on a Labor government to immediately recognise a Palestinian state, was passed overwhelmingly by the Left Caucus at the Australian Council of Trade Unions Congress in Brisbane on Monday afternoon.</div>
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The Left Caucus makes up roughly 400 of the estimated 1000 union delegates attending the three-day union meeting, which will set the scene for Labor’s upcoming National Conference in December.</div>
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<span style="color: #232323; font-family: georgia, serif;"><i>Australian Services Union official Jeff Lapidos, who broke ranks to speak against the "anti-Israel, anti-Semitic" motion</i></span></div>
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<i>“The motion itself condemned Israel for the ‘genocide’ of the Palestinian people and called on a Labor government to immediately recognise the Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders,” </i>said <b>Jeff Lapidos</b>, tax branch secretary of the Australian Services Union.</div>
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The left and right factions met separately on Monday to put forward motions that would then be debated on the floor of the congress. ACTU members collectively represent an estimated two million Australian workers.</div>
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<i>A delegate from the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union put forward the anti-Israel motion, calling for it to be put direct to the ACTU executive to avoid debate on the floor, where it would be voted down by the right.</i></div>
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<i>“They didn’t want a divisive debate,” </i>Mr Lapidos said.</div>
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<i>“He made it clear that the Right Caucus didn’t support the motion but the left had a majority at the ACTU executive, so the plan obviously is to discuss it behind closed doors and ram it through.</i></div>
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<i>“I got up and spoke against it, that it was wrong and shouldn’t be supported. I spoke for a minute or two, someone else spoke in favour for 30 seconds, then it was passed by an overwhelming majority by a vote of the hands.”</i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #232323; font-family: georgia, serif;">Sally McManus, who spoke for the motion and vigorously supports the anti-Israel BDS campaign</span></i></div>
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In 2011, ACTU secretary <b>Sally McManus</b> <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/sally-mcmanus-backed-antiisrael-bds-campaign/news-story/e66a28b005fe2a91046768c28fd6dc8a" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 118, 191); border-left-color: rgb(0, 118, 191); border-right-color: rgb(0, 118, 191); border-top-color: rgb(0, 118, 191); box-sizing: inherit; color: #0076bf; text-decoration-line: none; transition: border-color 0.3s; word-break: break-word;">said she vigorously supported</a> the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel “to end the violation of human rights and to campaign against Israel as a means of peaceful resistance”.</div>
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Mr Lapidos stressed he was speaking in his personal capacity and not on behalf of the ASU, which unlike <a href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/australian-unions-pledge-support-for-democratically-elected-socialist-venezuelan-dictatorship/news-story/2e833f4fb5307403d47defdce44b31a3" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(0, 118, 191); border-left-color: rgb(0, 118, 191); border-right-color: rgb(0, 118, 191); border-top-color: rgb(0, 118, 191); box-sizing: inherit; color: #0076bf; text-decoration-line: none; transition: border-color 0.3s; word-break: break-word;">more militant left-wing unions</a> does not take positions on international affairs.</div>
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He said the motion was effectively a “vote of no confidence” in the Labor Party’s current policy on Israel “which is to be even-handed”, and was the only motion that had to be “debated behind closed doors”.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>“For reasons I don’t fully understand, the left in Australia has developed a very anti-Israel, anti-Semitic passion,” he said. “Instead of backing the only democracy in the Middle East, they prefer to back a regime of murderous thugs. That’s what Hamas is, that’s what the Palestinian Authority is.”</b></i></span></blockquote>
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Mr Lapidos said it was a “big distraction for the ACTU”. “Most ordinary working people aren’t interested in the socialist revolution,” he said. “They want a better outcome for them and their families.”</div>
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An AMWU spokesman said, “It would be inappropriate for us to distribute any motions before they have been debated and voted on at the ACTU executive or congress. We don’t intend to make any further comments about this matter.”</div>
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<b>Peter Wertheim </b>co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said accusing Israel of genocide was an “outrageous lie, in fact an inversion of the truth”.</div>
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“It is Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas, which has a charter pledging that it will ‘obliterate’ Israel, who adopt the cowardly practice of hiding behind Palestinian civilians in Gaza while targeting Israeli civilian population centres with thousands of rockets and mortars, and burning hundreds of hectares of crops and nature reserves in Israel with incendiary devices,” he said.</div>
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“The Palestinian population in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza has increased fivefold since Israel was established, but if the Palestinian leadership had their way, the Jewish population of the country would be evicted or exterminated.</div>
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“This is why Israel defends its people so determinedly. Israel has offered the Palestinians statehood on at least three occasions, but the Palestinian leadership gives far higher priority to destroying the Jewish State than establishing a Palestinian State.</div>
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“If the ALP Left really champions human rights, as it claims, it should come to grips with these realities instead of indulging in outdated polemics.”</div>
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Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong distanced the party from the motion. “This is a motion before the ACTU Conference — it is a matter for them and has no relationship to the position of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party,” a spokesman said.</div>
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“Labor has long supported, and continues to support, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We support Israel’s right to exist within secure and recognised boundaries and the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.</div>
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“A just two-state resolution will require recognising the right of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples to live in peace and security.</div>
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“Labor, whether in government or opposition, will continue to work with the parties to the conflict, with our allies, and with the wider international community to achieve a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.”</div>
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The ACTU declined to comment.</div>
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Steve Lieblichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04026335065453324679noreply@blogger.com0