Antony Loewenstein

I wrote recently about Australia’s incredibly shameful failures in prosecuting the countless war criminals residing in Australia.

We now have some further information from the Australian Parliament that partly explains the country’s lax attitude towards the issue (via the Lowy Institute):

On Monday Senator Wong tabled some fascinating answers to a series of questions on notice from Senator Ludlam concerning Australia’s approach to war crimes (see p.110 of this Senate Hansard, made available online this morning). Just incidentally, the questions were asked on 30 September 2009 — so at 146 days for a reply that’s slightly over the 30-day rule.

A number of Senator Ludlam’s questions are dodged, but there are some interesting insights into the gaps in Australia’s war crimes policy. The most interesting replies concerned:

• Gaps in our war crimes legislation: the answer to question four confirms the obvious enough fact that the AFP only investigates ‘potential war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide where there is jurisdiction’ but goes on to note there were serious gaps in Australia’s jurisdiction before comprehensive legislation was implemented in 2002. For war crimes committed in non-international armed conflicts before this date — like the devastating Rwandan genocide — the only legislation referred to in the response is the Crimes (Torture) Act which criminalises torture committed after February 1989 and the Crimes (Hostages) Act which criminalises hostage-taking after June 1990.

• Asked about closing these gaps consistent with ALP policy, the response was evasive, but noted ‘it is generally not appropriate to punish people for conduct which was not a crime at the time it was committed.’ This highlights the two different approaches Australia takes to war crimes: domestic and international. At an international level, Australia has supported and is a financial contributor to the tribunal set up to prosecute the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide for crimes committed in just such a conflict well before 2002. Domestically, before 2002, Australia treats such acts differently.
• Expertise: answer six reveals that just three AFP officers have undergone specialist war crimes training in the last 10 years (five AFP members have also worked at the ICTY). There is no indication whether these individuals serve in the Special Operations Unit that covers war crimes or elsewhere, but we are told the average turnover in the unit is just two years. This highlights the inherent problems with the AFP’s current approach and why countries around the world have set up dedicated war crimes units. It also shows through in results.
• Results: despite evidence Australia is home to a significant number of war criminals, the AFP has conducted just 29 war crimes investigations in the last decade. And the AFP referred ‘preliminary material’ to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions in just one of these 29 matters, but ‘this material did not amount to a formal brief of evidence’.

What was also revealing is how these individual cases came to the attention of the AFP. Only one referral came from a private citizen. One came from a law firm, one from the Defence Force and one from Foreign Affairs. The Attorney-General’s Department referred four, but the vast majority (21) came from the Immigration Department. These figures suggest the AFP is not doing much of the heavy lifting when it comes to proactively identifying war crimes suspects.

A story that doesn’t really need any comment:

The son of a leading Hamas figure, who famously converted to Christianity, served for over a decade as the Shin Bet security service’s most valuable source in the militant organization’s leadership, Haaretz has learned.

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a Hamas founder and one of its leaders in the West Bank. The intelligence he supplied Israel led to the exposure of a number of terrorist cells, and to the prevention of dozens of suicide bombings and assassination attempts on Israeli figures.

…

Yousef was considered the Shin Bet’s most reliable source in the Hamas leadership, earning himself the nickname “the Green Prince” – using the color of the Islamist group’s flag, and “prince” because of his pedigree as the son of one of the movement’s founders.

During the second intifada, intelligence Yousef supplied led to the arrests of a number of high-ranking Palestinian figures responsible for planning deadly suicide bombings. These included Ibrahim Hamid (a Hamas military commander in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti (founder of the Fatah-linked Tanzim militia) and Abdullah Barghouti (a Hamas bomb-maker with no close relation to the Fatah figure). Yousef was also responsible for thwarting Israel’s plan to assassinate his father.

“I wish I were in Gaza now,” Yousef said by phone from California, “I would put on an army uniform and join Israel’s special forces in order to liberate Gilad Shalit. If I were there, I could help. We wasted so many years with investigations and arrests to capture the very terrorists that they now want to release in return for Shalit. That must not be done.”

Australia-Israel alliance rocked by passport fiasco.

Via ThinkProgress:

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal now owns a 7 percent stake in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, making him the company’s largest shareholder outside of Murdoch’s own family. Alwaleed is best known for going to Ground Zero after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks and personally handing then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani a check for $10 million to help finance relief efforts. Afterwards, Alwaleed released a statement blaming the attacks not on the Saudi airline hijackers, but on U.S. policies in the middle east. As a result, Giuliani returned the prince’s donation, gaining him praise from Fox News for doing so. Now that Alwaleed has a controlling ownership in News Corp., he is gaining influence over Fox News. In 2005, just months after Alwaleed acquired his first 5.4 percent stake in News Corp., Fox News covered riots in Paris under a banner saying “Muslim riots.” Alwaleed allegedly called Murdoch and had him change the banner to say “Civil riots.” Investigative journalist Joseph Trento also reported that a comment he recently made on a Fox Network morning news show, Fox and Friends, about Saudi Arabian money still financing Al Qaeda, was edited out of the show. Trento also reports that Alwaleed “has personally donated huge amounts of money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.” In a rare interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto in January, AlWaleed explained his personal reasons for seeking influence in American politics: the U.S. buys Saudi Arabia’s oil, and the bulk of his country’s gross domestic product (GDP) comes from oil. Fox News reliably broadcasts misinformation on clean energy, and aggressively fights efforts to move America away from being dependent on a fossil fuels.

This is truly absurd. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad meets with some of America’s most right-wing Jewish leaders who don’t believe in ending the occupation or ceasing settlement building. Fayyad is becoming the “nice” Palestinian (though Israel is starting to tire of his pronouncements: maybe they’ll just kill him):

U.S. Jewish leaders pressed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on incitement and the need to keep Israel a Jewish state. 

At a meeting Feb. 18 in Jenin between Fayyad and a visiting delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Alan Solow, the chairman of the Jewish umbrella group, said the actions of the Palestinian leadership set back the cause of peace. 

Yet more drama and evidence that Israel’s initially “successful” murder of a Hamas operative now threatens to infuriate the general community around the world, upset that the Jewish state so arrogantly uses and abuses other’s identities in their activities:

The mother of an Australian man linked to the assassination of a militant leader in Dubai says the photo in the passport used to name him as a suspect is not his.

Joshua Daniel Bruce is one of three Australians named among 15 suspects in the killing of senior Hamas figure Mahmud al-Mabhuh in Dubai last month.

His mother Sarah Bruce fears her son, who lives in Jerusalem, may be the subject of reprisal attacks but hopes people realise he has been the victim of identity theft.

“I am fearful, but hopefully everyone will see that it is fraud. It’s not his photo in the pictures they’re flashing around everywhere,” Mrs Bruce said from her South Caulfield home.

She said her son had been living in Israel undertaking Jewish studies for the past seven years.

She said Joshua did not travel much and kept his passport at a drawer at home.

The first she and her husband Harvey knew about the fake passport was when they received a call from Canberra early this morning.

She said that while the fake passport contained  her sons details, it did not have the correct photograph.

“It’s not his photo on the passport and we know nothing about it, nor does he,” Mrs Bruce said.

“He’s a very placid guy … he was concerned and he knew that we were, because we told him.”

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith comments in Parliament on Israel’s use of Australian passports in the murder of a Hamas operative in Dubai:

I’ve made it crystal clear to the [Israeli] ambassador that if the results of that investigation cause us to come to the conclusion that the abuse of Australian passports was in any way sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend.

The fun continues (and let’s see how serious Australia takes this clear Zionist breach; I’m guessing they’ll be a little public fury but not much else):

Police have 15 more suspects in the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai, including three who were allegedly travelling on Australian passports, CNN reported last night.

Included in the list of names suspected of killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel last month were Australian passport holders Nicole Sandra McCabe, Adam Marcus Korman and Joshua Daniel Bruce, all from Melbourne.

…

On Tuesday, the Israeli Opposition Leader, Tzipi Livni, praised the killing, which Dubai accuses Israel of organising. Israel has not commented about its involvement.

”The fact that a terrorist was killed, and it doesn’t matter if it was in Dubai or Gaza, is good news to those fighting terrorism,” she said.

The issue of the passports used has created a diplomatic furore in which Israeli envoys in Ireland, Britain, Germany and France have been called in for talks.

Police have traced the suspects’ travel routes and their destinations before and after Mr Mabhouh’s death.

”The suspects gathered in Dubai and dispersed to various locations before pairing up again in different teams and heading off to other destinations,” the statement said.

The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said this morning that it was the government’s ‘‘job to confirm the facts’’.

‘‘But we will not be silent on this matter … it really goes to the integrity and fabric of the use of state documents, which passports are, for other purposes,” he said.

‘‘That’s why we will not leave a single stone unturned.’’

Australian government officials would be contacting the families of three people named as passport holders, Mr Rudd said.

Mr Korman, 34, is Australian-born but lives in Tel Aviv, where he sells musical instruments, the ABC has reported.

He told Israel’s biggest newspaper Yediot Aharonot he was shocked over what has happened.

‘‘It’s identity theft, simply unbelievable,’’ he was quoted as saying.

‘‘I have travelled all over the world but never visited Dubai or the United Arab Emirates.’’

Mr Rudd said the government would be looking at ways to restore the integrity of the Australians involved if it was established their passports had been forged.

Australia had prided itself on having one of the most ‘‘efficient, effective and secure’’ passport systems in the world.

‘‘Australian travel documents generally are held in the highest regard … that’s what really worries me as well,’’ he said.

‘‘It’s not just the good name of Australia, it’s not just our adherence to the principles of international law, it is also the safety of the Australian travelling public.’’

The Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, would make a more detailed statement later today following his meeting with Israeli ambassador, Mr Rudd said.

How to define terrorism has become absurdly loaded since 9/11.

According to key Newsweek journalists, it is simply impossible for Americans to commit terrorism; only Muslims are capable of doing so (and being labelled as such.)

Really.

One of America’s finest journalists, Nir Rosen – fearless, intense and unafraid to embed with the “enemy” – writes that Iraq is not likely to descend back into chaos (but the West has still created a sick experiment in post-dictatorship development, something welcomed by the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman):

It’s been frustrating to read the latest hysteria about sectarianism returning to Iraq, the threat of a new civil war looming, or even the notion that Iraq is “unraveling.” I left Iraq today after an intense mission on behalf of Refugees International. My colleague Elizabeth Campbell and I traveled comfortably and easily throughout Baghdad, Salahedin, Diyala and Babil. We were out among Iraqis until well into the night every day, often in remote villages, traveling in a normal Toyota Corolla. Our main hassle was traffic and having to go through a thousand security checkpoints a day.

…

From the beginning of the occupation the US government and media focused too much on elite level politics and on events in the Green Zone, neglecting the Iraqi people, the “street,” neighborhoods, villages, mosques. They were too slow to recognize the growing resistance to the occupation, too slow to recognize that there was a civil war and now perhaps for the same reason many are worried that there is a “new” sectarianism or a new threat of civil war. The US military is not on the streets and cannot accurately perceive Iraq, and journalists are busy covering the elections and the debaathification controversy, but not reporting enough from outside Baghdad, or even inside Baghdad.

Iraqis on the street are no longer scared of rival militias so much, or of being exterminated and they no longer have as much support for the religious parties. Maliki is still perceived by many to be not very sectarian and not very religious, and more of a “nationalist.” Another thing people would notice if they focused on “the street” is that the militias are finished, the Awakening Groups/SOIs are finished, so violence is limited to assassinations with silencers and sticky bombs and the occasional spectacular terrorist attack — all manageable and not strategically important, even if tragic. Politicians might be talking the sectarian talk but Iraqis have grown very cynical.

Wow, real journalism about Israel’s occupation, published in the mainstream press.

Here’s an Associated Press piece in the Washington Post this week (and it’s titled, “Checkpoint misery epitomizes a Mideast divide”):

The journey to Jerusalem, for tens of thousands of Palestinians, begins in a dank, trash-strewn hangar.

They move through cage-like passages and 7-foot-high turnstiles to be checked by Israeli soldiers from behind bulletproof glass. The soldiers often yell at them through loudspeakers. They are supposed to work in pairs to speed the lines through, but sometimes one of them is asleep, his feet on his desk.

The Qalandia crossing, say the Israelis, is where potential attackers are filtered out before they can reach Jerusalem on the other side. Palestinians say it’s a daily humiliation they must endure to reach jobs, family, medical appointments and schools.

This main checkpoint between the northern West Bank and Jerusalem is one of the rawest points of friction between Israel and the Palestinians, a symbol of the day-to-day bitterness that grinds between the two sides as the U.S. struggles to relaunch peace negotiations.

Since taking office last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has eased Palestinian movement inside the West Bank, but not into Jerusalem. In recent weeks, he has repeated his vow that Jerusalem will never be divided, angering Palestinians who want the city’s eastern sector, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, as their future capital.

The separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank slices through several of Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, making Qalandia the only way for 60,000 taxpaying residents to reach their city. They too must line up along with tens of thousands of West Bank residents to enter Israel for work – provided they are patient, have permits, and don’t arouse suspicion.

For five days, an Associated Press reporter waited with them.