Antony Loewenstein

Think about this for a moment. The average Australian citizen barely hears about the Zionist lobby except when it’s whinging about supposed anti-Semitism and suggesting an acclaimed British TV compares Jews to Nazis. The hyperbole of these Jews would be laughable if it didn’t seriously frame all us Jews as victims. And Israel, of course, is the eternal angel, bravely fighting for its existence by occupying Palestinians and using white phosphorous on civilians in Gaza. The Sydney Morning Herald today:

A leading Jewish body is seeking to halt promotion and DVD sales of SBS series The Promise, a drama set in Israel and the occupied territories that it likened to Nazi propaganda.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry said the British-made drama, inspired by accounts of British soldiers who served in Palestine during the 1940s, was anti-Semitic and in direct violation of the SBS code covering prejudice, racism and discrimination.

The four-part series, which screened late last year, depicts a young British woman retracing the footsteps of her grandfather, a soldier in the final years of the British Mandate in Palestine.

In its 31-page complaint to the SBS ombudsman, the council said historical inaccuracies and ”consistently negative portrayals” of the central Jewish characters made the series comparable to the 1940 Nazi film Jud Suss.

It contended that identifiably Muslim characters would not be similarly portrayed by SBS.

In a letter to the broadcaster, the council’s executive director, Peter Wertheim, said the complaint also related to any marketing or sale of the DVD, which would be ”inappropriate” while the determination was pending.

The TV drama prompted a similar reaction following its screening in Britain last year. The UK’s Office of Communications received 44 complaints about the series, none of which were upheld.

In an online question-and-answer session after the final episode aired in Britain, its Jewish writer-director, Peter Kosminsky, said 80 British veterans had been interviewed during research for The Promise.

”If criticism of Israel becomes entirely synonymous with anti-Semitism, it becomes almost impossible to attempt any kind of reasoned analysis of what is clearly one of the saddest and most intractable conflicts facing the human race today,” he said.

The General Delegation of Palestine to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, which represents the Palestinian Authority, said the council’s complaint was ”an attempt to silence legitimate historical investigation, recollection and representation”.

An SBS spokeswoman said the broadcaster had received a high level of positive and negative viewer feedback on the series. She said that as the complaint was expected to be resolved before the February 8 DVD release, ”it is unnecessary to provide any undertaking regarding the DVD release”. ”SBS will assess its position in relation to the sale of DVDs once the complaint has been resolved,” she said.

Many letters have been written to SBS showing support for its decision to screen The Promise. Here are two selections (here and here).

You meet the Israeli Prime Minister. You can ask him anything. Do you want to mention the occupation? Of course not. Much easier, as per Greg Sheridan in the Australian, to get Netanyahu to recall those glorious days in the Australian sun. Yes, this is Murdoch “journalism”:

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, has very strong feelings about Australia, as he does about many things.

On Australia, however, his feelings are wildly positive.

“I love Australia,” he tells me during a long interview in the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem.

He appreciates Australia’s support for Israel, but he has much more personal feelings, and experiences, especially a vacation here more than a decade ago.

“I was happily unemployed and I received an invitation to go to Australia,” he says.

“It was the second visit I had to Australia. I went there first as United Nations ambassador (in the mid-1980s).

“I came there with my wife and my two boys and we had a wonderful time. I climbed Ayers Rock, again, barefoot, with my boy. He was young, 10 years old, he climbed it with me and nearly fell off the cliff.

“It was absolutely spectacular. Then we had a vacation in Hayman Island. We saw some whales and giant turtles in a nearby island. I don’t think you can beat that.

“I swam and sunbaked and didn’t do anything connected with politics for a couple of weeks. I’d say that’s pretty good. I can tell you I enjoyed it mightily. When I think of Australia, I think good thoughts.”

More seriously, I ask Netanyahu whether Australian support for Israel has been important.

Again, the response is pretty unequivocal: “Yes, very much so. It has been consistent, by and large. You can have here and there a difference. There’s also a sense of warmth and identification, which reflects the position of successive governments.

“But also there’s a sense of warmth of the people, which we don’t always enjoy elsewhere.

“In a world where Israel is vilified, castigated, where a beleaguered democracy is defending its very life against radical Islamist forces, we don’t always get credit. We don’t always get fair play. We feel that happens more often than not with Australia.”

A year ago, Australia’s Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, on a visit to Jerusalem invited Netanyahu to visit Australia as Prime Minister.

Would he like to do that?

“Absolutely.”

How many more breaches will it take for global governments to realise that Serco aren’t fit to run prisons, detention centres or the local chicken shop? (via the Guardian):

The unlawful use of restraint was widespread in privately run child jails in Britain for at least a decade, a high court judge has ruled for the first time.

Mr Justice Foskett said statutory agencies had failed to take action to stop the unlawful use of force against the large numbers of children held in the network of secure training centres run by G4S and Serco.

He singles out the youth justice board for its “apparent active promotion” until 2007 of restraint techniques which were subsequently banned.

The high court judge stops short of legally ordering the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, to inform hundreds, if not thousands, of potential victims of their right to claim compensation. But he does say that ministers need “to consider whether something ought to be done”.

In a damning ruling, Mr Justice Foskett, said: “The children and young persons sent to [secure training centres] were sent there because they had acted unlawfully and to learn to obey the law, yet many of them were subject to unlawful actions during their detention. I need, I think, say no more.”

The judicial review case was brought by the Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) to challenge Clarke’s refusal to contact former detainees dating back to 1998 when the first privately run secure training centre opened in England.

The judge said the legal action had shone a light into a corner that might otherwise have remained in the dark and described the decade-long abuse of children in custody as “to say the least, a sorry tale”.

The legal battle follows a second inquest last year into the death of 14-year-old Adam Rickwood, who was found hanging in his room at Hassockfield secure training centre, where he was on remand, in 2004. The inquest concluded that a serious system failure had given rise to an unlawful regime at the jail.

But here in Australia, Serco continues to turn on governments and bureaucrats with sweet talk about “efficiency” (via the West Australian):

The private company set to operate WA’s new youth offender centre has been criticised by the British High Court in a decision which found young people had endured a decade of unlawful abuse while in its care.

In a judgment handed down this week, High Court Justice David Foskett said youths held in the “secure training centres” had been restrained by staff inflicting a sharp blow to the child’s nose or ribs or yanking back their thumb.

The disciplinary techniques were outlined in a 2005 manual, which suggested they could be used to control fighting juveniles.

Judge Foskett said the techniques were used on as many as 350 children a month over the decade, and about 25 per cent of the time were used unlawfully.

This week’s revelations of the full extent of the abuse at the Serco and G4S facilities come after a previous British inquiry into the suicide of a 14-year-old who had been subject to unlawful restraint at a Serco unit.

The Community and Public Sector Union yesterday called for Serco to be disqualified from its bid to run Perth’s young adults centre.

Serco was given preferred tender status two months ago and was expected to win the contract next month.

The 80-bed facility for 18 to 24-year-old men will operate on the same site as the Rangeview Juvenile Remand Centre.

The Department of Corrective Services said the successful bidder would be tied to key performance measures and other controls to ensure standards.

A Serco spokesman said the firm took its responsibilities “very seriously” and that British centres had stopped using the physical controls in 2008. A court accepted the officers believed they were acting lawfully when using the techniques.

The role of real journalists is to question so-called established truths and make officials uncomfortable. Being too close to power is the role of court reporters. Sadly, the vast bulk of corporate hacks are dead keen to rub shoulders with the rich and powerful and remain unwilling to seriously challenge, for example, the rush to war (hello Murdoch’s Australian today, essentially demanding military action against Iran).

I’m writing a chapter in a forthcoming collection I’m co-editing on the incestuous relationship between the military and the media, an issue that has interested me for years (here’s an essay of mine in 2004 detailing the New York Times helping the Bush administration sell its bogus war against Iraq).

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald skewers in his latest column the disease that will never die:

The New York Times‘ Public Editor Arthur Brisbane unwittingly sparked an intense and likely enduring controversy yesterday when he pondered — as though it were some agonizing, complex dilemma — whether news reporters “should challenge ‘facts’ that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.” That’s basically the equivalent of pondering in a medical journal whether doctors should treat diseases, or asking in a law review article whether lawyers should defend the legal interests of their clients, etc.: reporting facts that conflict with public claims (what Brisbane tellingly demeaned as being “truth vigilantes”) is one of the defining functions of journalism, at least in theory. Subsequent attempts to explain what he meant, along with a response from theNYT‘s Executive Editor, Jill Abramson, will only add fuel to the fire.

Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky both have excellent analyses of the Brisbane controversy — which, as they point out, sparked such intense reaction because it captured and inflamed long-standing anger toward media outlets for mindlessly amplifying statements without examining whether they’re true. As Stephen Colbert put it in his still-extraordinary 2006 speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner: “But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works. The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home.” While reporters typically react with fury over the suggestion that they are stenographers, Brisbane was essentially posting that this is all they are, and then earnestly wondering aloud whether they should be anything more than that, as though it was some sort of exotic or edgy suggestion.

That most reporters faithfully follow the stenographer model — uncritically writing down what people say and then leaving it at that — is so obvious that it’s hardly worth the effort to demonstrate it. There are important exceptions to this practice even at the most establishment media outlets, where diligent andintrepid investigative journalism exposes the secret corruption of the most powerful. But by and large, most establishment news coverage consists of announcing that someone or other has made some claim, then (at most) adding that someone else has made a conflicting claim, and then walking away. This isn’t merely the practice of journalists; rather, as Rosen points out, it’s virtually their religion. They simply do not believe that reporting facts is what they should be doing. Recall David Gregory’s impassioned defense of the media’s behavior in the lead-up to the Iraq War, when he rejected complaints that journalists failed to document falsehoods from Bush officials because “it’s not our role“ and then sneered that only an ideologue would want them to do so (shortly thereafter, NBC named Gregory the new host of Meet the Press).

Literally every day, one finds major news stories that consist of little more than the uncritical conveying of official claims, often protected by journalists not only from critical scrutiny but — thanks to the shield of anonymity they subserviently extend — from all forms of accountability. Just to take one highly illustrative example from last week, the NYT published an article by Eric Schmitt based almost entirely on the assertions of anonymous officials, announcing that “a nearly two-month lull in American drone strikes in Pakistan has helped embolden Al Qaeda and several Pakistani militant factions to regroup, increase attacks against Pakistani security forces and threaten intensified strikes against allied forces in Afghanistan.” No criticisms of drone attacks were included. Three days later, the U.S. resumed drone attacks, after which the same Eric Schmitt immediately ran to inform us, citing Reuters, that the drone strike killed “at least three militants” (as always, “militant” in American media discourse means: any person who dies when an American missile shot from a drone detonates).

Israel’s war against Iran has been going for years. It receives backing from the Western powers and most corporate journalists. Just today Hamish McDonald, a good reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald, spews Zionist propaganda about Tehran after a nice, cozy Zionist lobby trip to Israel. The Australian’s Greg Sheridan, long-time friend of autocrats everywhere, writes similarly after meeting Netanyahu on the same visit organised by Australian Zionist lobbyist Albert Dadon.

Memo to the MSM; this isn’t journalism, it’s shameless stenography with no alternative voices. If another war erupts in the Middle East, these journalists will be partly to blame for creating an atmosphere of menace based on lies and distortions by a notoriously lying Israeli state (and here’s real reporting, by Max Blumenthal, if journalists need pointers).

A stunning story has appeared in Foreign Policy by Mark Perry that reveals the reality of Zionist war-making:

Buried deep in the archives of America’s intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush’s administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives — what is commonly referred to as a “false flag” operation.

The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah — a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children.

But while the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidental contact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same was not true for Israel’s Mossad. The memos also detail CIA field reports saying that Israel’s recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel’s ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with Jundallah officials.

The officials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallah is ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad’s efforts.

“It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” the intelligence officer said. “Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”

Interviews with six currently serving or recently retired intelligence officers over the last 18 months have helped to fill in the blanks of the Israeli false-flag operation. In addition to the two currently serving U.S. intelligence officers, the existence of the Israeli false-flag operation was confirmed to me by four retired intelligence officers who have served in the CIA or have monitored Israeli intelligence operations from senior positions inside the U.S. government.

The CIA and the White House were both asked for comment on this story. By the time this story went to press, they had not responded. The Israeli intelligence services — the Mossad — were also contacted, in writing and by telephone, but failed to respond. As a policy, Israel does not confirm or deny its involvement in intelligence operations.

There is no denying that there is a covert, bloody, and ongoing campaign aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear program, though no evidence has emerged connecting recent acts of sabotage and killings inside Iran to Jundallah. Many reports have cited Israel as the architect of this covert campaign, which claimed its latest victim on Jan. 11 when a motorcyclist in Tehran slipped a magnetic explosive device under the car of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a young Iranian nuclear scientist. The explosion killed Roshan, making him the fourth scientist assassinated in the past two years. The United States adamantly denies it is behind these killings.

Late last year I visited the Kimberley in Western Australia to document the attempts by big energy companies to exploit the area for gas. An upcoming documentary, Heritage Fight, covers the ongoing battle, one that must be won:

Albert Dadon is a leading Australian Zionist lobbyist who loves nothing better than cosying up to any old Israeli politician who gives him the time of day. Backers of occupation? No problem. Defender of the status-quo? Of course. He has no desire to do anything to change Israel for the better, merely to get Australian politicians face time with full-time Zionists. Amazing what money can get you these days.

We shouldn’t be surprised to read in the Jerusalem Post that Dadon and others are palling around with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (who just happens to be facing serious corruption charges):

Notwithstanding his exacerbated legal problems, former prime minister Ehud Olmert continues to attract admirers. Olmert, who was the keynote speaker at the Gala Dinner at Jerusalem’s King David hotel hosted by Albert Dadon, founder of the Australia-Israel- UK Leadership Forum, found himself not only among friends but also among supporters.

Diplomats and politicians, as well as people from the business community, crowded around him and listened intently to what he had to say both from the speakers’ platform and in private conversations.

Presumably, Olmert will receive a similar reception in April in New York where he will be the keynote speaker at The Jerusalem Post Conference.

Dadon is a businessman and philanthropist of French Moroccan background who lived in Israel before he settled in Australia. Prior to initiating the leadership dialogue, which is relatively recent, he founded the Australia Israel Cultural Exchange (AICE), which inter alia sponsors the annual Australian film festival in Israel and the Israeli film festival in Australia.

Convinced that a dialogue between Australian and Israeli parliamentarians would improve the already good relationship between the two countries, Dadon was gratified to see the formula was so successful that British politicians were eager to join. So this year for the first time, it’s not just a dialogue between Australian and Israeli government ministers, shadow ministers, parliamentarians, academics and other community leaders; it also has a British component with bipartisan representation all around.

In introducing Olmert, Dadon allowed himself to be critical of Israel, saying: “Here in this country, you take one of your best sons and bring him down.”

The remark was greeted with approbation.

Dadon recalled that in 2009, Olmert had given an interview to Greg Sheridan, the influential columnist and foreign affairs analyst of the national daily The Australian, in which he had laid out his peace plan “which had almost gone through”.

What Olmert had told Sheridan, Dadon continued, had recently been confirmed by former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in her new memoir, No Higher Honor. Since then, said Dadon, then it had also been confirmed in a newspaper interview given by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in which he stated that had Olmert remained in office, a peace agreement might have been concluded because they were only three months away from it.

“It’s disconcerting that you’ve cut off the best prime minister you’ve ever had,” declared Dadon, who advocated that Israel should follow the French system and not prosecute a sitting head of government.

With regard to the dialogue at hand, Olmert said it was his fervent hope that Israel will engage in dialogue not only with Great Britain and Australia but with her Palestinian neighbors, “not because I care about the Palestinians, but because I care about Israel. A two-state solution is essential for the future of a Jewish democratic state.”

The most important thing for a prime minister to remember, he said, is not to do what is politically comfortable for you, but what is in the national interest.

Yitzhak Rabin had been such a prime minister, he said. He took a long time to make up his mind. It was painful and he suffered, but once he made a decision it was for the good of the national perspective not his own personal political comfort.

Rabin’s son, Yuval, was in the audience to hear this tribute to his father from another former prime minister, who at the time had been on the opposite side of the political fence.

Julian Assange tells The Power Index that Canberra needs to grow a back-bone (fat chance):

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains frustrated by the lack of assistance from the Australian federal government over his prolonged overseas legal plight, three weeks ahead of his appeal against extradition in the UK Supreme Court.

In an exclusive interview with The Power Index, the platinum-haired whistleblower revealed Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd’s office had been in contact with his lawyers in the past month but with “no results”.

When asked if he had been receiving adequate assistance from the federal government over his potential extradition from Britain to Sweden, Assange replied: “Of course not”.

“Almost no Australian who is involved in trouble overseas receives the assistance they should,” he said. “Australia is famous for its lack of assistance to its people who enter into difficulty overseas.”

A clearly-discouraged Assange said Prime Minister Julia Gillard, former Attorney-General Robert McClelland and other members of the ALP had “risen above their population and developed network connections with elites in other countries”.

“That is their game … and in doing so they develop a base outside their own country and are no longer political accountable to the people of their country,” he told The Power Index.

“[They] have been working their international connections, yes at my expense, but also at the expense of the Australian people.”

Assange is currently awaiting a hearing in the Supreme Court to be held early in February, where a panel of seven judges will consider his appeal against extradition on accusations of rape and sexual assault of two women.

If Assange loses the appeal he could face extradition within weeks. There is another option of appeal which could see him take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The 40-year-old Australian said the prime minister, who has denounced the actions of WikiLeaks as “illegal” in the past, had not been in contact recently.

A spokesperson for foreign minister Kevin Rudd told The Power Index that consular officers have been in touch with Assange’s lawyers and were “closely monitoring” his case.

“The Australian government cannot interfere in the judicial processes of other governments but Australia’s ambassador to Stockholm has sought and obtained assurances from Swedish authorities that Mr Assange’s case will proceed in accordance with due process,” the spokesperson said.

“Such assurances have also been sought and obtained from the relevant UK authorities.”

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said he believed the government had not done enough to assist Assange, who has been under house arrest for more than a year.

“I think it would be much better for the Australian government to pull out all the stops and that means not just consular assistance, it means diplomatic activity and it means political statements,” he told The Power Index.

“We need to hear the prime minister and the attorney-general quite clearly advocating to the US that they would not support onward extradition of an Australian journalist to face trumped up charges in the United States.”

Good piece in today’s Sydney Daily Telegraph that tackles head-on the reality of private corporations that make a fortune by allegedly assisting the most vulnerable in the world and yet:

Just seven corporations have raked in a staggering $1.81 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts under the booming foreign aid program.

But the lack of scrutiny of their achievements and the huge sums being provided to agencies like the World Bank, which receives $450 million last year, is under challenge.

Aid experts and the opposition are demanding greater accountability of the money spent to tackle global poverty.

GRM International, which recently hooked up with the global Futures Group, had $500 million in AusAID contracts listed during the past 18 months, including $92 million to encourage Africans to study in Australia.

Cardno, which lists former defence chief Peter Cosgrove on its board of directors and which reported a record $59 million profit last year, holds $442 million in contracts, including two Indonesian deals worth nearly $100 million.

And Coffey International, which boasts to shareholders how the Gillard government is “spending more” on foreign aid, booked $353.4 million in contracts, including $31 million to try to weed out corruption in Papua New Guinea.

The dividends for shareholders and executives will grow even fatter with Australia’s aid budget forecast to soar to about $8.5 billion by 2015/16.

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has pledged to spend record sums trying to tackle poverty in some of the world’s poorest countries. But the hefty rise in spending is causing resentment among some of his ministerial colleagues, who question how wisely the money is being spent.

According to analysis of contract information listed on the government’s AusTender site, SMEC International, which grew out of the Snowy Mountains scheme, had $202.9 million in contracts listed since July 2010, including a $55 million contract for public transport evaluation in Papua New Guinea.

Huge amounts of foreign aid money are encouraging global firms to establish Australian arms – including the US-based URS which had $170 million listed in contracts. This includes the $110 million Strongim Pipol Strongim Nesen scheme – a five-year partnership with PNG to deliver programs in health, education and gender equality.

Overall, the money being paid to private sector corporations, known as “managing contractors”, has dropped to about 20 per cent of AusAID’s overall budget. But aid experts are questioning the checks and balances in a program growing faster than any other area of the commonwealth budget.

Fairfax reports on a company, Serco, whose primary aim is to punish refugees in its care:

The private company that runs immigration detention has been forced to back off an arbitrary ban on children using crayons and coloured pencils in their rooms.

Serco Group’s officers in Darwin had decided on the ban, even though crayons are not listed as controlled or prohibited substances in the detention services manual. The Immigration Department could not point to any official reason for the ban yesterday.

Serco officers told a group of Darwin people, including three children, who had wrapped 80 art packs to give to 200 children at the Darwin Airport Lodge detention centre on Christmas morning, that the presents could not be distributed because ”the children might draw on the walls”.

It is believed that Serco had stopped child detainees from using crayons and pencils other than in group classes, and said they could not be used in family rooms, even under parental supervision.

The Greens and refugee groups said yesterday such a restriction would impair the development of young children, and was in breach of Serco’s contract. ”Preschool children learn how to write by first learning how to mark paper with crayons,” said Kate Gauthier, chairwoman of ChilOut (Children Out of Immigration Detention).

”It is a necessary part of the early childhood education process.”

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said: ”This is another classic example of why children should not be in immigration detention. Serco is under a contractual obligation to provide early childhood materials to children in detention.”

After protests to the Immigration Department by the Darwin residents, the Christmas presents, which included 100 individually wrapped gifts that Serco had unwrapped, were distributed on Thursday, 12 days after Christmas.

A Serco spokesman yesterday apologised for the delay, and admitted its process for checking the gifts ”did not work well in this case”.

Said Ms Gauthier: ”It shows Serco are not just heartless buggers for interfering with Christmas presents, but are breaching their contractual obligations.”

A department spokeswoman said: ”The department is very appreciative of the gifts delivered to clients by the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network, ChilOut and the wider Darwin community. We regret there has been this slight delay in this single incident, and understand most of the 200 children have now received their gifts.”

”Safety procedures” were in force when goods entered a detention centre, she said.

The Immigration Department’s detention services manual lists controlled items, including alcohol, vitamins, phones with camera capability, computer modems, knitting needles, scissors, sporting equipment and religious candles, but does not mention crayons.

A Sydney-based friend wrote the following letter to members of the Labor Party in early November 2011:

Dear Member

I wake this morning to hear once more, with dismay, of the craven obeisance of the Australian Labor government to the wishes of the United States in voting against the recognition of Palestine at UNESCO.  At least a vast majority of other member nations were not so pathetic and self-interested, and voted to recognise and hopefully speed an end to one of the most heinous human rights abuses currently being perpetrated on the planet.

I spent 10 days in the West Bank earlier this year, and as one of (very) few Australians who has thus witnessed first hand the nature of the oppression and discrimination being inflicted on the Palestinian people, I find it incumbent to inform as many people as possible of the actual situation in the Occupied Territories.  Naturally this includes informing Australian voters of the disgraceful track record of the Australian Labor Party in backing every policy and opinion of the Israeli government.

The ALP is in sufficient trouble without further alienating what is a core constituency, those informed and decent people who regard human rights as pre-eminent in the conduct of its foreign policy.  Especially those ALP members currently sitting in marginal inner city electorates in Australia should be aware that such policy decisions as that enacted overnight at the UN force all thinking Australian voters to direct their attention to the only party with a principled policy position on Palestine, the Greens, whatever misgivings we may have about other aspects of their policy-making.

I have recently given a presentation to group of interested Australians about my trip to the West Bank.  I would be very happy to give a similar presentation to ALP members and anyone else who is interested in what is really happening in Israel.  It might offer some balance to the views proffered to those ALP members who are so quick to accept Israeli-government sponsored junkets to the Middle East.

Regardless, I hope some realistic understanding of the oppressive policies of the Israeli government might inform future ALP decision making, and that voters interested in human rights will be able to look to the ALP once more as a party who can be trusted to defend the rights of suffering people around the world.

With the release of Gilad Shalit (and his subsequent call for peace and reconciliation) the ALP could begin with one small step and push Israel to lift its illegal blockade of Gaza.

A few days ago The Hon. Tanya Plibersek MP, Federal Member for Sydney and Federal Health Minister, responded and her comments show just how utterly compliant Canberra is with Washington on Middle East policy. We aren’t independent. We don’t think for ourselves. We parrot talking points given to us by DC. We don’t truly care for Palestinians and their freedom. And for that reason, Australia, along with America, will never bring peace to Palestine and they should both be shunned as honest peace-brokers:

Dear ****,

Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding Palestinian statehood.

Australia strongly supports a negotiated two-state solution that allows a secure Israel to live side-by-side with a secure and independent future Palestinian state.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Kevin Rudd MP, underlined to both sides Australia’s strong support for a negotiated two-state solution during his visits to Israel and the Palestinian Territories in December 2010 and March and April 2011, and urged parties to return to negotiations.

I have raised this issue with the Foreign Minister who assures me that Australia’s decision to vote against the Palestinian resolution reflected Australia’s strong concern that consideration of Palestinian membership in UNESCO was premature.

The matter of Palestinian membership of the United Nations (UN) had only recently been placed before the UN Security Council (UNSC). 

Australia believed we should allow the process of UNSC consideration of Palestinian membership of the UN to run its course, rather than pre-empt it by seeking to address this question in different UN forums.

The Foreign Minister assures me that if a Palestinian resolution is introduced to the UN General Assembly the Australian Government will consider it carefully before deciding how to vote.

The Australian Government strongly supports the aspirations of the Palestinian people for their own state and is providing practical support for Palestinian institution-building in support of a future state.

On 18 September 2011 in New York Mr Rudd signed with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad a five-year, $120 million development partnership with the Palestinian Authority. 

This partnership includes regular budget support delivered through the World Bank. It is part of more than $300 million in development and humanitarian assistance Australia will provide to the Palestinian people over the next five years.

This increase is expected to place Australia in the top ten donors to the Palestinian Territories next year.

Australia has also launched a scholarship program focusing on disciplines critical to institution building including law and public sector management. Under this program Australia will provide up to 50 post-graduate scholarships to public officials and legal academics. The first scholars under the program will commence study next year.

Australia is also the 10th largest donor to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East – the main provider of social services to the 4.7 million Palestinian refugees.

Thank you for taking the time to write to me and letting me know your views on this important issue. Regarding federal issues in the future, it would be best for you to contact your Federal Member of Parliament, the Hon. Anthony Albanese MP and Member for Grayndler, as Kingston Rd Camperdown is outside the electorate of Sydney. 

Best wishes,

Tanya

Despite the “best” efforts of the Australian government and Serco, refugees are treated with a combination of suspicion and punishment.

Here’s a good piece in yesterday’s Australian by Paige Taylor which outlines the reality of the attitude towards the media by the political and bureaucratic establishment:

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship objects to the identification of asylum-seekers for a range of reasons that it has outlined repeatedly since it launched a controversial new media policy in October.

For the first time, the department is allowing media outlets into detention facilities, but on the proviso the journalist and camera operator or photographer accompany a department official, follow the official’s instructions at all times and hand over images for vetting before publication.

The department is also putting pressure on media watchdogs to rein in media outlets that continue to show the faces of asylum-seekers. It has written to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which sets standards for the telecommunications, broadcasting, radio and online media, urging it to use new privacy guidelines to crack down on the use of footage of asylum-seekers. The Immigration Department considers many of the images broadcast of asylum-seekers to be gratuitous and unjustified.

The broadcasting watchdog has posted the privacy guidelines on its website and concedes they could be used to force television stations to blur the faces of asylum-seekers. The Immigration Department says it may use the guidelines, which create a protection of “seclusion” even in a public place, to pressure broadcasters to do just that.

The department also has its sights on newspapers’ use of images of asylum-seekers. An Immigration Department spokeswoman confirmed yesterday that it was considering a similar submission on restricted use of images to the Australian Press Council.

The debate has drawn in refugee advocates, human rights lawyers and media bosses. Opinions are not black and white. Even those who believe some sections of the media have misused images of asylum-seekers have acknowledged that, in the right context, such images can promote understanding and empathy.

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The West Australian’s editor-in-chief Bob Cronin told the federal government’s media inquiry last month that the Immigration Department’s access terms were so outrageous that “no editor worth two bob would agree”.

Even human rights lawyers with stated concerns about detainees’ privacy have acknowledged the benefits of media coverage sometimes outweigh the risks.

Sydney solicitor George Newhouse of Shine Lawyers, who took up Seena’s case last year, says asylum-seekers should be, and are, entitled to the same rights to privacy as any other person.

“I’m not criticising The Australian in any way. Ironically, the reporting has probably helped a lot of asylum-seekers on Christmas Island,” he says.

“Some (asylum-seekers) will want their images to appear in the media and others won’t.

“The critical issue is to obtain the relevant asylum-seeker’s informed consent.

“What is disingenuous about DIAC’s concern about the personal privacy of detainees is that the department, Customs and (DIAC’s contractor) SERCO make it difficult, if not impossible, for the media to contact asylum-seekers. That approach means that the department, Customs and SERCO are effectively censoring all images of detainees by denying them the ability to consent.”