Antony Loewenstein

Satire is clearly dead.

Weeks of media coverage of Israel/Palestine in Australia and the BDS campaign pushed by the NSW Greens and Sydney’s Marrickville council and not a peep from Arabs or Palestinians. I mean, why should they be heard? It’s only about their land in the Middle East but let’s not focus on details. It’s clearly too much to expect journalists to actually, you know, call people who aren’t white and Anglo.

Last night’s ABC Radio PM (no Arabs there), today’s Murdoch Australian (obviously no Palestinians here or here), nothing on ABC news today (except Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd just saying BDS is “nuts”, clearly a man who gets his talking points from the Israeli Foreign Ministry) and another story on ABC radio this morning; nobody supporting the Palestinians.

A lone and brave voice:

Greens senator-elect Lee Rhiannon says she will continue to advocate for a trade boycott on Israel, despite being reprimanded by her party’s leader, Bob Brown.

Ms Rhiannon backs the so-called BDS policy – boycott, divestment and sanctions – which is also backed by several Greens councillors on inner Sydney’s Marrickville council.

Senator Brown says a trade boycott of Israel is not party policy and says the issue cost the Greens votes at the recent New South Wales election.

But on Sky News, Ms Rhiannon has defended her position.

“It’s not an anti-Israel position at all. It is about a boycott to bring forward policies that will work for Palestinians because at the moment, Palestinians just don’t have a lot of the human rights we take for granted,” she said.

Ms Rhiannon acknowledges there is a difference between her stance and that of some of her federal colleagues.

But she says the issue has only been highlighted by News Limited newspapers to try to damage the Greens.

Another version of this interview features Rudd’s instructive comments on BDS:

Kevin Rudd has branded as “nuts” a NSW Greens call for a boycott of Israel, as Greens senator-elect Lee Rhiannon vowed to continue to support the policy.

Amid a growing split within Greens ranks on the issue, Ms Rhiannon backed the Marrickville council’s proposed Israel boycott, which could see the Sydney council sacked by NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell.

Mr Rudd said the council should focus on removing rubbish and cleaning local parks.

“The action by the Greens frankly is just nuts. The bottom line is that any local authority in the country should get on with the business of what they are paid by ratepayers to do,” Mr Rudd told the ABC.

“Foreign policy is the province of the national government and for any element of the Green party to go out there and call upon the nation’s government to engage in a campaign to boycott goods and services, be it from Israel or China or any other country, is as I said plain nuts.”

But Ms Rhiannon said she would not abandon the policy, which Greens leader Bob Brown recently condemned as a mistake which had cost the party votes at the NSW election.

“Yes, we have that position in New South Wales and I’ll support the New South Wales position. But it’s not something we’re taking to the federal parliament. There are clear priorities,” Ms Rhiannon told Sky News.

She said while Senator Brown was the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, she would continue to advocate the policy.

She said it had a long history in various Australian communities, with the Wollongong council pursuing the policy in the 1970s.

Courage is sorely lacking in our political and media elites.

I’ve spent years being told that my work on the Middle East was extreme, irrelevant and dangerous and therefore should be ignored. Alas, this didn’t stop a litany of critics continually speaking out against it. Threatened much?

This is how we should see the ongoing Murdoch campaign against the Australian Greens and its policy towards Israel/Palestine. The embarrassing Australian campaign against the party shows a profoundly dishonest agenda and one that will probably only increase its vote. Bullying is such a good look for a broadsheet that’s read by about seven people daily. But nobody said the Murdoch empire was very savvy.

Today sees yet another front page yarn:

Two founding fathers of the Greens say the split between the old-school environmentalists and the new generation of ideologically driven urban activists now swelling the parliamentary ranks could destabilise the party and alienate voters.

The man who gave up his seat in the Tasmanian parliament 29 years ago to launch Bob Brown’s political career, Norm Sanders, said the Greens had “lost the plot” by shifting away from their core business of the environment.

And Queenslander Drew Hutton, who co-founded the party in 1992 with Senator Brown, hit out at the “ludicrous” decision by the NSW division of the Greens to thumb its nose at federal policy and back an international trade boycott of Israel in the recent state election campaign.

And a page two story:

Greens leader Bob Brown wants to end Australian exports of arms and defence equipment, effectively calling for the end of an industry worth $2 billion a year.

Senator Brown yesterday backed a call by WA Greens senator Scott Ludlam for an embargo on the sale of weapons to Israel, adding that he opposed all arms exports and believed Australia should offer “more positive” exports to the world.

His comments were rejected by Defence Materiel Minister Jason Clare and his opposition counterpart, Stuart Robert, who both said Senator Brown’s proposal would cause significant job losses.

Mr Robert accused the Greens of hypocrisy, noting that Senator Brown had strongly backed the establishment last month of a no-fly zone around Libya but was now rejecting the sale of technology to make such actions possible.

Senator Brown’s comments came as he rejected criticism over the appearance of Senator Ludlam and South Australian Greens senator Sarah-Hanson Young at anti-Israeli rallies.

At a rally in Perth last year, Senator Ludlam called for an embargo on the sale of weapons to Israel, citing a $41 million Australian contract to supply equipment, including vests.

…

Senator Brown accused The Australian of conducting “a vendetta” against his party. Asked why he had refused to answer a series of questions about Senator Ludlam and Senator Hanson-Young sent to him on Wednesday, the Greens Leader said: “We had priorities and you didn’t figure.”

The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, backed yesterday’s coverage and said that he had not heard from Senator Brown or any other Greens representatives to query its accuracy.

And finally an op-ed by three Zionist Jews, Philip Mendes, Nick Dyrenfurth and Suzanne Rutland, who all care far more about maintaining Jewish privilege in Israel rather than ending the occupation of Palestinian lands. All three have spent years writing the same article over and over again, ignoring the Israeli government’s growing fascism. How on earth would Israel give up its colonisation program? Empty words from the Zionist Diaspora? Please. This is the face of “liberal” Zionism, utterly complicit in today’s Israeli occupation:

During the recent NSW state election, the controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel became a significant campaign issue. Much public debate suggested a sharp divide between Leftist groups, such as the NSW Greens who appeared to support BDS, and mainly Jewish and non-Left groups, who oppose BDS.

In the election’s aftermath, commentators credited the defeat of Marrickville Greens candidate Fiona Byrne to her support for the BDS.

Remarkably, Greens Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon insisted that her party should have spent more time building progressive support for the BDS among “academics, Arab communities and social justice groups”.

However, in our opinion, the BDS is the antithesis of progressive or left-wing politics.

We are long-time advocates of a peaceful two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We strongly oppose the demonisation of Israel by sections of the Left, and also the demonisation of the Palestinians by sections of Jewish/Israeli opinion.

We favour a negotiated compromise peace which respects Israel’s right to security within roughly the Green Line borders and the Palestinian right to national independence within the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

…

Perversely, BDS advocates suggest that the Palestinians should now be congratulated for abandoning the horrific suicide bombings and rocket attacks of the second intifada, instead adopting a non-violent strategy. But BDS initiated in this zero-sum context can only be seen as a war against Israel by other means.

It bears a message not of humanistic support for two states, but of a utopia where Israel unilaterally surrenders and concedes its national existence.

Likewise, BDS fails to engage with Israeli and diaspora opposition to the settlements, but seeks to impose a collective national guilt on all Israelis irrespective of their political views, social class or whether their background is Jewish, Arab or Druze.

Inevitably, the overwhelming majority of the six million Israeli Jews view BDS as motivated by the same prejudices that influenced Nazi anti-Semitism, and also the ethnic cleansing that drove out nearly a million Jews from the Arab world during the 1940s and 1950s. Their response is hardly likely to be dovish or conciliatory.

Not to be outdone, Australia’s Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd tells the Australian Jewish News that the Greens are mad and bad and Canberra will always love Israel and the “peace process”, which has gone nowhere except further colonisation of the West Bank:

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has pledged the Government’s policy towards Israel is not up for negotiation with The Greens.

In an in-depth interview with The AJN this week, Rudd said that while the Government constantly negotiates with other political parties, particularly in the Senate, foreign policy was different.

“What I would say unequivocally is that when it comes to policy on Israel and the Middle East there will be no, repeat no, compromise on any matter of policy because of The Greens,” he said.

His strong statement was made in the wake of national debate this week over the NSW Greens’ policy to boycott goods made in Israel.

Facing accusations from Israeli diplomats that Australia could be breaching its international trade obligations by not stamping down on The Greens, Rudd’s condemnation of the policy and its instigator Lee Rhiannon left no doubt.

“The Greens senator-elect’s statement concerning a comprehensive boycott of Israel is repugnant, offensive and totally opposed to Australian Government policy, that’s the first point. The second is, because it doesn’t represent Australian Government policy, but simply the irresponsible rantings of a Greens senator-elect there is no case in terms of the WTO whatsoever.”

The occupation is Israel’s cancerous tumour. Those who don’t work actively against it are simply indulging Zionist racism.

Very powerful and true letter published in yesterday’s Melbourne Age:

I am a Sri Lankan. In 2009, we had the same issue as Libya: Sri Lankan armed forces killed civilians during the fight against the rebels.

The Australian Tamils wrote to then prime minister Kevin Rudd to help stop the bloodshed and prevent the innocents being killed. Neither the prime minister nor the foreign minister did anything.

The UN and Western leaders did nothing, watching thousands of innocents killed.

Now Kevin Rudd is making noises about the UN resolution on the Libyan crisis. Barack Obama said the Libyan people should be protected. Where was he when the Tamils were massacred by the Sri Lankan government?

The war criminals in Sri Lanka are still free and continue to commit atrocities and the Western world turns a blind eye.

Why this double-standard? Libya has oil wealth. The Tamils do not have any. The UN is supposed to protect the poor and vulnerable. But here oil wealth speaks loud and clear.

N. S. Nathan, Wheelers Hill

The ongoing controversy over Sydney’s Marrickville council backing BDS against Israel is getting the political and media establishment and Zionist lobby worried.

So what to do?

Find a compliant Federal politician who loves Israel to death and will do anything to defend Zionist occupation.

Victorian Liberal Mitch Fifield is your man. He’s been on trips to Israel (alongside Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd late last year) and back in 2009 he talked about the glorious democracy in Israel.

Today he moved the following in the Federal Senate. The Greens voted against it and asked for it to be recorded in Hansard:

Senator Fifield: To move—That the Senate—

(a) notes:

(i) the boycott of Israel instigated by Marrickville Council – part of the Global Boycott Divestments and Sanctions (GBDS) – banning any links with Israeli organisations or organisations that support Israel and prohibiting any academic, government, sporting or cultural exchanges with Israel,

(ii) letters from Marrickville Council to Members of Parliament asking them to support the GBDS, and

(iii) reports of the intention of the Greens Marrickville Mayor, Ms Fiona Byrne, to seek to extend the boycott of Israel to the entire state of New South Wales;

(b) acknowledges that Israel is a legitimate and democratic state and a good friend of Australia; and

(c) denounces the Israeli boycott by Marrickville Council and condemns any expansion of it.

My following article is written with Australians for Palestine co-founder Moammar Mashni and published in Online Opinion:

“I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, the description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would be a description of what is happening in South Africa”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, New York 1989

When Desmond Tutu made this comment, the South African apartheid regime was still in power. In 1994, after 45 years of racial segregation, the apartheid era was officially over. When watershed moments like this occur, multiple factors can be attributed. But history is clear that one of the many reasons this tyranny finally succumbed was an international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign – BDS.

There is no doubt the decision taken by Sydney’s Marrickville council last December to heed the 2005 call for BDS by virtually all of Palestinian civil society was going to be controversial; so was the international movement against apartheid South Africa.

With a New South Wales state election just around the corner, and other local councils considering similar BDS proposals across Australia, this issue is generating predictable heat. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Gerard Henderson last week condemned the Greens for ignoring “democratic” Israel. A prominent mural in inner Sydney, normally aimed at attacking Muslim women who wear the burqa, was changed to attack Marrickville mayor and leading Greens candidate Fiona Byrne for supporting BDS. Even DFAT Secretary Dennis Richardson has entered the debate, calling BDS “wacko stuff”.

Sydney’s Daily Telegraph slammed Byrne for daring to consider a trade boycott of China over its human rights abuses in Tibet. She should be praised for consistency, acknowledging that we should not conduct international relations, even with a major trading partner, and ignore gross human rights outrages to make a buck.

As a Palestinian and a Jew, we salute Marrickville for understanding that words about “two-state solution” and “peace process” are soothing to elite media and political ears, but desperate facts on the ground in Palestine require direct action in a consultative and non-violent way. When governments fail to arrest the illegal march of colonisation on Palestinian land, it is not enough to wait for futile peace negotiations that only lead to a more deeply entrenched occupation.

Marrickville council is at least trying to advance the debate about occupation while our leaders visit Israel and dine with Benjamin Netanyahu. Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd led the largest ever delegation to Israel in December, barely stopping in the occupied Palestinian territories for a few meetings.

Much as staunch Israel advocates would like to have us believe that apartheid South Africa and Israel are completely different, they are actually intimately linked. Israel was one of the few countries that continued to support apartheid South Africa when most of the international community had instituted its boycott. In his recent book about the relationship, The Unspoken Alliance, author Sasha Polakow-Suransky writes that the Zionist state is “playing its part” in comparison to the darkest apartheid days by instituting a matrix of control against the Palestinians.

In reality, the resolution that Marrickville passed is probably more symbolic than anything else, but it is a necessary one precisely because it has had its intended impact; leading a debate on Palestine/Israel both here and overseas.  In early February , Israeli Member of the Knesset Miri Regev announced that “In the realm of the boycott alone, one can point to real damage to the State of Israel, assessed at tens of millions of US dollars”. It is as legitimate to target Western security firms that assist Israel in the West Bank as boycotting arms dealers who sell weapons to the brutal regimes of Egypt and Libya.

When Israel refuses to cease colony building and Western states, including Australia, continue to fete Israeli “democracy”, BDS becomes a logical and moral tactic. A wide selection of Jewish groups, activists, unions and Israeli citizens has now embraced BDS worldwide.

Israel’s illegal military occupation, West Bank settlements, home demolitions and blockade of Gaza have sometimes been met with Palestinian violence. BDS however is a categorical act of non-violence, yet those who support BDS as a way of franchising the international community into making Israel more accountable are themselves now attacked as ‘delegitimisers’. This is as insidious as calling critics of Israel “anti-Semites” as a way to shut down discussion. It should not succeed.

In the last 25 years, Australia has unfortunately lost its way with respect to dictating any real policy on Palestine/Israel. The major parties say they support a two state solution, but what does that mean when there are 500,000 plus illegal colonists in the lands that are designated as the future ‘Palestine’? Ironically, a UN vote on settlements that took place recently saw only the US (14-1) reject a resolution calling for the immediate halt to all construction in the occupied Palestinian territories.

It has never been clearer, with revolution sweeping across the Arab world, that America and its Western allies much prefer Arab “stability” to maintain the illusion of Israeli democracy. BDS punctures this bubble and clearly asks; do you believe in representative democracy in Palestine and Israel or a state that discriminates against non-Jews in the name of religion?

While the two major Australian parties continue to whitewash this critical issue, the void will inevitably be filled by those compelled to act. We congratulate the NSW Greens for embracing BDS, with the support of their Labor colleagues in Marrickville, as it demonstrates that the impending state election will be hotly contested on local and global issues – not least whether we as Australians truly value equality, human rights and real democracy for all Israelis and Palestinians. Our globalised world dictates acting when injustice rages, whether in Burma, Sri Lanka or Palestine.

Last week at a “meet the candidates” forum in inner Sydney, Greens candidate Fiona Byrne defended her decision to back BDS by saying it was a question of universal human rights, just as councils in the past have supported actions against Burma and China. Israel is committing human rights abuses and we are compelled to act.

To dismiss BDS out of hand as some sort of revolutionary cause célèbre of the left is to utterly denigrate those who died in the name of freedom from oppression. When the Australian Jewish News runs an entire front page headline, “Laughing stock of the world” and “a joke” this week, in reference to the decision by Marrickville council, one seriously wonders whether backing illegal settlements in the West Bank is their way to further 21^st century Zionism.

The stated purpose of BDS is “to end Israel’s occupation, colonisation and system of apartheid”. As Israel descends into an increasingly intolerant state with fascist members of parliament in major positions of power, BDS seems the most reasonable response imaginable.

The Middle East is in turmoil and yet here’s the Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, speaking a few days ago in Greece, on what he thinks the region should look like. Nearly everything is reactive and the “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians should continue as if it’s nearly achieved resolution.

Somebody should tell Australia that Tehran isn’t the main issue in the Middle East (despite what Tel Aviv and Washington is telling them):

We believe that Egypt needs fundamental political reform beginning now. We also believe that this process of reform must be delivered peacefully.

We are therefore deeply concerned at the violence that erupted today in Tahrir Square. This sort of violence is an anathema to Australians and we deplore it.

We call on the Egyptian authorities to ensure its people are able to undertake their peaceful protest safely. We again call on the Government to exercise maximum restraint and respond to peaceful protests without violence.

I conveyed directly to the Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Moussa my concerns about this violence. He too was very concerned by today’s events.

Difficult and dangerous days lie ahead in Egypt. Around a million people took to the streets of Cairo yesterday. Many will take to the streets again on Friday.

The Government and the people of Egypt have been presented with an historic opportunity to engineer peaceful democratic transformation — creating a modern democracy out of this most ancient land.

More broadly across the Arab world, the forces of democratic transformation are also at work. These forces run headlong into the two, well established stereotypes of what has hitherto been believed to be politically possible in the Arab world.

One such stereotype is, that given the challenges of governance in the countries of the region, the only workable political system is an authoritarian dictatorship.

The other is that if you lift a lid on democracy, you open up the possibility of an Iranian-style revolution and a creation of an Islamist state.

The people on the streets of Cairo appear to be calling for another way: a democratic system of government capable of embracing a multiplicity of views within its political system.

This appears to be very much a popular movement from below — led by young people whose names by and large are unknown to the outside world; people whose incomes have not risen in recent years because economic growth has been so thin; an intellectual class which has long sought greater freedom of expression; by both new and long-standing opposition political figures who have often been in conflict with one another in the past; as well as those who are calling for a more central role for Islam in what since Nasser has been a secular Arab state.

The difficult challenge ahead lies in how these disparate elements might be melded together into a pluralist democracy while preventing radical Islamists from snuffing out the pluralist voices of the people.

While this represents a difficult challenge, more difficult is the prospect of hanging on indefinitely to the political absolutism of the past.

Political reform is necessary in the wider Arab world — although ultimately it’s a matter for the Arab peoples themselves to determine its shape.

The Arab peoples are no different to others in the world who have found their democratic voice in recent decades — across Latin America, across Indonesia, across the former states of the Eastern bloc and across other parts of the world.

In Australia, we hold democracy to be a universal value — not one which is particular to one culture, one people or one set of intellectual traditions.

There is a basic animating principle of freedom to which all peoples strive — the freedom of political expression; accompanied also by economic freedom to unleash the full potential of all people.

This does not mean that the State has no role in maintaining law and order or in regulating economies. But it does mean that these constraints must be bound constitutionally in order to offer genuine freedom to peoples everywhere as the proper condition of humankind.

Events in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world also have potentially profound implications for the Middle East peace process. It is possible that new democratic voices unleashed in Egypt and elsewhere will begin to challenge many of the assumptions underpinning the traditional views of moderate Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia.

In other words, the geopolitics of what flows to the region from the streets of Cairo are likely to have significant implications on the current state of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Many of us who are friends of Israel and friends of the Palestinian people are familiar with the broad architecture of a comprehensive settlement which would create a two state solution — an independent and secure Israeli state and an independent and secure Palestinian state.

These elements include the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed land swaps; the question of the right of return; the question of Jerusalem and the holy sites; as well as necessary security guarantees.

Ultimately this is a question of course for Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to resolve because what is at stake is the future of their respective homelands.

Given the possibility of opportunistic actions by Iran in the light of the political changes currently underway in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world; it therefore becomes more imperative than ever to bring the Middle East peace negotiations to a successful conclusion.

There is political capacity for this to be achieved on both sides of the negotiation table.

From Israel’s perspective reaching such an agreement holds out the prospect of greater security for Israel and its people, and recognition and respect from its neighbours and the wider world.

Reaching such an agreement also holds the potential to transform the Arab world into an open market for Israeli goods and services, helping grow the Israeli economy as well as helping grow the economies and employment opportunities among its neighbours.

For the Palestinians, an independent and secure state would also enable its Government to get on with the task of improving the lot of its people.

And for the region at large, it would remove the Israel/Palestine question as the regional rallying point around which Iran seeks to bolster its political and diplomatic standing.

The governments of the region are carefully analysing the possible strategic consequences of what now unfolds from political reform on the streets of Cairo.

Today’s rally in Sydney was a good event, attracting around 1000 people, all of whom wanted to show solidarity with what Wikileaks stands for; transparency and real free speech.

My speech addressed the often complicity of the mainstream media in keeping government secrets away from the public. They want to be gate-keepers, close to power. I reject this; independence is vital to not be seduced by official romancing.

Here are the notes from my speech:

Wikileaks rally, Sydney Town Hall, 15 January 2011

-       Welcome to country.

-       War on whistleblowers.

-       Rudd Labor government pursued leakers more than double the rate of Howard government.

-       Obama administration also pursued whistle-blowers more than Bush years.

-       Bradley Manning, torture-like conditions in US, virtual solitary confinement, UN investigating his treatment. This is how our key ally behaves.

-       Key revelations from Wikileaks aren’t about Assange or his personal life but that our governments lie to us every day and now we have the evidence to prove it. In the Middle East, Africa, Australia, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen.

-       Journalists reacting with anger towards Wikileaks. Jealously, frustration and outrage. Why aren’t they doing their job better?

-       Insider journalism is the enemy of an open democracy.

-       General silence of journalists in speaking out in defence of Wikileaks and what it represents, especially in the US and Australia.

-       Secrecy is the problem not leakers. Who keeps the secrets? Governments and their media courtiers.

-       In 2011, we demand greater transparency, an independent Australian government to support Wikileaks and a press that doesn’t take its cues and leaks from government advisors.

No wonder so many in positions of power fear Wikileaks. What we are seeing is diplomacy and statecraft laid bare. And the results are devastating. We are lied to on a daily basis.

And what of the countless corporate journalists taken on embedded trips to Afghanistan, simply “reporting” futile battles and tiny details that ignore the big picture? They’ve been on the drip-feed and it shows:

We squabbled with our allies, yet in public we talked of close co-operation. We frustrated the Americans with unfulfilled promises. Our politicians big-noted in public but dithered in private. Our bamboozled bureaucrats tried to make sense of the details. All along, the public was kept in the dark.

Not any longer.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have an insight into the diplomatic skirmishes behind the war in Afghanistan, now in its ninth year and which has cost 21 Australian lives.

Leaked US diplomatic cables expose friction between Australia and its allies, undermining the public veneer of coalition solidarity.

We did not trust the Dutch, our key partner in Afghanistan.

We confounded the Americans by dithering over Kevin Rudd’s promised ”civilian surge” – a promise made to head off a US request for more troops, by offering advisers and police instead.

Ministers and officials were left in the dark over the promise, while federal departments bickered as they struggled to make the pledge a reality.

The US State Department cables, released exclusively by WikiLeaks to The Sunday Age, include reports from the US embassy in Canberra that reveal deep distrust between Australian and Dutch forces in Oruzgan province, where Australia was part of a Netherlands-led force.

In February 2007, Australian officers, concerned the Taliban were preparing a do-or-die offensive, started planning to send special forces back to Oruzgan.

This was just five months after the Howard government pulled them out, in September 2006, when it argued Oruzgan was ”relatively stable” and that Australian reconstruction troops remaining in the province were well protected by their own forces and Dutch troops.

But the claims of stability and the stated faith in the Dutch were undermined when intelligence reports warned of a Taliban resurgence.

While the army planned another special forces deployment, officials in Canberra briefed journalists that the troops would be under Australian – not Dutch – command. But privately, Australia actually wanted them under US command.

An editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald today that highlights an amazing recent comment by Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd showing the inherent racism of Western backers of Zionism:

Rudd made a distasteful joke about Menachem Begin carrying out ”some interior redesign” of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel – referring to a terrorist bombing in 1946 that killed 91 people. Has Rudd really has got it as a diplomat?

Australia’s depravity over asylum seekers is revealed even by the US, a nation fond of demonising refugees:

Secret United States embassy cables have sharply criticised the handling of asylum seekers by the former prime minister Kevin Rudd and accused both Labor and the Coalition of playing partisan politics with the issue.

The cables reveal that a close adviser to Mr Rudd failed to persuade him to use the government’s powers ”to calmly and rationally put the issue in perspective” by acknowledging that only a small number of asylum seekers were arriving by boat compared with tens of thousands overstaying their visas each year.

A cable obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to the Herald says an unnamed “key Liberal Party strategist” told US diplomats in November last year that the issue of asylum seekers was ”fantastic” for the Coalition and ”the more boats that come the better”.

There is currently in Israel the largest Australian delegation ever to visit the Zionist state. Leading politicians and journalists are enjoying the pleasures of Israeli hospitality. The fact that so many people are visiting while Israel faces intense criticism over its racist policies proves the blindness of the Western elites when it comes to the country. Witness the chummy press conference between Foreign Ministers Kevin Rudd and Avigdor Lieberman.

We have to read the Jerusalem Post to learn some of the real agenda of this largely off the record experience:

On Monday, after arriving in Israel for the third time, Rudd warmly embraced President Shimon Peres who asked him what it was like to be a foreign minister after having been a prime minister.

To take the barb out of the question, he added that he had his own experience in this respect.

“I was going to ask you for guidance,” said Rudd without missing a beat.

But treating the question more seriously, he said that he was now able to give 100 percent of his time to foreign affairs instead of 20% as he had done as prime minister.

Following their private discussion, Peres and Rudd held a Q&A session with the members of Rudd’s delegation, who participated in the third annual Australia-Israel Leadership Forum.

Who is running the Australian government these days?

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday mounted a strong defence of Julian Assange’s legal rights.

The WikiLeaks founder is preparing to face court in London early Wednesday morning (AEDT).

Mr Rudd said he was prepared to intervene to have a laptop computer provided for Mr Assange in London’s Wandsworth prison to help the Australian prepare his defence and obtain bail at his appearance at Westminster Magistrates Court.

Following suggestions by Julia Gillard and Attorney-General Robert McClelland that Mr Assange may have his Australian passport cancelled, Mr Rudd said any such decision was his as Foreign Minister. “Under law, I’m responsible for the Passports Act, therefore the decisions concerning the withdrawal or otherwise of passports rests exclusively with the foreign minister based on the advice of the relevant agencies,” Mr Rudd told The Australian in Cairo.

And a woman supposedly of the Left bows to Labor tribalism and sells out her ideological heritage. Has she not heard of freedom of speech? The shame:

A minister in the Gillard government has defended the push to charge Julian Assange for publishing secret US cables on his WikiLeaks website.

Human Services Minister Tanya Plibersek told Sky News’ Australian Agenda the leaks were very serious and threatened the workings of international diplomacy and the quality of advice public servants were willing to give.

She broke ranks with some of her factional colleagues in the Labor Left, who told The Weekend Australian the government had overreacted to the leaks and should stop treating Mr Assange like a criminal. Backbencher Laurie Ferguson said the information the 39-year-old Australian had released was crucial to democracy and to exposing the truth.

Ms Plibersek said yesterday that at the heart of the issue was the fact that the documents were classified and had been stolen.

“I don’t think that it’s a terrific thing for world security for people to go stealing classified documents and sticking them on the internet,” she said.

“I think everyone in the Left of the party, the Right of the party and the Australian public would expect that Julian Assange would face the law, as any other Australian citizen would face the law.”

Ms Plibersek said the language used by those calling for Mr Assange to be assassinated and accusing him of being a terrorist was extreme and unwarranted.

“But the Australian government has not said those things. The Australian government has said that this is based on an original criminal act, which is a theft of classified documents,” she said.

“It’s yet to be seen who has stolen those documents, and those are matters best left to the police, both in the United States and here.”

Ms Plibersek said anyone publishing anything had to apply a degree of responsibility.

“If we find that someone, say a businessman in Iran who is pro-American, is strung up by the Iranian government because these documents have been published, do you say that Julian Assange has no responsibility for that?