It’s nearly Christmas and that must mean yet another year of the Australia-Israel-UK Leadership Forum. The Australian media has virtually ignored the whole thing because they’re a) lazy b) not curious and c) clueless how to write about the shamelessness of witnessing so many politicians pall around with pro-occupation Israeli figures. These are the same…
Showing all posts tagged Israel lobby
Murdoch’s way of defending Israel is publishing Netanyahu’s crib notes
Yesterday the ABC published as its lead opinion story my piece about the reasons why an academic boycott should be imposed on Israel. The hundreds of comments below are a fascinating if mostly despairing insight into the mindset of people who want to label any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. Oh well. Today’s Rupert Murdoch’s…
Why boycotting Israeli academia is necessary and principled
My following piece appears today in ABC’s… The Drum: An academic boycott of Israeli universities isn’t an attack on freedom of speech. The evidence tells us these institutions are key battlegrounds for breaches of international law towards the Palestinians, argues Antony Loewenstein. New Zealand’s $20 billion national pension fund… announced this month… that it was divesting from three…
UK Israel lobby is most powerful in the country
The power of the Zionist lobby in Britain is far too rarely discussed in the mainstream media. And yet its presence is one of the key reasons London is so blindly supportive of Israel. Here’s a rare perspective, written by Peter Obourne in the UK Telegraph.… Note the fear that the two-state solution is dead/dying/on life…
Anybody else like to speak out against a courageous academic challenging Israeli apartheid?
There’s been so much media coverage of Dr Jake Lynch at Sydney University taking a principled stance against an Israeli academic that it’s vital to just have all the stories on the record. I’ve been publishing all the information I can find about it on a daily basis (here’s the piece from yesterday). The Australian:…
What a spectacular own goal looks like; thank you Michael Danby for embracing Israeli occupation so cluelessly
Labor MP Michael Danby has a history of loving Israel as only a married man can. Today he unleashes his glorious literary skills in the Murdoch tabloids to denounce Foreign Minister Bob Carr for daring to have an independent thought over Israel: As NSW premier he [Bob Carr] awarded the Sydney Peace Prize to Palestinian…
Australian Zionist community once again falsely cries anti-Semitism
The Australian Jewish News: The editor-in-chief of… The Age… has defended a series of cartoons published over the last week, one of which the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) labelled as “virulent hate-speech”, that have outraged the Melbourne Jewish community. A cartoon by Michael Leunig last Wednesday adapted German pastor Martin Niemoeller’s famous “First they came for…
Baby steps towards neutering the fundamentalist Zionist lobby in Australia
Interesting piece in the Australian Financial Review that outlines the decreasing power of the Israel lobby to bully its way into the corridors of power. As importantly, its belief in apartheid in the West Bank shows that they speak for nobody but the Israeli government. They will never be independent players and should be ignored…
How lobby trips to Israel and beyond pollute political and media culture
Far too many reporters and politicians take free trips to Israel, America and elsewhere. In the vast majority of cases they’re little more than propaganda exercises. When it comes to Zionist lobby visits to Israel, I can count on one hand the number of returnees who write or say anything independent instead of mouthing Israeli…
A singularly rare voice in Australian parliament that defends Palestine
Federal Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon speaks truthfully about what’s been happening in Gaza and the Middle East, unlike the sheep in the two major parties who simply mouth platitudes about Israel and receive their talking points from the Zionist lobby or political leadership. The following speech was given by Rhiannon on 20 November: The other…