With US President Trump’s rejoicing, Israel has re-elected Netanyahu for a fifth term. An Israeli public relations firm took credit for placing hidden cameras at polling stations on election day, successfully reducing the voter turnout in non-Jewish communities. Netanyahu’s Likud Party admitted that it was behind the deployment of a reported 1,200 hidden cameras. In a previous election in 2015, the Israeli Prime Minister published a video, warning that ‘Arabs’ were “voting in droves” with the help of left-wing organisations.
For the Palestinian communities that are suffering under Israeli Occupation and military dictatorship, the one constant reality is that Zionism goes on ruling. The Occupying power carries on annexing Palestinian land, destroying homes, and even seizes tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority. Acts of racist violence, perpetrated by Israeli settlers illegally imposed among Palestinian communities in the West Bank, more than tripled last year, compared with the year before. The Trump Administration’s recognition last month of what it calls Israel’s ‘authority’ over the Syrian Golan Heights can only bring closer the looming, formal annexation of the West Bank by Israel, now most assuredly convinced of its enduring and unassailable impunity.
Emboldened by the growing support from extreme right-wing politicians around the world, the new Israeli Government will become even less diplomatic and more brazen in pursuit of Zionism’s ultimate goals. President Trump is planning to visit the UK in early June and activists will be holding a National Demonstration for Palestine on 11 May. The need to show international solidarity with the Palestinian people is now even more urgent. Also in the UK, in cahoots with the US, the government has seized and imprisoned Wikileaks founder and journalist, Julian Assange, who is now in grave danger of being extradited to the US. Genuine democracy depends upon openness and freedom of information. Growing militaristic alliances across the world require subservient, ill-informed societies in order to gain complete control. Wikileaks revelations of US prison camp torture at Guantánamo Bay, civilian casualties resulting from secret air strikes, and other covert war crimes committed by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, have exposed an ugly reality that the US and British Governments are desperate to hide from public view. The UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has demanded that: “The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British Government.”
Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, under constant threat and surveillance by the Zionist Israel Lobby. The Lobby is represented by the self-styled Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), which claims to campaign “within the party and the wider community to support labour values within the UK, Israel and Internationally.” The JLM is also affiliated to the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Zionist Federation of the UK, as well as organising within the “World Zionist Organisation alongside our sister party in Israel, Havodah – the Israeli Labour Party.” In fact, JLM is ‘sister’ to an Israeli Labour Party that supports the deportation of 40,000 Eritrean ‘economic migrants’ from Israel, and even opposes dismantling Jewish settlements. According to the Jewish writer Tony Greenstein, founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a member of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, two-thirds of JLM membership is predominantly non-Jewish. Greenstein observes that “no Jew who is not a Zionist can possibly join a group which is affiliated to the settlement funding World Zionist Organisation.” As the majority of the Labour Party’s Jewish members are not Zionists, he asks “why is the JLM allowed to represent itself as the Labour Party’s Jewish section?” JLM conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and, on behalf of Israel, is dedicated to bringing down Jeremy Corbyn.
Greenstein draws attention to an article by Asa Winstanley that refers to a conspiracy, evidenced in Al Jazeera’s The Lobby, to use the movement to bring down Jeremy Corbyn. JLM turned to an Israeli Embassy political officer, Ella Rose, as Director. Foreign interference in domestic politics has many forms and, in the US, the most powerful is the Israel Lobby. Since the end of the Second World War, human rights and respect for international law have never been under greater threat. Trump’s pro-Zionist policies are a grim reminder of the irrational, supremacist psychology that pervades the corridors of power in many threatened, faltering democracies.
In Australia, the Labour Party candidate for the West Australian seat of Curtin, Melissa Parke, has been forced to withdraw from the upcoming election following a report on 12 April that she had told a public meeting last month that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians was “worse than the South African system of apartheid”. Previously a lawyer with the United Nations, Melissa Parke has 20 years of experience in international relations and law, including living and working in the Middle East. A person, one can assume, eminently qualified to speak out for human rights and for what are claimed to be Australia’s values. But no, the Australian Labour Party would prefer to ditch such a candidate rather than support her views and campaign for them. Parke’s pronouncement is incontrovertibly supported by the Fourth Geneva Convention and yet her views are unacceptable to the Labour hierarchy in Australia. Whence comes the power to counter anti-racist free speech so thoroughly? Ali Kazak, former Palestinian diplomat and founder of the Australian-Arab Affairs Council, tells us that the resignation was due to the powerful influence of three Zionist organisations: The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), The Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) and The Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) “welcomes the opening of a new Australian Trade and Defence Office in Jerusalem” because it “has a focus on building Australia’s trade, investment, defence industry, education and innovation partnerships with lsraeli industry, including maximising opportunities for Australia’s high-tech and defence exports industries, according to the government.”
AIJAC’s extreme Zionism is well revealed in the following statement: “Building on the Australian Government’s welcome and principled recognition of the reality that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and has been since 1949, this office should both give that recognition concrete form and help further develop the already extensive and mutually beneficial trade ties between Israel and Australia.”
Australia’s cosying-up with Israel and the demands of Zionism suits big business and militarism. The AIJAC Executive Director, Dr Colin Rubenstein, notes that “the Trade and Defence Office shows the government’s genuine commitment to their declared policy on Jerusalem and Israel and it will also provide significant concrete dividends to the Australian economy in the defence, high-tech and cyber security sectors . . .” In an irrational disregard for international law, Rubenstein went so far as to declare: “We also look forward to the Australian government eventually relocating our Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, helping to end the discriminatory situation whereby, for the last 70 years, Israel has been the only country in the world not permitted to nominate its own capital on its own sovereign territory.”
Zionist Federation of Australia
The Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) website tells us that ZFA is “the federal roof body of all Zionist organisations and activity in Australia, responsible for developing, enriching and supporting a meaningful relationship between the Australian Jewish community and the State of Israel.” ZFA says it “believes in the centrality of Israel as a determining factor in the creation and maintenance of Jewish identity.” It also endorses The Jerusalem Programme, the official platform of the World Zionist Organisation and the Zionist movement. The Jerusalem Programme sees: “Settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism” and promotes “the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ)
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry website observes that “For the Jewish community, Australia has indeed been the lucky country bestowing upon us the blessings of freedom and respect for human life and dignity.” However, ECAJ is also bitterly opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state and applauds the Israel Experience Fund/birthright Programme, established by the Zionist Federation of Australia with the support of the United Israel Appeal.
Zionist Federation of New Zealand
Here in New Zealand, the Zionist movements now operate under a single entity, the Zionist Federation of New Zealand. The Federation declares its mission is “to facilitate the growth of Zionist activity through extensive Hasbarah, access to educational programs in New Zealand and Israel, and non-negotiable solidarity with Israel.”
We have already had a taste of Zionist contempt and interference. In 2004, our then Prime Minister, Helen Clark, denounced a “breach of New Zealand laws and sovereignty by agents of the Israeli government” after the Zionist state’s Mossad (the second largest spy organisation in the West) secret agents dishonestly obtained a passport in the name of a tetraplegic man. The conspiracy involved an attempt by up to four Israeli agents to create a false identity for yet another suspected Israeli spy, Zev Barkan. The agency had employed a fraudulent birth certificate, as well as a fake voice mail message, and fabricated medical symptoms to get its way. In court, one of the accused agents was allowed to cover his face with a balaclava and another had substantially changed his appearance. In 1997 Mossad agents used fake Canadian passports in an attempt to assassinate a Palestinian leader, Sheikh Khaled Mashal. Canada reacted by ordering the Israeli ambassador out until Tel Aviv promised to cease its violations of national sovereignty.
Mossad’s behaviour reflects and serves Zionist ideology. In 1986, whistleblower, Mordechai Vanunu, went to Britain to reveal to the Sunday Times proof of the existence of Israel’s secret (as it was then) nuclear weapons facility at Dimona. While Vanunu was still in London, Mossad set a honey trap by using a woman to lure him to Italy from where, in violation of Italian law, they kidnapped, drugged and smuggled him out of the country to Israel.
The Israel Institute of New Zealand website carries an article by the President of the Zionist Federation of Australia, Jeremy Leibler, lambasting our country for abstaining, last December, from the UN General Assembly vote on a US-backed resolution condemning the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas. With regard to what he called “New Zealand’s hypocrisy”, he wrote “New Zealand and its accomplices at the UN have yet again imposed a different standard of proof for terror when perpetrated against Israelis.” He then quoted an outdated ‘Covenant’, now repudiated by Hamas, in order to brand them as terrorists. The Zionist movement desperately needs to draw attention away from its UN-condemned blockade of Gaza and other inhumanities. To that end, it attempts to shift the blame for all the suffering onto the elected Hamas leadership.
What the Zionists don’t want publicised is the Hamas Charter, published almost two years ago on 1 May 2017. Here, as far as supporters of human rights and a universally-recognised peaceful resolution are concerned, are two most pertinent articles from the Charter:
16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
17. Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage. The Zionist movement, which was able with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settlement occupation which has already disappeared from much of the world and must disappear from Palestine.
Understand the outrage felt by Jewish supporters of universal human rights, at Zionism’s claim to represent all Jews. Remember that all forms of apartheid are abhorrent. We must all stand up to pro-Zionist bullying and Netanyahu/Trump alliance supporters around the world. Never be afraid to speak out and act in support of human rights, justice and international law.
Another view:
“Benjamin Netanyahu won reelection by outflanking Israel’s far right. If you listen closely, you can hear the rumble of fascism approaching.”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/04/netanyahu-election-annexation-west-bank-occupation
Approaching?
Its here. Read above.
Palestine and its people are a victim of organised fascism supported by a tribal elite with wealth beyond comprehension.
But its not just Palestine.
Look who is involved with the atrocities in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and most places in the middle East for nearby.
The plan often quoted is reputedly control of oil and resources much wider than just the middle East.
That seems hard to refute when you look at what is happening.
Jesus Christ. That’s all a bit chilling.
Thanks @ LB for your tireless work. Otherwise, we’d never know.
We have our own apartheid here. It’s exemplified by the gap between the riche and their poor and one can’t help but notice that the majority of homeless people are brown people, so double-yay.
Mark my words. There will come a time when all AO/NZ’ers who aren’t zionists will be forced to live on Stewart Island while our new masters can take pot shots at us from the top of Bluff Hill while eating our cod and oysters as their kids run around.
Was that ever a fear of Maori, all those years ago?
“ One day, these white people will arrive in huge waka with guns and lies then we Maori will end up in the streets begging fag ends off them as our whanau end up in prisons or die of poverty related diseases.”
If we don’t all [get] together to change history, history is doomed to repeat itself.
The Orange Tyrant and the War Crimes Criminal up a tree… Ugh!
I have an alternative proposal for NZ regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Take no sides at all. We should be Switzerland on this issue, because the reality is that it has nothing to do with us, and for that matter it has nothing to do with anyone else who does not have skin in the game, in other words anyone who is either a Palestinian or Israeli, or at least Arab or Jew.
There are dozens of ethnic/religious conflicts in the world. There are dozens upon dozens of issues regarding breaches international law and persecution of minorities. Yet for some reason this one issue consumes a vast amount of time and energy from activists, most of whom have no skin in the game at all, and often while many other worthy issues get little more than lip service, if they get any attention at all. That makes me suspicious. Take the Gaza flotilla for example. I have yet to see any similar actions by activists in support of the Kurds in Turkey, or the Uighurs in China, or the Tibetan people (remember them?), or the Rohingya, and they are just four of many possible examples.
Why? Because being anti-Israel is a required fashion accessory for the activist Left, mush as being pro-Israel is a required fashion accessory for the US Christian Right. And a fashion accessory is all it is. If it was really about justice, we would see activists spending equal if not more time on the many, many other issues of ethnic conflict around the world, and taking similar “brave” actions like the Gaza flotilla in support of the Rohingya or Uighurs.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simply not relevant to NZ or most New Zealanders. Most Kiwi’s have no skin in the game. There is no reason for us to spend any more energy on it than on any other issue.
So SHAWN are you saying we ignore the many UN ruling on the illegal Israeli stealing of land and genocide.
Its not a religious issue at all. That is a smoke screen.
John, the UN rulings are a good example of my point. They are not wrong in and of themselves, but the sheer number of rulings about Israel, compared to say rulings about Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Cuba, China, and many other countries with appalling human rights records, is telling. Moreover, some of the countries backing these rulings have as bad if not worse human rights records themselves, and some of the countries leading UN human rights bodies that make these rulings are themselves shocking human rights abusers.
I’m not pro-Israel (or anti-Zionist for that matter), and I find the Netanyahu government appalling. But the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just one issue among many, yet it receives a vast amount of attention by the UN and by activists, to the detriment of many other worthy causes and issues.
As far as the NZ government goes, there is no logical reason why we should give that one issue anymore attention than any other human rights issue.
So you do think the UN rulings should be ignored. If that is the case then what do you see as a solution to the genocide.
Human rights records – 1.4 million slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan all on the pretext of another flagrant lie.
And we helped.
Zionists desperately seek to draw attention away from their crimes against humanity, which include the longest foreign military Occupation in modern history and confinement of nearly two million people in the largest ghetto ever created. Zionist ‘Hasbara’ is clinging to the argument that Israel is being ‘singled out’. Tough, the world isn’t buying this, observing that it is Israel’s unconscionable behaviour that singles it out.
Shawn claims that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “not relevant to NZ or most New Zealanders.” Interestingly, we note that Zionists didn’t complain when New Zealand failed to mind its own business and voted for the Partition of Palestine at the UN.
If he had bothered to read the article he comments upon, Shawn would have read of Israel’s acts of contempt against other nations, including New Zealand. Israel’s gross violations of human rights and the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention are very much relevant to New Zealanders. Believe it or not, international law is, just that – international.
Shawn sees this as a game. It may be “game” for Zionists but their lobbying interference in the domestic political affairs of other nations is venomous and damaging in the extreme. Having achieved their way, they now demand special exemption for Israel from duty to respect international human rights law. We shall resist.
“which include the longest foreign military Occupation in modern history”
Longer than China’s occupation of Tibet?
“is clinging to the argument that Israel is being ‘singled out’”
It clearly is. Human rights abuses in places like Saudi Arabia and similar countries, especially with regards to women and homosexuals, are vastly worse than Israel’s record. Yet by comparison to Israel, very little attention is focused there. I see no activists travelling to Saudi Arabia to protest it’s appalling treatment of women and homosexuals. I see no activists travelling to China to protest it’s appalling treatment of the Uighurs or the Tibetans.
I have seen no marches down Queen street since Brunei decided to implement the death penalty for homosexuals.
I have seen no marches down Queen street protesting China’s human rights record or it’s ongoing interference in NZ’s domestic politics, which are far more intense and extensive than Israel’s.
Why is that?
And why is it that activists on the far left are so concerned with Israel, yet defend this country:
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/venezuela
“Shawn sees this as a game.”
No I see it as a fashion accessory for fashionable activists whose concern for human rights and international law is very selective.
Unable to deny Israel’s racist war crimes and faced with the mounting disgust of a growing majority of humanity across the world, Zionism’s attempts to divert attention become ever more vociferous. Begging the world to look the other way is an admission of guilt. Racism is a growing threat to the global community and Zionism is at its core.
In the US, the white supremacist Richard Spencer [https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180727-the-unholy-alliance-between-israel-and-alt-right-ideologues/] has welcomed Israel’s recent Nation State Law, saying: “I have great admiration for Israel’s nation-state law” and tweeting “Jews are, once again, at the vanguard, rethinking politics and sovereignty for the future, showing a path forward for Europeans.”
Steve Bannon [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon], who served for seven months as a White House Chief Strategist for Donald Trump, was also former Executive Chairman of Breitbart News. In a Haaretz newspaper interview, Bannon proudly stated that Breitbart News had “consistently” supported the state of Israel. He also co-founded the data-analytics firm behind the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal].
Former Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief, Bret Stephens, dedicated a column [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/opinion/steve-bannon-israel-anti-semitism.html] in the New York Times on the issue, commenting that: “Just as there are anti-Zionist Jews, there are also anti-Semitic Zionists”.
For Zionism, its obsession with ethnicity transcends everything else, which is why it embraces even anti-Jewish figures, such as Bannon and Spencer. Israel also has the support of far-right groups in Europe, from Italy to the Ukraine. The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, has published a protest [https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/rights-groups-demand-israel-stop-arming-neo-nazis-in-the-ukraine-1.6248727] over Israel’s arming of the neo-Nazi paramilitary Azov Battalion in the Ukraine. Zionism and its allies are uniting in their opposition to human rights, Islam and a United Nations that looks to replacing assertive nationalism with a more humanistic, global rule of law, based on justice and human rights.
Resisting Zionism is essential in combatting those who would condemn humanity to global civil war. Bannon told Haaretz [https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-steve-bannon-tells-haaretz-why-he-can-t-be-anti-semitic-1.6316437]: “We in our time are heirs to the same challenge Charles Martel faced when he blocked the Muslims from conquering Europe in the year 732 at the Battle of Tours. The challenge has since changed form, and may now appear in the guise of mass immigration, but the essential conflict has not disappeared, and we cannot afford to let our guard down.”
We certainly must be on our guard – but against the true danger. Racism is on the rise and the hard-won provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention are at extreme risk. Resist the Crusaders before they come for us!
In 2005 this American writer in Jerusalem met Vanunu who told me “Israel is only a democracy it you are a Jew.”
Vanunu also told me that JFK tried to get Israel to open the Dimona to inspections, LBJ sent two senators annually to ‘inspect’ but Israel boarded up the stairwells and elevators so the senators never knew what was going on six floors underground. Nixon stopped the inspections and ever president since has ignored Israel’s nuclear deceptions.
Read more: https://www.amazon.com/Eileen-Fleming/e/B00IZA7460/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
View UNCENSORED “30 minutes with Vanunu”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwdz6dLbfok&t=12s
Many thanks, Eileen, for these informative links.
We must admire Mordechai Vanunu. His steadfast courage, and concern for humanity, in refusing to cave in to callous and brutal treatment is an example to us all. The Israeli state tried to break his spirit – and failed. He deserves our enduring support.
Superb article Lesley. However as we know, trade trumps universal human rights everytime.
A comfort you have to up and leave? Unlike us who will be excavated off by reality. Don’t count on ideals doing that in Israel. Jews lost their faith in ideals, for some reason … The dissipation of the idea of the good so prominent after WW 2 is our death-knell. I think this hell we’re really in, intellectually at the mo’, is the true spirit of our species.
Unfortunately NZ is a vassal of the U.S. Empire, so we support all of the vile war crimes that the Nazi Zionist State of Israel gets up to. We support the Apartheid that is worse than that visited on the black South Africans. We support by inaction the theft of Palestinian land and colonization.We support the racist composition of the Israeli state. We support the race ideology that is identical to the Master race theories of Adolf Hitler.We support the disproportionate response of the Nazi Zionists whereby they kill four hundred Palestinians for every dead Zionist. Even the German Nazis did not exceed that!We show by our inaction that we support Nazi Zionist Israel over the Palestinian people.History will show that NZ abjectly and gutlessly failed to follow a moral compass !!!
Your list is very incomplete and this forum is too small to cover the damage done to the world by Zionism and like tribal dogma.
Having a effective moral compass would be one that guides you no matter what race ofrposition you are in as you seek justice and peace with wider communities.
Zionism has no universal morality nor do its supporter appear to understand that concept.
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