Well, so much for our new government taking
an even-handed position on Israel/Palestine.
Before our politicians even warmed their seats in
the new parliamentary sittings, the Australian Prime
Minister announced that he will lead a parliamentary
motion to honour Israel on 12 March
acknowledging Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence
Day. The Opposition Leader will second
the motion. Then, celebrations will take
place at a reception in the Mural
Hall of Parliament House.
If Palestinians and their supporters had any
hopes of a sympathetic hearing from the new Rudd
government on the multiple human rights abuses being
perpetrated by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories, those hopes
are now well and truly dashed.
This year marks 60 years of Palestinian
dispossession and displacement and a
savage, relentless occupation that is
smothering the lifeblood of the
Palestinians while Israel celebrates its
ill-gotten gains. Palestinians are
starving in Gaza, Palestinians are being sold
out in the West Bank, Palestinians are dying.
Their very existence is under threat. It is as
simple and as awful as that.
Every Australian ought to be asking why our
Prime Minister and the parliament feel so
humiliatingly obligated to Israel that
they must go to these lengths to show their
friendship with a foreign country that
consistently violates international law,
United Nations resolutions and
human rights conventions? If supporting the
Palestinian cause is too much to
ask, then refusing to single Israel out for any kind
of recognition would at least be sensitive to the
Palestinians living here. The Palestinians were
never asked if they would agree to the foreign
imperial division of their Country. Most had their
family homes and lands taken from them by Zionist
forces ruthlessly pushing for a Greater Israel
not intended by the 1947 United Nations Partition
of Palestine. All suffer indescribable pain knowing
that many of their people live a hellish existence
under Israel's occupation. It is on this human wreckage
of Palestinian lives that Israel
celebrates its independence,
honoured so gratuitously by our government.
Such demonstrations of affection are not new.
Our former Prime Minister
John Howard had already fostered this extraordinary
bond when he declared
Australia as Israel's closest friend. Many of his
ministers followed suit and none was more
accommodating than former Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer when he said that
he wore Israel as "a badge of honour" even as
Israel's war planes decimated the Lebanese
landscape in 2006.
True to form, Israel has rewarded its friends
with facile honours. John Howard received two in
one year. He was awarded the Jerusalem Prize
from the World Zionist Organisation and he had
a forest named after him in the Negev
by the Jewish National Fund, which specialises
in acquiring property for "the purpose of settling Jews
on such lands." These lands are the subject
of legal proceedings brought by the now displaced
indigenous Bedouins of the Negev who are being
"moved out" for the exclusive benefit of
Jews worldwide who want to live in Israel.
Although these Bedouins live in what is now
called Israel, 45 of their villages are not
recognised by the Israeli government and have never
received even the most basic amenities.
All this falls hard on the heels of the new
Prime Minister's moving apology
to our own indigenous people and raises many
questions about the sincerity of that momentous
gesture. The similarity between the grievous losses
suffered by both peoples
– the Aborigines and the Palestinians – is not
fanciful. Both peoples have been the hapless
victims of the great white colonial enterprise and in
both cases, it would have succeeded brilliantly,
if these people would have just disappeared.
But it is not so easy to kill off people
and their dreams.
There are some 11 million Palestinians worldwide
whose collective memory is seared with the narrative
of their people who fled in terror during Israel's
1948 purge of Palestine. About two-thirds of the
Palestinian population never saw their homes again.
Many still have the keys to their front doors,
the deeds to their properties and lands, the photos
of happier moments, and the endless familiar
memories of smells and sounds unfaded by time.
Around 7.2 million refugees are languishing
today in refugee camps waiting to return home and
to receive compensation for the calculated decimation
of their society – one that had successfully
developed culturally and economically over centuries,
despite four hundred years under Ottoman rule.
Palestine was not a land without people as Israel's
mythmakers have tried to promote, particularly
through the emotive Hollywood film "Exodus".
Palestine was, in fact, populated by successful
citizen merchants and officials who added an
economically vibrant dimension to the essentially
peasant population who were actively engaged
in working the land. Not only did Palestinians own land,
but even where there was no legal title, the land
was considered as belonging to the Palestinians
through their history of
land use and uninterrupted possession.
All the recent posturings by Israel's supporters,
to show Israel as a first world country in the forefront of
science and technology and the cutting
edge of the arts in order to gain legitimacy with
Western countries, might resonate with our politicians,
but it does not with people who know Israel's
atrocious human rights record. More and more
people are beginning to wake up as intrepid journalists
report a far from rosy picture in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories. Yet, these are still lone
voices in our Australian media and not enough to reach
the wider population. For decades, Israel has
won the battle for the hearts and minds of people,
despite the official reports of every human rights
organisation – from Amnesty International to
Israel's B'Tselem – documenting in graphic detail
Israel's litany of human rights abuses. Most are gathering
dust, but they provide more than enough
evidence to challenge the appropriateness of aligning
ourselves with Israel. And there are stirrings in our churches,
universities, the legal fraternity,
social justice groups and in the consciences of people
generally, to reach out to the Palestinians.
In response, Israel has established the
Peres Centre for Peace in Australia
which is endeavouring to project an image of Israel
as peacemaker. Rather than the usual rounds of dialogue
and conflict resolution, it is being done
on a populist level through sporting activities and
culture. The Centre has already persuaded the
Australian Football League (AFL)
to include a friendly team of Israelis and
Palestinians in their 18-team line up for
this year's AFL International Cup. In this way,
Israel hopes to normalise its image with
the Australian public, and through a handful of players,
show its willingness to work towards peace -
something it has been unwilling to do at
the negotiating table.
However, Israeli tanks and soldiers are still
shelling Gaza, and Israel is further tightening its
siege on this tiny sliver of land with a population
almost at bursting point The recent smashing of
the wall with hundreds of thousands of desperate
Palestinians swarming into Egypt to look for food and
other basic necessities gave the world a glimpse
into the misery of their lives. And, in the West Bank,
Israel is increasing – not decreasing as it
promised to do in the most recent peace negotiations -
the number of checkpoints that totally suffocate the
ordinary daily movement of another
burgeoning population.
The surest sign though of Israel's real intentions,
is its blatant disregard of international law and all
requests to stop its illegal settlement project
that is literally turning thousands of Palestinians
on to the streets – homeless and stateless and forced
to rely on the world's pitiful humanitarian aid that can
never bring them economic or political independence.
As conditions deteriorate for the Palestinians,
and the words "apartheid"
and "ethnic cleansing" begin to enter mainstream
consciousness after being given voice by former
US President Jimmy Carter and
Archbishop Tutu, Israel
is employing new public relations strategies to
secure its legitimacy in the global community.
In Australia, where sport dominates
so much of our cultural life and social interaction,
using sport as a vehicle for peace is
a powerful image. This latest venture by
The Peres Centre - named after one
of the more notorious Zionist architects of
Palestinian ethnic cleansing –
is already bedazzling the AFL administrators with
the idea of people crossing all boundaries
"for the simple love of the game" - a notion that
would never be entertained by a government at war
with an enemy state and one that has been rejected
when political pressure through sports' boycotts
is deemed necessary to stop countries behaving
oppressively. Nowhere else was this so effective
than in South Africa's anti-Apartheid struggle.
There is no excuse for our leaders in politics
and business to buy into this
scam when they know that some 4 million
Palestinians are being denied
justice and basic human rights under Israel's
illegal military occupation,
with no sign of reprieve. If it were not for the
West's craven politicians indecently rushing to join
Israel's circus, Israel would long ago have had
to find a solution to give justice and dignity
back to the Palestinians.
Regrettably, our leaders will continue to
pursue their self-serving policies
until ordinary, decent people force them
to accept that our common humanity
is worth more than the lucrative deals that
bring such enormous profits to
the multinational corporations, and from
which many governments benefit. It
is by no means impossible. Just as people brought
down the Apartheid regime in South Africa,
the people can bring down the ethnically divisive Zionist
regime in Israel as well. This is why the word
"apartheid" so rattles Israel's supporters.
But, we have a long way to go, especially
when governments insist on
continuing their love affairs with Israel.
In the meantime, al-Nakba – the
Palestinian catastrophe of dispossession
and displacement – is being accelerated.
This crime against humanity is what needs to
be acknowledged in our Parliament and not
a motion honouring Israel. The Australian "fair go"
that our Prime Minister so fondly embraces,
has never sounded so hollow or sunk so low.
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