Yesterday Julia Gillard boasted to the "Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange" (sic) assembled in Jerusalem that Australia was "the first to vote in favour of Israel's right to full independent nationhood and its right to live securely within defined borders", in the United Nations in 1947. She also made reference to Israelis living alongside "Arabs" - as though she couldn't bear to utter the word Palestinians.
The problem in all of this lies in the term "defined borders". What borders? The area allocated to Israel under the UN partition plan? The borders they established by military might in the 1948 Nakba? The borders they have controlled since their war of aggression in 1967? It goes on and on, the endless theft of land, the endlessly expanding state.
Since 1993 the PLO, under Arafat, and more recently Hamas have unequivocally supported Israel's right to exist - within its 1967 borders (whereby it occupied more than 78% of Mandated Palestine, leaving the Palestinians, the indigenous population, with the remaining 22%). But peaceful co-existence doesn't suit the Zionist colonial enterprise. It thrives on death and destruction, lies and deceit.
Meanwhile, those parliamentarians insensitive enough to accept a place in this latest all-expenses-paid junket to Israel do so - their salaries continuing to be paid by the Australian taxpayer - while our parliament is sitting! What absolute bloody cheek!
2 comments:
Australia - the greatly democratic country - fails to see the atrocities that fascist, Zionist Israel has committed, and continues to commit.
A government running a country that contains laws that stress fairness and justice, support the Israeli cause.
Oh, the irony.
Well, Jennine, our politicians are well aware of Israel's brutal treatment of the Palestinians. Most of them, however, think that it's not in their interest to be critical. The Zionist lobby here, as elsewhere, is incredibly powerful and well organised. How they sleep at night escapes me.
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