Topic: aust govt
In a rather pathetic form of timing Kevin Rudd is dominating the lead evening news in Sydney by the pretext of awarding the highest military honour to an undoubtedly brave Australian soldier:
VC award 'stuff of legends': 'I don't see myself as a hero' - National 16 Jan 2009 ... Mr Rudd said Trooper Donaldson's actions "leapt from the page" and was "stuff of legends".
When was the well earned VC ceremony organised? Is it an excuse to avoid the Israeli war crimes underway in Gaza? Why is Rudd silent on the 5,000 injured and dead mostly civillians? Is this the craven calculations of a supremely amoral politician at his worst hiding behind a brave soldier to avoid his policy responsibilities to promote human rights including for relatives of Australian citizens in Palestine?
We condemn Australian PM Kevin Rudd over his silence on the Gaza scandal on the day UN headquarters and food and medical supplies were bombed. We predict Rudd's silence and in effect apologia for criminal elements within the IDF will be condemned in a surprisingly big protest rally in Sydney scheduled this Sunday, and it will be well justified.
Rudd was exposed eloquently earlier today on ABC Radio National by an 85 year old giant of the peace movement in Israel, and former Knesset member as here:
Dissent against Gaza conflict: Uri Avnery
Israeli Journalist and Peace Activist
Uri Avnery has been a Zionist paramilitary but now a dedicated peace activist. At 85 he nailed his own government in Gaza as a "blood stained monster lacking in moral restraint and prepared to committ war crimes", the cheap populism of war until the body bags roll in just like "Vietnam", and the cynical politicians generally. Here is his published opinion recently:
How Israel is Multiplying Hamas by a Thousand Molten Lead in Gaza By URI AVNERY
Kevin Rudd couldn't hold a candle to this old man who has survived at least one murderous attack by a 'settler' nutcase. Or to the UN Secretary General
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Postscript 17 Jan 2009
The Rudd Government have tried to mitigate their craven silence on the obvious war crimes of Israel through targetting of UN facilities by announcing some significant but small compassionate policy decisions on a handful of refugees here in Australia. But it's too little too late for a PM who likes to think of himself as a courageous Bonhoeffer, ie brave against political orthodoxy on matters of high morality:
Arrival of first visa recipients in ALP's asylum regime imminent ... 17 Jan 2009
Additionally Hilary Clinton as prospective Secretary of State in the USA from next Tuesday USA time is reported making an incredulous comment about Hamas renouncing violence:
Hillary Clinton faces a tough test for 'smart power' | The Australian 17 Jan 2009
But there's a red line the incoming Obama administration won't cross.
"I think on Israel you cannot negotiate with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognises Israel and agrees to abide by past agreements," Clinton said. "That is just for me, you know, an absolute. That is the US Government's position, that is the president-elect's position."
and earlier same article:
Clinton is seen as a staunch ally of Israel, particularly since becoming a New York senator, putting behind her, for instance, controversies such as embracing Yasser Arafat's wife Suha in 1999 after the latter had denounced Israel (Clinton later condemned the remarks when she saw an official translation, but the damage was done and it almost derailed her bid for the senate).
Incredulous for these reasons:
1. No sovereign government has ever renounced the option of violence including in self defence.
2. There is a real 'blame the victim' air to the naive comment by H Clinton, given the 5,000 injured with 1000 dead including many hundreds of children, after Isreal's constructive breach of the cease fire with ongoing blockade of essential supplies, then air strike killing 5 Hamas members in early November;
3. The blockade on every side particularly the sea border controlled by Israel but also landside is a form of violence against Gaza with real fatalities. With 45% of children anaemic and therefore prone to severe illness, poverty, lack of medical and other services for a population of 1.5 million people, does kill people every day. The blockade on and off for 30 years but particularly the last 2 years is a form of violence.
4. Then the creeping consquest by the 500K strong Israeli illegal squatter movement, backed by aparthied land laws with no objective written constitution in Israel is another form of violence on Palestinian legal rights.
5. Only this week we learn of the USA shipping 325 shipping containers of ammunition supplies for the IDF. Given 30% of Israeli society are sympathetic the assassin of PM Rabin in 1995, and it is preumably these criminals targetting civilians and UN workers and facilities within the IDF in Gaza, the USA is complicit in arming these "gangsters" to quote Israeli historian Avi Shlaim in today's Sydney Morning Herald, last few paragraphs here:
Bitter pill after the mourning - World - smh.com.au 17 Jan 2009 For all its muscle power and powerful allies, Israel stands diminished in the eyes of the world, writes Paul McGeough. - Sydney Morning Herald Online.
....The Israeli historian Avi Shlaim has a wonderful knack of tracing the arcs of Israel's history to reveal today's reality - all the talk of successive governments about the peace process has been lip service which has conceded nothing on the ground.
Even before the events of this week, when Washington dismissed Olmert as - well, as a liar, and the UN used similar language to dismiss Israel's attempt to blame Hamas for the white phosphorous bombing of the UN's emergency stores of food and medicine in Gaza, Shlaim was in his library, re-evaluating the words of John Troutbeck.
In June 1948, Troutbeck vented to Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary of the day, that the US had been responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders".
"I used to think this judgment was too harsh," Shlaim wrote in The Guardian. "But Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza and the Bush Administration's complicity, have reopened the question."
Paul McGeough is the Herald's Chief Correspondent.
Yet Clinton laughably selectively focuses on Hamas renouncing violence. And what does she say about Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela who also refused to renounce violence in the face of fascist aparthied and systemic human rights abuses by the South African Government? Her comments so far are a biased nonesense. As we write another 6 are reportedly killed in a UN school shelled by the Israeli Defence Force. The covert campaign by Israel to expand Greater Israel while giving lip service to the 2 state solution continues.
