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The Forum > Article Comments > Significant support for Palestinians > Comments

Significant support for Palestinians : Comments

By Stuart Rees, published 3/11/2015

The Israel right or wrong lobby will be preparing their usual polemics about BDS being an anti-Semitic plot to abolish the state of Israel and drive its citizens into the sea.

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The BDS movement is of interest to Australian tax-payers because the Australian is government is actually *funding* Israeli and other organisations involved in human rights abuses in Israel and Palestine. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade own data shows that over the last ten years the Australian government has spent over $1.5 billion (that's BILLION, not million) of Australian tax payer’s money to directly fund Israeli arms companies (compiled here: http://www.endmilitarytieswithisrael.com/military-ties/). These are the same arms companies actively involved in human rights abuses, violence against civilians and other breaches of international law in Israel and Palestine. #ElbitSystems has received the bulk of this Australian tax-payers’ money. #ElbitSystem’s drones were used extensively by the Israeli military in their 2014 assault on Gaza, in which over 2000 people, including over 500 Palestinian children, were killed. #ElbitSystems also profits as the key supplier of electronic surveillance equipment for the illegal Israeli separation wall built throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories — a wall which the International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 is illegal under international law.

This shows a clear double standard in favor of Israel compared to its neighbours. Australia maintains a wide range of sanctions on countries in Israel’s region, with sanctions on states and groups in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, and Libya (see the official DFAT sanctions pages http://dfat.gov.au/international-relations/security/sanctions/sanctions-regimes/Pages/sanctions-regimes.aspx and http://dfat.gov.au/international-relations/security/sanctions/Pages/consolidated-list.aspx)

There is however one country in the region with a terrible human rights record which is conspicuously absent from Australian sanctions.

Israel.

Instead Australia is actually using their tax-payers money to fund Israeli arms companies that are actively involved in violence against civilians and human rights abuses.

If Australia is placing sanctions against Arab and other Middle East violence, why is it not placing sanctions against Israeli violence?

Australia's failure to adopt a sensible, balanced foreign policy towards Israel and its neighbours is why the civil-society lead BDS campaign is so important in Australia. And why the campaign is growing.
Posted by Paul Duffill, Wednesday, 4 November 2015 1:51:33 PM
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Israel is a serial war criminal, and Australia an habitue of the extreme right, militaristic fringe of world political opinion, on this as on all other key global issues of our time - treatment of asylum seekers, relations with Indigenous people, kneejerk recourse to force at the behest of Washington, vanishing civil liberties, heedlessness of human-induced climate change.
In all of this, Australians are very poorly represented. There is a yawning chasm between political and published opinion, on the one hand, and public opinion on the other. When asked, Australians invariably express more sympathy with Palestinian perspectives on essential issues in the conflict, than Israeli.
That is why there is so much noise of rage and hatred from the pro-Israel lobby, to bamboozle us into overlooking the real issues. Good on Stuart Rees for telling it like it is. In the sentient world beyond our shores, more and more people are waking up. It's time we did too.
Posted by Jake Lynch, Wednesday, 4 November 2015 2:12:30 PM
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If you ever wanted to see how the education system has dumbed down so many just read Jakes post.
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 4 November 2015 4:39:57 PM
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Thank you Paul Duffill for informing us that the Australian government is actually doing something smart by buying weaponry from the Israelis. One thing the Arabs all agree upon, is that Israeli weaponry works very well. Let us hope that the next submarine contract goes to the Israelis, because us taxpayers can then be absolutely assured that the damned things will work.

And of course Australia will not sell Australian weaponry to Muslims nations. That would be like Australia selling arms to North Korea or Al Qaida.

Human rights is a load of crap. Human Rights are just a left wing wish list that nobody I know ever voted to sanctify. Human Rights conflict with each other. Human rights never defend ordinary people. The main purpose of Human rights is to ensure the safety of criminals, terrorists, illegal immigrants, and homosexuals. Freedom of Speech is supposed to be a human right, but the entire human rights lobby in Australia went missing in action when journalist Andrew Bolt got hauled before the Inquisition. Conclusion? People like yourself only rave on about Human rights only when you can get some mileage out of it. When human rights get in the way of your western hating ideology, you suddenly get a case of acute myopia.

And thank you for mentioning how Israel is violating international law. Although if you have a UN organisation that includes members such as Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Cuba, I would not give much respect to any UN laws. And if you think that the law should be upheld, the next time the stupid Greenies break Australian law and international law, I hope you will be just as damning upon their behaviour as you are on the Israelis.

Probably the main reason why I support Israel is because people like yourself and your friend Jake Lynch hate ordinary Australians like me. People like yourself never tire of slandering my people, my country, my civilisation, or showing your contempt for us. So naturally I feel nothing but solidarity with any other people that you and your friend Lynch despise.
Posted by LEGO, Wednesday, 4 November 2015 6:06:25 PM
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Dear LEGO,

You said;

“People like yourself never tire of slandering my people, my country, my civilisation, or showing your contempt for us.”

I'm wondering if you would care to enlighten us about who your people are. I have a reasonably broad range of friends, some of them to the right of politics plus a very broad range of acquaintances some of those I would class as very far right including some of my relatives. None of them even come close to your kind of people. I have probably moved close to 30 times in my life, lived in every state in Australia and quite a few other countries and not once would I have knowingly met a person like yourself.

You sir and your kind are thankfully such a very tiny minority in our country that we are able to tolerate your views without too much risk to this great multicultural nation.

You talk of civilisation but ignore what it takes to be civilised by denigrating one of its fundamental pillars – human rights.

I repeat the question, who are your people?
Posted by SteeleRedux, Wednesday, 4 November 2015 6:53:15 PM
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"My people", Steelredux, are the British descended Australian Protestant people, and the people from any other race, religion or culture who have substantially integrated into my people's culture. Speaking more broadly, on an international scale, "my people" are the white European people, who I am proud to say, have led the world for 500 years, invented almost everything, and who's free market, democratic culture has set the standard for what are prosperous and free societies. Those who substantially emulated us did very well, and are even beating us. Those who rejected our ways went backwards into the future. But now these failed cultures and religions are jumping onto boats and coming to live with us, so that we can keep them, whether we want them to or not.

"Human rights" was an invention of American slave owners who obviously did not think that they should apply to African slaves. Americans think that ordinary citizens owning Glock's is a human right. Muslims have their own "human rights" which are somewhat different to yours. "Human rights" are an invention of the lefties in the UN, and they are fundamentally a left wing wish list. The custodians of these so called human rights include Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Libya.

Like all fundamentalist ideologies, human rights conflict with each other. They can be "interpreted" to mean almost anything that a left wing judge wants them to mean. You can not say that people have a right to elect a government which defines and creates their own laws, and then say that human rights trumps those laws. Canada was stupid enough to give their judges the right to trump their own parliament with human rights, and the result was that Canada lost the "human right" of freedom of speech. My parliament is elected by my people. Nobody asked me to vote on what is a human right. Human rights are an imposition by ruling elites on people who never got to vote on what they should be.
Posted by LEGO, Thursday, 5 November 2015 3:24:51 AM
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