The nazis/Devils diciples didn't win either even with massive force or the most evil designs or propaganda!

Time for a reality check and a decision to try something else, given doing what you've always done, or more of it, only ever gets you what you've always got!

Surely this is too high a price just to keep a few incorrigible old farts in power!?
Rhrosty.

Well, with the goodwill of many men behind the scenes nothing is impossible with God.......

Now Israel's self-defence "(entitles) them to kill any Palestinians or anyone who looks like an Arab". Could they not be acting against people who are stabbing them and running them down on the footpath? Does it matter what murderers look like?

Why has "the Australian media and politicians given so much unconditional support to Israel over so many years"? Well, Israel IS the only democracy in the area, and the only bulwark in the Middle East against Islam, defending itself against Hamas and acts of "random violence" by Palestinians, as admitted by this anti-Semite. Which side does this joker reckon Australia has more in common with? Are we really going to go along with Palestinian terrorism when we are supposed to be at war with Islam elsewhere? And this is what it is all about: the world versus Islam, not where some Palestinians want to build huts.

Certainly not because some 'journalist' called Gideon Levy ridiculously calls Israel a "military dictatorship" and "one of the most brutal regimes in existence today", just because it defends itself against continual attacks from Palestinians and others who deny it historical right to existence.

And, not because of the Stuart Rees's distortion of what the Isreali PM actually said about the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini's role in Nazi genocide of Jews.

Every time Palestinians make attacks on Israel, the anti-Semite, anti-Israel mad dogs come out barking in support of the attackers.

Very lopsided story as usual defending the BDS. Israel can't be that bad of a dictatorship when an Israeli newspaper prints anti Israeli stories.

Rhosty, "sooner or later it gets down to blowing their heads off" when you have an enemy that has not changed its rhetoric in 1,400 years you give up on attempting to talk to them & defend yourself against monstrous evil.

sophies choice, too true, WW3 is rapidly approaching.

ttbn, spot on as usual.

MAREELORAINE, the left & islam are "United in Hate" http://www.wnd.com/2009/03/90831/

Forget BDS, Iran has been given the Bomb by the O. The middle East is going to be a giant ashtray (glazed) in a few years.

Thank you Stuart for supporting Israel.

Though there is a grain of truth in them, the facts that you present about the Palestinian innocence and Israel's brutal conduct are exaggerated half-truths.

While Palestinians do suffer, they have always been suffering, especially under their own regime and RELATIVELY, the best thing which ever happened to them was the Israeli occupation.

But never mind, if you can help Israel to save itself from the burden of holding onto those cursed territories that it took in 1967, which corrupt its society and ruin it from within, then you have my support.

Reading Mr Rees' contribution was an odd experience.

I couldn't determine if his is a work of fiction or non-fiction. After all his essay is littered with BDS misrepresentations that even Israel-basher Noam Chomsky has unmasked.

And right at the end of his piece it was all made clear, when Mr Rees writes: "[the BDS] shows a non-violent way to bring a decades long occupation to an end so that Palestinians ... build a future characterized by the values ....of human rights".

How funny is that? 'Arabs (or to use the marketing term 'Palestinians") and a 'society based on human rights' in the same sentence.

I haven't had such a good laugh in a while.

After all, there are 58 Muslim states and not a single exemplar of human rights amongst them.

Professor,
If you wrote an opinion piece as biased against Palestinians as your piece is against Israel, you would be in fear of your life. Such is the nature of the people for whom you have so much sympathy.
I am an atheist without any connection to Jews but am angry that a person who can put out such biased bile is funded by the taxpayer to put you poison into the minds of undergraduates.

So Rees is a vile old left wing poseur who supports Palestinian terrorism. We knew that. Nothing new to see here, move on, please.

The reason why Australians don't care about "Palestinians", Mr Reece, is because Palestinians" are Arabs and Muslims, and Australians as a rule don't like Arabs or Muslims. We also know that the only thing that the Arabs Muslims want is the total destruction of Israel, something which you and your tertiary education can't even figure out. That being the case, the Israelis should do whatever they need to do to defend themselves from their enemies.

I don't know why the Israelis just don't do to the "Palestinians" what the Arabs and Muslims have been doing to the Jews and the Christians in the Middle East for the last 1400 years. Ethnically cleanse them. Drive them back into "Muslim" countries. Arab Muslims crying about the ethnic cleansing of Arab Muslims is just like Nazis complaining about the ethnic cleansing of Nazis. But the Israelis are just too humanitarian for their own good.

And Arab Muslim countries are becoming unfit to live in anyway, mainly because they are full of Arab Muslims. So I suppose the Palestinians will have to head to Europe where the Eurotrash who have your overly humanitarian attitudes towards the people who hate them are starting to feel like Christian Scientists with appendicitis. With Europe filling up with Muslims, it will only be a matter of time before the Eurotrash start asking for asylum in Israel to get away from the Muslims.

So, don't keep upsetting the Israelis, Reece, you might need them when Sharia Law comes to your suburb. Think that won't happen? The Eurotrash used to laugh about that forty years ago, they are not laughing anymore,

Ethnic Cleansing is a War Crime LEGO.

An excellent essay that gives Australians a non-violent way of supporting the Palestinians' struggle against a violent colonial regime.

Thank you Professor Rees. Please keep up your courageous work and ignore the haters.

Dear Stuart,

Thank you for the article, there is not much I don't agree with.

Please don't pay too much heed to the rabid pack. With a very few exceptions of posters like Yuyutsu most here do not have a dog this fight rather it is only their brand of politics that forces them to paint the occupiers as the victims. This is what makes them so reprehensible, they do it purely out of a far right ideology which most rational, thinking people recognise as base and racist.

We used sanctions against the South African regime. They do work and can drive change. Our foreign minister described those growing numbers of us supporting BDS as anti-Semitic. To me this was defamatory and unworthy of a person in that position. Hopefully Turnbull's ascent will temper her bombast and allow a more realistic view of the situation in Israel and Palestine.

To Mikk.

Only if you lose.

If ethnic cleansing is a war crime, then the entire Islamic world, including Mohammad himself, are war criminals. Islam spread from Arabia throughout the world entirely by force. It is no accident that the number of people from different religions who reside within the Ummah are reducing year by year. Islam is a religion which does not believe in your precious multiculturalism or cultural diversity. You either convert to Islam or you die. Or, if they choose not to kill you, they will make your life miserable until you do convert. How a supposedly humanitarian person like yourself can support such an Nazi ideology is beyond me.

The Jews have been driven out of the entire Middle East except for Israel. I see nothing wrong with the Jews doing to the Muslims, what the Muslims have been doing to the Jews (and everybody else) for 1400 years. The Arab Muslims can have the entire resource rich Middle East and they an stuff it up and make it unliveable as much as they choose. The Jews can have Israel, which is only a tiny country with no resources except the intelligence of it's people, and it can show the stupid Arabs what they could do if they had brains instead of a backward religion.

Multiculturalism is just like Socialism, how many times does it need to fail before "intelligent" people like yourself can flash on that? How many dysfunctional and violence prone multicultural countries have had to divide into two or more countries to get internal peace, before you realise that only one culture can run a country? Societies facing civil wars are those where two or more cultures have diametrically opposed value systems, and the minority culture is growing stronger through immigration or birth rate differentials. That sad fact is as immutable as the Law of Gravity.

The difference between "right wingers" and "left wingers" is that "right wingers" deal with brutal reality, while lefties live in a dream world where the world can be saved if everybody holds hands and sings "Kumbaya."

McCackie, Yuyutsu, Jonathan J. Ariel, Old Man, calwest, LEGO, well said, although calwest, i think communists should be reminded that they are 100% evil as often as possible.

mikk, i hear where you are coming from but not if you are cleansing your nation of criminals who are 100% evil.

INsanity check, 6 to 3 so far, you lose to an absolute majority.

Steele Redux, national socialism is left wing, just not as far left wing as international socialists like you. christian conservative centrists are in the middle, libertarians & anarchists are on the right. are we awake now? do you understand that your brand of evil is worse than the Nazis?

LEGO, i hear where you are coming from but leftists are not foolish, they want to destroy Australia quite deliberately. They will not stop committing sabotage until the capitalist patriarchy has been smashed, if that means your grand daughter gets raped by migrants from a primitive culture, then collateral damage is the price these feminists are willing for you & your grand daughter to pay.

http://capitalismmagazine.com/2005/01/susan-sontag-not-so-judicious/

http://capitalismmagazine.com/2015/03/socialism-is-based-on-a-philosophy-of-death/

I, personally, care little about Israelis and jews, except for the fact that their enemies are the enemies of all our basic freedoms.

The only ones to blame for the situation of the palestinians are the palestinians and Muslims. They use this issue to gain support. They like nothing better than a dead Muslim child or a weeping mother -- but only if caused by jews, or heartless non-Muslims. Dead Muslim children and crying women are no problem if done by other Muslims.

Its not just Muslims! If one were to consider only UN resolutions, one would think only Israel is evil!

There is no solution to this problem. It is physics -- two different objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and palestinians will not live in peace jews. Or as Golda said "there will only be peace when the palestinians love their children more than they hate jews. Don't hold your breath.

What is worst to jew-haters and/or Palestinian-lovers (like Mr. Rees) is that Israel will do what it has to do to survive, and in doing so it will prosper. Israeli leaders, unlike our own, give priority to their people. While the Palestinians and Arabs sink into an ever deepening pit of hate, violence and dispair, Israelis try to live normal lives.

Even if the BDS movement grows (and it is) and becomes 100%effective, it will make little difference because Israel will do what it has to survive.

On a more theological basis, is this not exactly what is predicted in the Bible? In the "last days" the nations (gentiles) will turn against Israel as God gathers his people back into Israel and there will be a war unlike any other. Has anybody noticed how many jews are returning to Israel because of the raising anti-semitism? This is mainly due to Muslim immigration (they come and bring their hate for the jews with them), traditional jew-hating (left and right) and yes, even BDS-type movements.

Isn't it great that Muslims and Mr. Rees are working hard to see a Christian fundamentalist scenario come true!

Lego, pleasssseee stop applying the same moral standards to Muslims and lefties that are required of jews and western countries. You should understand that killing, expelling people, violence, plunder, rape and discrimination are only wrong for some -- for others these are part of their culture, traditions and theology and should be respected as such. I hope you will be more mindful of the sensibilities of the culturally disadvantaged now that this has been brought to your attention.

Oh yes, by the way, Kumbayah is a great of music and should not be used in a derogatory context! Remember, it is the thought that counts -- a group of people singing kumbayah over a pile of dead bodies proves that those people really want peace and cooperation, so we shouldn't let a minor detail like bloody corpses distract from the important message of love. I hope you can understand this simple concept.

You have been warned.

jay Kactuz (too many jays here!)

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.

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.

If you ever wanted to see how the education system has dumbed down so many just read Jakes post.

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.

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?

"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.

Hi Paul Duffil,

You may need to add a clause to your statement:

"There is however one country in the region of Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, with a terrible human rights record which is conspicuously absent from Australian sanctions."

Perhaps more than one :)

As I understand it, Israel holds elections, and has a parliament, the Knesset, in which Arab Israelis are entitled to sit if elected in the usual way. Christian and Muslim-Arab children study equally at Israeli schools. Arab students attend universities.
In Israel, many signs are in both Hebrew and Arabic, isn't that so ? Arabic-language radio and TV station flourish.

In Israel, Arabs do NOT have to pay a special tax, such as Muslim countries may charge for dhimmis. Israel does not support slavery, which may still exist in Muslim countries, such as Mauretania.

And perhaps in Saudi Arabia: in her 'Slavery in the Twentieth Century', Suzanne Miers writes (p. 349):

" .... in August [1962], a younger son of Ibn Saud, Talal, an admirer of Nasser, and an advocate of constitutional government, announced he was freeing his thirty two slaves and fifty concubines.... "

Was he the only one to do so ? Anybody else since ?

As for Turkey, it was illegal until recently for Kurds to speak Kurdish or print anything in Kurdish. Perhaps those days will return now, Paul.

And as for Syria ....

But you may wish to ignore all those inconveniences :)

Good luck !

Joe

Just a small correction if I may, Joe:

Israel DOES support slavery, in the form of conscription. However, Arabs/Muslims are exempt, so they are treated even better than Jews!

Hi Yuyutsu,

I suppose it depends on how you define 'slavery': the usual definition includes a labour or service component, with no or little pay. I think Israeli conscripts get paid. They can also vote, but that may not count since Mauretanian slaves have also had the vote since way back, about 2007.

If we stretch that definition a little, many non-working women in unhappy marriages also could be defined as 'slaves'. And I wonder who that might include, in Australian society ? Women required to stay at home, unless accompanied by a male relative, whose human rights are severely restricted, and whose main task is to provide male children for their master, who may have more than one such 'wife'.

Good heavens, are there such people in Australia ?! Surely not people with standard Australian values ?!

Joe

Dear Joe,

Israeli conscripts receive pocket money (currently 540-1076 NIS/month, which are about A$195-388, depending whether they are in combat roles), which is enough to buy sweets and soft-drinks at the canteen and for other sundry expenses such as replacing their underwear and socks (the army provides only once on the first day of service, 3 sets of underwear, 5 pairs of socks and one towel), as well as for refunding the army for losing/damaging/being-stolen military equipment.

Though this is irrelevant because conscripts are not there for the money: they could be millionaires already with no need for that money, yet no sum of money can buy their freedom or save them from danger.

Similarly, the women you describe who are locked at home by abusive husbands could be receiving lots of gold and diamond jewellery, but this doesn't change their status one iota.

As the BDS movement targets not just Israeli organisations, but Jewish organizations as well, their claim not to be bigots and racists is hollow.

Secondly the same left whinge loonies that were silent as Russia occupied and oppressed Eastern Europe, China occupied Tibet, and ISIS occupies and terrorizes Syria, are focusing on only Israel and ignoring the atrocities committed by the Palestinians.

Sorry but BDS is about as racist as it gets.

Anything bad that happens is never the fault of the Muslims

Even their members who shoot and stab and take hostages like the
Lindt coffee shop attack are all doing it because we don't make him feel
Welcome. Notice it is not the fault of their tribal cult lime filling their heads
With hate and lies.

in the middle of all the wars and hatred going on throughout the world.
Who are always right in the middle of the trouble, the Muslims.
But notice again, it is never their fault, it is because people don't
Understand them, and persecute the poor darlings.

Israel occupied the so called Palestian Territories as a buffer zone from Arab attack,
After they were attacked by 3 or 4 Arab States when the British pulled out of Palestine which they had occupied at the end of World War Two, because the Arabs had collaborated with Hitler.
It was called the 6day war. Israel beat back those 4 Attacking Arab states and occupied
The territory in a buffer zone around Israel.
The Arabs never mention their attack on Israel or that they got beaten, big time.
They only ever blame Israel for occupying the territory.

Lies,lies and more lies from the Arabs.

Gideon Levy is drawing a long bow describing Israel as a military dictatorship and one of the most brutal regimes in existence today, The 57 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation surely put it in the shade for brutal, dictatorial rule.

However, what’s in Israel to make it worth any sacrifices to preserve it? If the alternative was mass extermination then of course it should be defended against its neighbours and its own lunatic element.

But we had a racial-supremacist state in constant conflict for decades which finally – as a result in part of BDS campaigns – ceased to exist and its inhabitants lived on. This was the late unlamented Boer Republic of South Africa with its ethnically chosen Übermenschen and Untermenschen. Boer South Africa, like racist Israel, was a standing danger to drag the rest of us into its endless wars to protect its racial supremacism from its neighbours such as South West Africa. What an excellent riddance when it lost its “right to exist”. But if the world was rid of Israel, would the Jews be without a homeland?

Have a look at the alphabetical list of national flags at http://flagpedia.net/index . How many of these are national homelands with nationality shared by Jews living as individuals in full equality with everyone else? Like Australia. Not as born overlords, not as born submen. How embarrassing it must be for non-racist Jews belonging to all these homelands to hear repeatedly, from racists pretending to represent them, that they need part of Palestine as their homeland and racially defined nationality. How humiliating for true Palestinians, in whose land this borderless expanding obscenity has been planted, to be treated as “cockroaches”. How foolish of the people of the nations in which Jewishness is not an issue to let their own countries be dragooned into accepting and defending someone’s racist and troublesome “homeland”.