"If pro-Palestinian people aren't happy...and if they want Australians to remain ignorant of the conflict's complexity, let them organise and fund their own trips to the area" and, while they're finding out what's really going on there, let them, like young Australian, Philip Reiss, get shot in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet by trigger happy Israeli troops, or bulldozed to death like young American, Rachel Corrie, or just plain shot dead like others (like Palestinians actually!). The problem for Australians who aren't wined and dined by AIJAC and the Israeli Foreign Ministry is that they not only might not return alive but that our press, flooded by AIJAC propaganda from the pens of Lapkin and Rubenstein, will show bugger all interest in their stories.

Because Palestinians are stateless? In part more because in the past the Great Power era supposedly past but annoyingly persistent Israel was proclaimed such suited the big powers who could assuage their feeling of guilt at Arab expense though proclaiming there was none for the land was inhabited not by settled communities but wandering Bedouins. History of possession at least partial anyway, though many centuries ago and religious sacred land were all used to support the case for a Jewish Home.
Legal or the rule of might?
Israel a narrow land is concerned at its vulnerability and has behaved accordingly seeing any claim as threatening. Faer is a useful tool of politicians.
Israel has not, itself and via the American veto not abided by UN resolutions. And has done nothing to implement past resolutions.
Palestine has indulged in rebellion and attack termed by Sharon and America as Terrorism. Israel has mounted attacks on individuals seen as central to such, not terrorism.
Israel has by purchase and alienation collected Arab land and made a new apartheid.
Meanwhile various groups put their point of view but the Glasgow University in a recently published book Bad News From Israel points out how unbalanced reportage is in the media of the West.
As usual,each side proclaims religious need yet each religion though denying the other expresses a need for kindness honest etc etc.
So is it an argument other than between the bigoted with powers playing their own interest? America in particular but the UK as well see Israel as, certainly in the past, an important capital piece in the game of power politics. All of course point to their own superior morality,need for security and decry the other.
How can sense be made of this outside a court of law yet each uses such legal claims for their own purpose? How can solution be found amongst these people of ‘good will’ who only want their own will? And of course the right to live said to be guaranteed by the charter of human rights.

Strewth picked the same quote that irked me about this defensive piece, that pro-Palestinians should go organise their own trip rather than bleat about AIJAC's guided tour. Frankly if the author had answered some of Mr Mathewsons queries about who and where the participants went and saw, I'd be more impressed. Assuming all critics are pro-Palestinian suggests to me that the writer has been working too long in a restricted space.

Just for the record, the author was unaware of Mr Matheson's article when he wrote this one.
Susan Prior
Editor

Why is the human animal so emotionally responsive to the calls of the leaders who from their funk holes proclaim the justness, necessity, religious imperative and security need, to name just a few, but not forgetting the triggers of patriotism and nationalism?
The media or at least some of it has admitted culpability for the reporting of the Iraq idiocy and postulated, tongue in cheek, that accurate reporting might have prevented the leaders war endeavours, for that is what the war seems to have been. Israel/Palestine and great powers similarly.
Why do enough intelligent humans simply give this mendacity the bum’s rush it deserves?
Why do we read of investigation after investigation that pillories these leaders for lack of honesty, lies, over interest in the perceived national interest, read their own ego?
Until the democratic electorate and others learn to treat the utterances of the great for the bull they are and look to dispute resolution hopefully, against the wishes of the mighty pleading the nation will lose, pushing for international law.
I assume the voyeur interest boosted by the media is so strong that empathy comes only when we and ours are mangled or threatened. Reading Fisk reasserts the fact that much money is spent so we the public can have nice little pictures of death and destruction. Would these idiots film their own family in distress? Probably yes

Anti-Israel worms? Too dumb and lazy? Critics of Israel all anti-Semitic believers in conspiracy theories?

Is this the stuff sensible public discourse is made of?

I'm an Australian who believes I should have the right to criticise any government on the planet. Just as Israelis criticise their government inside Israel, I should have that right outside Israel and inside Australia.

I also believe that countries refusing to recognise Israel should realise their non-recognition is futile. I've been published on this website and in a mainstream newspaper castigating the Iranian president on his verbal attacks on Israel.

But after reading this article, I am confirmed in my initial perception that some persons working in and/or with AIJAC are among worst exemplars of Zionism in the Western World.

My own faith-community gets plenty of bad press and is in desperate need of decent PR. But I hope it never follows what appears to be AIJAC's model of aggressive, winner-takes-all, head-kicking hysteria.

First, the non-specific smears: "anti-Israel worms"; then the generalised spin: "scholars...have easily shown the many holes" [in M&W] "Even Chomsky dismissed it."; then some sleazy innuendo: "blood oaths...the blood of Christian children." My God, what mental contortions did you have to perform, Bren, to produce this kind of nonsense? How soul-destroying. You make a point about not being a Jew. So what? You slander Jews if your point is that the above constitutes a generic 'Jewish' viewpoint (whatever that is). And since when do you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist? But to cut to the chase. You suggest that to say Palestinians are "stateless and occupied" is "black and white analysis." Whatever feat of tortuous mental gymnastics you perform to deny reality, the bottom line is that the majority of Palestinians, whether in exile or under occupation, are stateless. Yep, black and white. And those in the Occupied Territories are just that - occupied. Black and white again. And yes, by any meaningful moral standard, occupying the lands of others is bad. Nothing complicated about it. And because occupation breeds resistance of all kinds, including sometimes acts of terrorism, this should not come as a surprise. Your pretense that the conflict between Palestinians and the state of Israel is "the most complicated of conflicts" doesn't really fool anyone. We're all familiar with colonial-settler land grabs and the crime against humanity that is occupation. And despite the propaganda tactic of blaming the victim, we all know who has the jackboot on his neck. "No easy answer"? Again, the elements of a solution are not not hard. Get out of the Occupied Territories for starters: dead easy. Then, implement the right of return of Palestine's stateless and disenfranchised refugees and dismantle Israel's apartheid legislation. The hardest thing will be for Israelis to rethink Zionism and the anachronism of the Jewish state. You do them no service by aiding and abetting their denial of what needs to be done.

If only the AIJAC were as harmless as Bren Carlill claims..

Did you note the attempt to create that good old emotion - fear - in the line "that would seek to advance the Palestinian cause of a state of their own (with world Islamic caliphate and destruction of Israel being optional extras)."

This is the first time I've come across Mr Carlill, but I've heard Ted Lapkin speak and he sounds like, and has a grasp of facts similar to, Fox News. Not surprising really, as he proudly proclaims that he's a card carrying member of the Republican Party. Some of the comments made publicly by Mr Lapkin, as he is aware, are potentially grounds for civil action by the parties maligned by him.

Thus for him (and by the tone of this article, it's AIJAC policy), to use the umbrella of free speach is not to make rational arguments based on fact, but to engender fear and uncritical acceptance of their objectives by using dog whistle politics.

The fact that the Murdoch press allows Mr Lapkin to publicise his views on things outside of the AIJAC remit says more about the state of Australia today and the Murdoch press than it does anything else.

Also, Let's not forget that at least one member of the US chapter has been involved in spying for Israel against the US government.

Unsavoury is an understatement.

A world Islamic caliphate? Are you serious? And who will be the first education minister? Dr Hanan Ashrawi?

This article has done more damage to AIJAC's credibility than anything I've seen written on their behalf.

Irfan, what credibility did it have before this article?