Imagine that we lived in a country that stood up for international law
Tag: Australia’s Shame
This letter is the immediate reaction of distinguished Australians, who hope many more will express their outrage that the State of Israel continues to ignore the United Nations, breach its charter and attack its personnel.
It is time the Australian Government stood up to Israel to demand a halt to all military violence and offered its full support to the United Nations and the Office of the Secretary General.
Renegotiate Trade Agreements
Australia must push to renegotiate trade agreements that lock in neoliberal principles. By removing provisions like ISDS clauses, Australia can regain control over its economic policies and introduce reforms that help its citizens rather than multinational corporations.
Challenge Military Spending
Australians can call for a reduction in defence spending, especially in areas that directly help the U.S. military-industrial complex. By reallocating these funds to healthcare, education, and social services, the government can begin to address the needs of its citizens instead of prioritizing foreign military
Since the onset of the Gaza War, many Australians have urged the Albanese Government to speak up in condemning the Netanyahu regime’s constant breaches of international law and to act urgently to protect innocent civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Albanese Government has consistently ignored advice about the humanitarian disaster in Gaza
In the face of Israel’s intransigence the only way to secure Israel’s compliance with international law is the application of political and economic sanctions along the lines of those imposed upon South Africa which led to the deconstruction of that apartheid State.
Certainly Penny Wong is correct to say, as she did, that “We have been consistent in Israel having a right to self-defence” but as Israel has been found to be an occupier at all relevant times it is under particular international law duties to those under its occupation.
Government in damage control
The Albanese government was forced to employ new language following evidence given by a Defence Department official in a recent Senate Estimates hearing.
Orwell revisited. The Government playing word games with weapons to Israel
Australian parliamentarians are responsible for the wellbeing of Australia’s multicultural society but in the last eight months the majority have failed to understand the reaction of those citizens who have experienced colonisation, occupation and war. These Australians are more likely to identify with oppressed people, so they expect their parliamentarians to articulate commitment to international humanitarian law. And of course, as we know many Australians are opposed to militarism as a means to resolve conflict. It is important to recognise those few political representatives who have tried to initiate difficult debate about how Australia should respond when a hitherto trusted ally ignores international law to engage in ethnic cleansing? Australians want to see their representatives and senators engage in informed consideration of complex issues that require sensitivity and courage. Time is running out for many parliamentarians to fulfil their obligations and Australians are watching and waiting for greater responsibility .
Source: Why has the Australian Parliament failed to debate the tragedy of Gaza? – Pearls and Irritations
Yesterday, the Australian Senate voted 56-12 to condemn the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, because it allegedly “opposes Israel’s right to exist, and is frequently used by those who seek to intimidate Jewish Australians via acts of antisemitism”. And yet there was no similar motion condemning (or even adequately acknowledging) the ongoing slaughter that stands in opposition to Palestine’s right to exist. If your suss-O-meter isn’t firing yet, it is well and truly broken.
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing”. Today, you will not find a clearer example of the phenomenon Macolm X was referring to than Israel’s wholesale slaughter of Gaza and the mesmerising cover provided by truth-discordant imperial apologia we sometimes call “the news”.
Reject it all. It is swallowing your humanity.
Source: Primetime genocide apologists and the annihilation of Gaza – The Shot
The sensitivity of the hidden weapons and components trade to Israel from Australia is clear.
Neither the Defence Department nor the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade responded to questions on this important issue of public accountability.
Source: Secrets of the weapons trade – Pearls and Irritations
That no sanctions have even been proposed by Australia is dumbfounding given the litany of clearly unjustified acts of war inflicted upon the Palestinians. Since October 7 Netanyahu’s ‘inevitable consequences of war’ has meant:
- 203 aid workers killed of whom 95% were Palestinian (this figure is higher than the total number of aid worker fatalities that typically occur annually worldwide)
- More United Nations aid workers have been killed in Gaza than in any other single conflict in the organisation’s 78-year history
- 102 UNWRA aid workers killed and 27 others wounded
- UNRWA’s facilities have been hit over 290 times in the hostilities,
- 374 medical personnel have been killed
- 120 ambulances have been completely destroyed.
- 12 of 35 hospitals are only partially functioning
- 51 of 72 primary medical care facilities are closed.
- Hospitals and other vital medical infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank have been attacked nearly 600 times
- 613 people have died within health facilities (of which seven were in the West Bank) and more than 770 have been injured, (WHO)
- In the West Bank, 286 attacks caused seven deaths and 52 injuries. Some 24 health facilities were affected along with 212 ambulances
- At least 95 journalists have been killed according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in what has been the deadliest period for journalists since the NGO began tracking casualties in 1992.
The above translates to an Israeli army for which the rules of engagement are being ignored at will – an army totally out of control.
Source: Australia’s disgraceful diversion of responsibility over Gaza war crimes – Pearls and Irritations
Australia Shamed by Military Aid to Israel
Mary Kostakidis and Quentin Dempster explore the Australian mainstream media’s blind eyes on the humanitarian catastrophe now unfolding in Gaza.
Source: Accessory to genocide in Gaza – Pearls and Irritations
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is one of several Western leaders who have provided political and material support of the Israeli government and military over the past five months as their bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 30,000 people, but on Monday he became the first to be referred to the International Criminal Court for being an “accessory to genocide.”
Forget Wong’s wobbliness, the persuasive pull of the Genocide Convention, and Canberra’s concerns about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Cash, contracts and jobs drawn from the military industrial complex continue to sneak through the guards.
Netanyahu has turned Gaza from a self-managed Concentration Camp to a Transit Detention Center of displaced “illegals”. The next stage will be searching for a home and nations other than Israel to pay.What will Australia’s role be given it lies on the side of Israel?
The ABC reports “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will keep security control over all Palestinian areas and make reconstruction of Gaza dependent on its demilitarisation.” (Click here to read more) In other words, Israel has invaded Gaza and now own it as far as Benjamin Netanyahu is concerned.
Does Australia’s government treat Jews and Palestinians differently, both in foreign policy and at home? Defunding the UNWRA is the latest example of double standards and puts Australia at further risk of breaching the Genocide Convention. Farah Abdurahman on aid cuts, false allegations and fake chants.
While the UN Secretary General and head of UNRWA calls for an investigation into what Israel alleges are crimes committed by some 12 Gazan UNRWA staff (among the 13,000) in the participation of the October 7th events, the leaders of the Western world including Australia just jump on board of these allegations and immediately cut aid to UNRWA. In so doing I believe they are all involved in yet further collective punishment, Australia among them, on an entrapped, starving, drenched, freezing, ill and injured 2.3 million Palestinians.
Source: Australia’s role in further collective punishment on Gazans – Pearls and Irritations
The action, launched in the Federal Court of Australia, is intended to cast some light on the arms exports permits being granted by the Australian Defence Minister to Israel since the initial Hamas attacks. Only then can we get a better sense of Australia’s complicity in the genocidal apocalypse currently unfolding in Gaza.
Source: Corporate murder: the Australian companies behind Gaza’s destruction – Pearls and Irritations
One might well ask who are the terrorists? In 2006 Hamas won a free and democratic election and immediately after in Trumpian style were “designated terrorists” because Israel demanded it. The election, supervised by Jimmy Carter, had to be somehow declared null and void.
Time and time again Israel crossed into Gaza breaking the truce. They called it “mowing the grass”. During these incursions, civilians women and children were killed many more than on October 7th. Today it’s becoming increasingly clearer Israel actually killed more and more of their own than was reported but they can’t stop the leakage of truth. One only needs to google the number of assassinations carried out by Israel or the number of “mowing the grass” operations to become aware of who the terrorists really are and who holds the moral right of resistance. Israel’s 20-year illegal and inhumane blockade of Gaza might just be the starting point to begin understanding the events in this modern era
The only sustainable ceasefire is one where Hamas – designated a terrorist organisation by Australia – releases all its hostages and lays down its arms, opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham says.
Source: Australia mulls US request to send warship to Red Sea
While we invest in Israel Israel warns its citizens not to come here “Australia is dangerous” .
Documents obtained under FOI reveal Australia’s Future Fund has shares in controversial Israeli defence contractor Elbit Systems, a company associated with the making of cluster-bombs. Michael West and Kim Wingerei report.
Is the Albanese government aiding and abetting the Israeli military and intelligence services in actions in Gaza which are serious violations of international human rights laws?
Source: Legal case set to expose Australia’s facilitation of war crimes – Pearls and Irritations
Nothing seems to have changed in the subsequent century and a half. Humans are still killing other humans because of their differing gods or how they look, or the things they believe, and the children still fall first. We are only more efficient at our killing. Bullets and bombs are more deadly than swords and arrows, and if Israel is attempting genocide, we may not know until it is a fait accompli, but we will be complicit with our billions in military aid. Hezbollah, backed by Iran, may also be prompted to enter the war, and Israel could be more endangered and seek increased American support, maybe even troops. What then? Will the American president not call for a cease fire? When will it be too late? Or is it already?
There are parents on both sides of the conflict who already have an answer to that last question.
Source: The Second Casualty – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Many Australians will be ashamed that our nation has failed to speak and vote unequivocally at the United Nations during this crisis. As a nation we cannot continue to pretend that Israel has “a right to defend itself” while Palestine has no such right and is being systematically destroyed.
From the moment the Liberals lost Aston in a by-election, Peter Dutton had to find a way to keep his job. Why not try and ruin Albanese’s simple plan for a better Australia, by doing what every other lazy wrecker has done? Make it all about race.
Source: Dutton has set the country back 50 years – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Australia’s biased friendship towards Israel undermines peace and forsakes justice for Palestinians, serving neither Australian nor Israeli.
“The aspirations of Aboriginal Australians are expressed through a political system designed, first and foremost, for the white majority.”
Source: We have failed the First Nations people – » The Australian Independent Media Network
LNP argue for “More of the Same” Are we even at the forefront of the best of all possible worlds? The LNP say “yes vote No”
White Australians like to think of themselves as an egalitarian and frank people, despising pretentiousness, while basking in a reputation for larrikinism and mateship. But this is all a front, papering over a culture that is deeply racist, excessively masculinist, and incorrigibly populist. Indeed, from its very beginnings, white Australia has been a morally backward society. And there are no signs that this is abating. Its moral backwardness is disgustingly on show in the No campaign against the forthcoming referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Source: White Australia’s moral backwardness – Pearls and Irritations
It hardly speaks to the truth given the Australian ALP Government’s attitude to the current state of Israel. The Albanese government seems blind to the true face of Israel being revealed and this says a lot about us. There is a disjunct between what Australians believe and the government that represents us to the rest of the world. A government that no longer believes in the UN.
For months, Arabic media in the Middle East has been following the mass protests against the Israeli government and its judicial overhaul with great interest. Many Arab political commentators agree that they are witnessing a moment of unprecedented crisis and division in Israel; some believe that the rise of fascism there is an important development, as it puts the state on a path of self-destruction while revealing its true face to the world.
Source: The Arabic media on Israel’s crisis: Don’t interfere with its implosion
The constitution is a profoundly racist document, an expression of White Australia, of settler history, with the concepts of Australia having been “discovered” by Europeans under the fiction of terra nullius. Implicit in it is “the passing of the Aborigines”.
The one issue on which all parties in the Australian colonies agreed in 1901 was White Australia. The Australian Labor Party was zealous on this. The Australian way of dealing with racism was to deny it existed.
Failure to recognize the suffering and marginalization of First Nations people was the core of what anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner, in his important Boyer Lectures for the ABC in 1968, called “the great Australian silence”.
Indian soldiers were invited to the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia in Sydney at 10am on January 1, 1901, but no Aboriginal Australians. The omission may not have been deliberate – perhaps it never occurred to the organizers to ask any.
It is egregious cynicism to argue in 2023 that a positive reference to First Nations people would bring a divisive racist element into the Constitution.
Source: “The… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
Why hasn’t the devastation of almost an entire people been called out for what it is?
Where’s the outrage of what is happening in Jenin, Palestinian Territory? One of Australia’s foremost newspapers had an article today on whether it’s best to drink soy, almond or oat milk. Really? Who could have imagined that in 2023 Israel is allowed to get away with settler-colonialism as they imprison millions of people and subjugate them in such dire conditions while Australia frets about which ‘milk’ to put in their coffee.
Source: Silence and the horror of Jenin – Pearls and Irritations
The approval by Netanyahu’s coalition government of thousands of new colonial settlement units in the Occupied West Bank comes in the midst of a nearly week-long wave of violence that has drawn international condemnation.
Australia’s military leaders need to be held to account for command failures in Afghanistan. It’s no surprise that calls of a cover-up are growing louder, writes defence whistleblower David McBride.
America’s Shame is our Shame The British East India Company was one of the largest if not the largest Colonial Corporate Slave Trader at the time
“This day, the 24th instant, and the day following, at the North Side of the Custom-House, at 11 o’clock, will be sold, a very valuable GANG OF NEGROES, accustomed to the culture of rice; consisting of SIX HUNDRED.”
Marco the French President got it right when he said he was double-crossed. It was all about the money and selling the soul of the nation. The ALP hasn’t changed the direction or in any way deflected the AUKUS scam. They are assisting the rampant profiteering of the Military-Industrial Complex at the expense of the French.
Paul Keating described the AUKUS submarines deal negotiated by the Albanese government as the “worst deal in all history”. Is he right, and if so, just how bad is it?
I am in complete sympathy with Jennifer Bush Pearls and Irritations 5, June 2023 in resigning from the Labor Party because of Prime Minister Albanese’s congratulations to Israel despite its government’s disgraceful treatment of Palestinian people.
Any change to this current racial system we have had in place for 240 years Peter Dutton calls “dangerous”. He’s a real redneck. A Trumpster who treats his slaves with compassion
As we head toward the referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament later this year, it is worth considering the long history of how governments have tried and failed to authentically listen to First Nations people.
Intentional confusion on the part of the fearmongering LNP seems to have gained some traction in Australia as far as the First Nation Peoples are concerned. Australia remains unique and behind the rest of the world in its resistance to what other nations have regarded as common sense for generations.
According to the latest Resolve Strategic poll for Nine media, support for a Yes vote in the upcoming referendum has fallen to 44%. Opposition has climbed eight points to 39%, while 18% are undecided.
Only 40K ?
Moe Turaga never expected to end up enslaved in a rural Australian town when he left Fiji as a teenage boy to earn a living for his family.
Source: More than 40,000 modern slaves trapped in Australia – Michael West
“Sometimes we just need to take time out, sometimes our souls are hurting, and so it is for me,” Grant said, as tears welled in his eyes. “I’m not walking away for a while because of racism – we get that far too often. I’m not walking away because of social media hatred. I need a break from the media. I feel like I’m part of the problem. And I need to ask myself how or if we can do it better.”
Source: Stan Grant farewells ABC’s Q+A, delivers powerful speech
Why truth-telling matters
Courts and policymakers are still making decisions about the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples without full knowledge of Indigenous histories and how they continue to affect people today. In our forthcoming book, I argue that even Australia’s highest court has presented a misleading, “whitewashed” view of the history of Indigenous belonging since 1788.
Australian foreign minister Penny Wong claims she wants peace in the Asia-Pacific. At the same time, she is doubling down on Australia’s role in maintaining the global dominance of US capitalism — and threatening war in the region.
Source: The Australian Government Is Selling War Under the Guise of Peace
Asking Indigenous peoples to simply elect one of their own democratically to sit in an extra chamber advising future government irrespective of what party wins elections. Isn’t a hard task to ask. I think it would be more productive to have more Indigenous advising State Governments via a Treaty in QLD and nationally through the Voice then having none at all in the room which could only make situations worse and a continual revolving door of post generational trauma that persists for another 235 years. Perhaps we could have a civil discussion about what many call Australia Day then, closing the gap, and improving living standards for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Having a voice might also increase the chances of more First Nations people becoming engaged in politics and see aspire to see perhaps a First Nations State Premier or Prime Minister one day?
Source: Voice and Treaty Must Happen Hand in Hand – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Hawke promised to rid us of child poverty but then we have had 20 years plus of the LNP
The insanity of all this defies logic. We can see venal capitalism making obscene individual profits for a tiny handful. We see governments, at the behest of the United States, spending unimaginable millions on weaponry that will make us all that little less secure and we have a generation of our youth, being cast adrift for the sake of what amounts to small change.
Source: Child poverty, $3.5 billion for tanks, and a government that does not care – Pearls and Irritations
Statement issued on 3 February last by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian people. I quote:
“The Bureau firmly believes in supporting an immediate and unconditional end to Israel’s illegal, half-century-old occupation and establishing a two-State solution, with the achievement of the independence and sovereignty of the Palestinian State based on the 1967 lines, and the realisation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including self-determination, and a just solution for the plight of the Palestinian refugees, in line with UN resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements.”
Surely the Australian people are entitled to an explanation as to why in December last year the government voted against an International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Source: Why did Australia oppose an ICJ advisory opinion on Israeli settlements? – Pearls and Irritations
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