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  • Federal politician slams Israeli lies

    It’s the oldest trick in the book: if they look and sound like us, we are more likely to be sympathetic towards them. Anyone putting an alternative view is immediately cast as anti-Semitic. Our media glibly accept the excuses of the Israeli public relations machine and ignore the horrific realities of Israel’s barbaric behaviour in Gaza.

    It’s the same in most Western countries – the groundwork has been laid and the responses of world leaders are predictable. When the Israeli attacks began, right on cue Western leaders regretted the killing of children but in the same breath condemned Palestinians for firing rockets from their walled ghetto into Israel.

    While French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for an immediate ceasefire by both sides, US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called only for Hamas to halt rockets fired from Gaza. They did not call for Israel to halt its bombing.

    There was a lot of handwringing by world leaders but no tough talk when it came to the bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza or the killing of 40 civilians in a United Nations school. We saw the same during the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon.

    It all reminds me of an old story from the days of the Roman Empire. The Emperor Nero was upset that his prized lions were being distressed by Christians who ran away from them in the Colosseum. Nero ordered that at the next circus a Christian was to be buried up to his neck in the sand to make things easier for the lions. When the lions entered the ring, the biggest and meanest saw the hapless condemned, swaggered over and stood astride the Christian’s head, roaring for approval from the crowd. At that moment, the Christian craned his neck and bit off the lion’s testicles. The crowd was shocked. “Fight fair! Fight fair!” they yelled.

    It seems that no matter what injustice Palestinians have suffered in the past 60 years, they should be grateful for the privilege of being able to live under the jackboot of Israeli occupation.

    For three years since daring to democratically elect a government not favoured by Israel or the US, the people of Gaza have been subjected to a starvation blockade. Yet the civilised world has barely raised a note of concern. Is this the standard by which we judge the behaviour of nations? We talk about Darfur and Zimbabwe but say little of the gross abuse of human rights that occurs daily in the illegally occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Our double standards have made a mockery of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention.

    Our failure to condemn the totally disproportionate, not to say illegal, attacks by the Israeli Defence Force has changed the way conflict is regarded around the world. Last August, Russia employed the same tactics in its attack on Georgia as Israel did against Lebanon.

    Neither Russia nor China sought UN Security Council emergency meetings in response to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. What happens in the Middle East today sets the standard for the world. And that applies to weapons as well as tactics.

    Using cluster bombs or phosphorus bombs against civilian targets is perfectly legal if you can believe the Israeli Defence Force.

    Assassinating Hamas leaders during a ceasefire does not constitute a breach. Collective punishments against communities, obstructing medical and humanitarian relief – all part of Israel’s tactics – could now be considered acceptable behaviour in national and international conflict.

    How can we criticise brutal regimes elsewhere in the world when we condone worse atrocities when they are committed by Israel? The Security Council has become a laughing stock. The Secretary-General is a pathetic figure reduced to faint pleas for a ceasefire while UN personnel are murdered on the ground in Gaza. And who will pick up the pieces when the bloodshed has finally stopped? The rest of the world will, of course. Through the world’s contributions to the UN, its largest budget item is the UN Relief and Works Agency. With an annual $700 million budget going to support Palestinian refugees, the biggest component is being spent on Gaza.

    Even before the Israeli bombing and invasion of Gaza, the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur responsible for reporting on conditions in the occupied territories, Richard Falk, was denied entry to Gaza.

    Last month, Falk called for an International Criminal Court investigation to determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.

    To that long list of war crimes and crimes against humanity we can now add the atrocities committed in this recent invasion. But, with its superior public relations forces, Israel can easily deflect concern about its barbaric assault.

    And will the world call Israel’s leaders to account for their crimes? Not likely. Western leaders – including Australia’s – will merely call on Palestinians to fight fair.

    Julia Irwin is Federal MP for the NSW seat of Fowler and a member of the Parliament’s Palestinian Friendship Group.

  • Who Runs America?

    Prime minister Olmert of Israel, who has been forced to stand down because of allegations of corruption, telephoned President Bush to make the latter alter his orders to his Secretary of State to support a mild resolution in the UN Security Council that called for a ceasefire in Gaza. The barely believable transcript of Olmert’s boasting of his success is on public record. He said:

    “I [Olmert] spoke with him [Bush]; I told him: You can’t vote for this proposal. He said: listen, I don’t know, I didn’t see, don’t know what it says. I told him: I know, and you can’t vote for it! He then instructed the secretary of state, and she did not vote for it.”

    There is no other head of government in the entire world who could say such words to the president of the United States. And will Olmert’s successor be able to speak with Bush’s successor in the same way and with a similar result?

    We know the name of the next US president, but we don’t know who the next Israeli prime minister will be. It looks as if it might be a choice between two steel-minded sadists, Tzipi Livni or Binyamin Netanyahu, both dedicated haters of Palestine, Palestinians and Arabs in general. So what might they be able to say to President Obama? Will they be able to pick up the phone and call him to suggest forcefully that he alter the voting intention of the United States of America in the UN Security Council? And what would he do, if they did?

    Given the commitment to Israel of Mr Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, as was obvious in their groveling speeches last year to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, there is no guarantee that they will, either of them, ever utter a word in criticism of Israel.

    There is one thing certain: the US Congress is going to continue its unconditional support for Israel, no matter what war crimes are committed by its disgusting thugs-in-uniform. The Reps need the money, after all, which they get through political action committees which are generously funded by American Jews. And they are scared to political death by the threat that pro-Israel agencies will destroy them politically if they dare say a word against Israel.

    There are very few Representatives of the people of America who would dare challenge Israel, or who might possibly criticize Israel, or who have the courage to condemn atrocities committed by Israel.

    ***

    The worst of all the barbarians who are killing children and their mothers and fathers in Gaza are the Israeli pilots who mercilessly bomb houses occupied by terrified families. And they are staunchly supported by the House of Representatives of the United States of America.

    These pilots, these vile little war-gamers of the skies, these latter-day examples of what Tom Wolfe called “The Right Stuff”, can zoom over towns full of traumatized children and happily heave and hurl their bombs and rockets to kill yet more Palestinian kids without the remotest chance of being shot down. How heroic; how truly gladiatorial. How contemptible. They are blood brothers with the pilots of the Nazis’ Stuka ground attack aircraft of yesteryear, with their terrifying sirens, who bombed columns of fleeing refugees all round Europe.

    But the US House of Representatives rushed to praise Israel, and endorse its invasion and its merciless air strikes, and committed America to a motion “Recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

    ***

    Not many Americans know anything about the hideous barbarity in Gaza, because US cable networks and newspapers rarely carry pictures of disfigured blood-splashed children who have been killed, maimed or orphaned by the Israelis. But here in Europe we have access to some TV channels and newspapers that are very different from the pliant pro-Zion patsies of the major news outlets across the Atlantic.

    And if US television channels carried pictures like the ones we see, there would be such outbursts of horror and indignation that even the US Congress might be forced to condemn the Israeli fascists for their barbarity. But the all-powerful Israel lobby makes sure that little of the sort will appear.

    Who runs America?

    The only honorable members of the House, voting against unconditional support for Israeli killing of Palestinian children, were Democrats Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), Maxine Waters (California), Gwen Moore (Wisconsin), and Nick Rahall (West Virginia), along with Texas Republican Ron Paul. And Mr Kucinich put the whole case for their vote when he said

    “In Gaza, the United Nations gave the Israeli army the coordinates of a UN school, and the school was then hit by Israeli tank fire, killing about 40. The UN put flags on emergency vehicles, coordinating the movements of those vehicles with the Israeli military, and the vehicles came under attack, killing emergency workers. The Israeli army evacuated 100 Palestinians to shelter, and then bombed the shelter, killing 30 people.”

    Blunt stuff – but it cut no ice with the 390 members of the House who voted for Israel to continue its killing.

    The Israelis have killed over a thousand Palestinians, and the UN reports that at least 500 of these deaths were civilians, and that half of these were women and children. One million of Gaza’s 1.5 million people have no electricity, and about 750,000 are without water. They are existing in conditions of appalling squalor and fear, with US-supplied helicopter gunships and F-16s striking at will, and tanks and artillery destroying their houses and killing their children.

    Yet the House votes for Israel. And the President of the United States of America jumps to obey the Israeli prime minister. But will there be any change under Obama and Clinton?

    A year ago Hillary Clinton told the American Israeli Committee that “we stand with Israel because of our shared values and our shared belief in the dignity of men and women and the right to live without fear or oppression.”

    Last June Barack Obama told the American Israeli Committee “Now is the time to be vigilant in facing down every foe, just as we move forward in seeking a future of peace for the children of Israel, and for all children. Now is the time to stand by Israel . . .”

    Will they continue to support Israel, the country that has laid waste a land and murdered over 200 women and children?

    If they do, the question must be asked: Who runs America?

    Brian Cloughley‘s book about the Pakistan army, War, Coups and Terror, has just been published by Pen & Sword Books (UK) and will be published in the US in May by Skyhorse (New York).

  • War of extermination closes in

    The Palestinians are mostly silent; each man working out where he finds himself and what he’s going to do. Fearing for their wounded and fearing for those they’ve left behind, they are silent but unfailingly courteous.

    They try to answer questions. They must be exhausted? “The people of Gaza,” they say (not “we”; they’re too proud for that), “the people of Gaza just wish for an hour’s sleep.” The case you’re accompanying? “I’m here with my nephew. He’s 19. Shrapnel in his head. He was sitting with his friends. He’s a student. Architecture. The helicopter dropped a bomb and seven of the group were killed and six were injured. They found a boy’s hand on a 3rd floor balcony.”

    Later, I see a boy sitting up in bed with a bandage round his head. He has wide brown eyes flecked with green and he frowns a little, as though he was trying to remember something important. In the next bed a 12-year-old also with a bandaged head is not quite conscious yet. He is flushed and fretful.

    The Palestinians say: “This is a war of extermination.” They describe bombs which break into 16 parts, each part splintering into 116 fragments, the white phosphorus which water cannot put out; which seems to die and then flares up again.

    No one I spoke to has any doubt that the Israelis are committing war crimes. According to the medics here, to reports from doctors inside the Gaza Strip and to Palestinian eye-witnesses, more than 95% of the dead and injured are civilians. Many more will probably be found when the siege is lifted and the rubble is cleared. The doctors speak of a disproportionate number of head injuries – specifically of shrapnel lodged in the brain.

    They also speak of the extensive burns of white phosphorus. These injuries are, as they put it, ‘incompatible with life’. They are also receiving large numbers of amputees. This is because the damage done to the bone by explosive bullets is so extensive that the only way the doctors in Gaza can save lives is by amputating.

    One of the nurses said to me that the nurses and paramedics were horrified by what they were seeing. “We deal with cases all the time,” she said. “But what we’re seeing these days we’ve never seen before or imagined.”

    Upstairs a professor of economics, accompanying his brother, sees me staring at my notes and says: “Exaggerate. Whatever you write will not be as bad as the truth.”

    In the silence that followed someone put a mobile in my hand.

    “Look!” On a rubble-strewn street lay the body of a roasted and charred child. Two bones were sticking out where her thighs had been. “The dogs ate her legs,” he explains. For a moment I put a hand over my eyes. The phone goes round the table, each man gravely contemplating the burned child on the screen. Then someone asks: “What will it take to make the Israelis stop?”

    • Ahdaf Soueif is a writer whose novel The Map of Love was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker prize

  • A roof is the new New Year resolution

    That is reprehensible in an affluent society that claims to believe in a fair go. The average rent on a three bedroom dwelling in the Tweed Shire one year ago was $330 a week, higher than equivalent premises in Sydney. Wages, on the other hand, average just under $700 a week compared to Sydney’s almost $1,200. No rental property remains in a real estate agent window for more than a few days. Most never make it at all.

    Despite these facts, local bureaucrats have taken it upon themselves to don inspection torches, clipboards and detailed maps to cleanse the region of illegal tenants. In one case, a woman had moved into the annexe of a caravan she was renting so that she could sublet the bedroom. That is the bedroom in the caravan we are talking about, not a bedroom in the house.

    When a rainstorm delivered her a bout of pneumonia and her daughter turned up at welfare seeking food, the situation came to the attention of authorities who declared the caravan illegal and served notice on the rate-paying landlord who lived in a separate house. The landlord has decided it is easier to sell the house to a refugee from the city than it is to deal with tenants, tenancy laws and the inconvenience of dealing with the great unhoused.

    The bureaucratic logic is sound: allow landlords like that to suck the lifeblood out of those poor souls desperate to shelter in any tumbledown structure and you encourage a culture of exploitation and unhealthy living arrangements. The logic is also flawed. Throw those people onto the streets and you simple expose them to greater exploitation where they end up losing their health and dignity as well.

    With an ongoing economic downturn and increasing flood of refugees from dysfunctional cities the situation will only get worse.

    The solution, of course, is simple. We just need to adopt the housing model that has evolved over five millennia on five different continents and modernise it to take advantage of twenty first century science. Build villages where people of all income levels can cluster together to share those resources that the poorest among us cannot afford to own – swimming pools, for example. That way the cost of building and delivery of community services goes down and the amenity and access goes up.

    The challenge is finding the political will to cut through the red tape and fight off the vested interests that prevent it happening. Recent state government legislation, for example, strips local councils of the right to establish independent building codes that could regulate to encourage such developments and discriminate against profitable but wasteful development that alienates the environment, the poor and squanders resources.

    The irony is that if we don’t, it will happen anyway. It will just happen out of sight, where health inspectors and police do not go and the poor can be exploited terribly and suffer miserably.

    If you have a spare room or a garage, put someone in it now. You will increase your income and their quality of life. Even if your new tenant is somewhat irritating, you will be less lonely, more entertained and happier. After all, there is nothing more rewarding than having someone to bitch about.

  • nationals call for better food labelling

    Leader of the Australian Nationals in the Senate, Barnaby Joyce, has said that the international trade lobby is squashing Australian farmers and small business people through uneven trade practices and poor labelling laws. Discussing the fight to label Australian grown food he noted, “The majors are saying you can’t have branding because it discriminates against imported products.That’s exactly what I want it to do!” He said that he is economically to the left because “people have bastardised the free market to mean anything goes for the major player in town.” He believes that family farmers, small business people and regional citizens are disadvantaged by global trade agreements and multinational agribusiness. “Are we prepared to pull down our strides (on international free trade), while the rest of the world is fully clothed?” he asked.

    From The Land

    Australian family farmers and small businesses are being rolled by forces that have grown powerful in the absence of dissent, Barnaby Joyce believes.

    The self-confessed ‘agrarian socialist’ and leader of the Nationals in the Senate says he is ‘economically to the left because people have bastardised the free market to mean anything goes for the major player in town.’

    “This ultimately leads to small business, whether they are farmers or otherwise, being squashed,” Senator Joyce says.

    “Look at the ridiculous fight we are having trying to get Australian branding onto home-grown fruit and vegetables and foodstuffs.

    “The majors are saying you can’t have branding because it discriminates against imported products.

    “That’s exactly what I want it to do!”

    He applauds moves by the upcoming Obama administration in the United States to implement reciprocity in trade.

    Obama’s approach, as the President-elect puts it: “You put a tariff on your product, I’ll put a tariff on mine,”

    Senator Joyce asks: “Are we prepared to pull down our strides (on international free trade), while the rest of the world is fully clothed?”

  • iran invests in concentrated solar

    According to the Mehr Iran news agency, Iranian energy minister Parviz Fattah said: “The country backs the use of alternative and renewable energy sources. In future alternative energy sources will be greatly developed in the country. The growth of investments in this sphere is expected.”

    The solar radiation hitting the Earth contains around 10,000 times the energy needs of the world’s population. CSP is seen by many as a simpler, cheaper and more efficient way to harness the sun’s energy than other methods such as photovoltaic panels. But it only works in places with clear skies and strong sunshine. As such, large CSP plants of up to 20mw each are already in construction in the sunnier parts of the world.

    Spanish firms, in particular, are moving quickly with CSP: more than 50 solar projects around Spain have been approved for construction by the government and, by 2015, the country will generate more than 2GW of power from CSP, comfortably exceeding current national targets. The companies there are also exporting their technology to Morocco, Algeria and the US.

    At present the Iranian plant is small (just 250KW, probably enough for just over 200 family homes while the sun is shining) but the locally-
    built mirrors join thousands of smaller-scale solar-thermal installations already in place around the country.

    Whether Iran has plans to build bigger solar plants or add photovoltaic panels to those plans is unclear, but an ambitious move in this direction would be a good idea. Not only because the region has a huge resource of sunlight falling onto it, so tapping even a small proportion of that would be a cheap and clean way to provide energy for the country. But, just perhaps, solar plants could also placate those international observers that are suspicious of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s nuclear plans.