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loving israhell to death of the gazan people.....

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.

While the government has been strident in attacking those Green and Independent parliamentarians who dared to voice their concerns about the devastating death toll of Palestinian civilians , the Australian prime minister has continually refused to condemn the indiscriminate retaliatory behaviour of the Israel Defence Force.

 

The Albanese Government has consistently ignored advice about the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.    By Margaret Reynolds

 

Instead, Australian Government ministers responsible for the Genocide Convention have continually avoided confronting their own failures with the Deputy prime minister proudly announcing, “I wouldn’t use that term”. Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, has refused to publicly comment on rulings by the International Court of Justice and Australia’s obligations as a signatory to the convention, even as Israel continues its illegal campaigns.

In responding to the death of Zomi Frankcom and her World Kitchen colleagues, the prime minister and his foreign minister could only manage to tell the prime minister of Israel it was “unacceptable”, when we all know this courageous Australian died because “our trusted friend” Israel, now a rogue state, acts unilaterally outside international law.

In attempting to distract Australians from continuing war crimes in Gaza, the Albanese Government has carefully chosen to deflect with its own brand of messaging, so we are told that this overseas conflict has divided Australia and risked our social cohesion. Indeed, protest marches, university encampments and graffiti attacks were presented as a national emergency, demanding immediate government action. The tragedy of Gaza was set aside by a government prioritising the appointment of an envoy for anti Semitism. How can apparently responsible leaders preside over this charade which attempts to prevent Australians from engaging in real debate about an international humanitarian crisis?

When governments fail to deal with the original cause of criticism, they desperately try to find a fresh crisis to mask their original failure. The devastating loss of life and destruction of Gaza does not rate highly on the Albanese Government’s political agenda. True, there are obligatory calls for a ceasefire. However, it would be hard for Australians to name one standout action or statement that demonstrated this government is proactive in trying to influence our powerful allies to follow international negotiation and law to stop their reliance on militarism.

The Australian Government has failed to make any statement in the parliament recording its regret about the death of 40,000 Palestinians with women and children disproportionately affected. There has been no debate about the deliberate destruction of an entire community – its homes, schools, places of worship and culture. Where is the voice of the Australian Government challenging the failure of its allies to protect United Nations aid workers and journalists with so many killed on duty? The only parliamentary statement the Albanese Government has supported was the one made immediately after the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas when speaker after speaker sanctioned “Israels right to defend itself”.

Since October 2023, the extent and degree to which that right may be used has been widely questioned and criticised by those nations upholding international law and protecting the rights of civilians. But there has been silence from the Australian leadership on these vital questions, so it is reasonable to ask just how regularly professional public servants briefed Federal Cabinet.

Thanks to a recent Freedom of Information request from former Senator Rex Patrick, we now know the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has indeed been advising the Albanese Government of the “catastrophic” crisis in Gaza. Briefings have included reference to the killing of Zomi Frankcom as “outrageous”. As of 13 May, DFAT reported 35,000 civilians killed, 78,000 civilians injured and 1.7 million Palestinians displaced. Regular reports have reminded our leaders of mass graves around hospitals and rising starvation and disease.

We can only presume that Dreyfus and Defence departmental officials have provided similar advice, but the Australian community’s right to know this information has been carefully protected by a government intimidated by both Israel and the United States. It would seem that Federal Cabinet supporters of lucrative trade deals with major international arms manufacturing companies are more protective of these shadowy deals than of the victims, who suffer the consequences of this ruthless war mongering.

Is it possible for the Albanese Government to recant and recognise its many failures to follow its alleged commitment to international law and, of course, that much lauded, but unclear, “rules-based order”? How could we now be persuaded that the prime minister and his ministerial colleagues are sincere in their efforts to demand Israel reach an immediate and permanent ceasefire allowing 100+ Israeli and 9000 Palestinian hostages to return to their families? Can we anticipate a parliamentary statement in October that details the Australian Government’s deep regret that it has been unable to convince its “forever friends” to negotiate and use constructive diplomacy to prevent the carnage of continued warfare? Will this deadly 12-month anniversary be used to promote rehabilitation and rebuilding, or will we yet again be confronted by irresponsible political brinkmanship?

 

https://johnmenadue.com/will-the-albanese-government-now-admit-it-has-consistently-ignored-advice-about-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-gaza/

 

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

jewish thieves.....

Last October, Palestinian grandmother Ayesha Shtayyeh says a man pointed a gun at her head and told her to leave the place she had called home for 50 years.

She told the BBC the armed threat was the culmination of an increasingly violent campaign of harassment and intimidation that began in 2021, after an illegal settler outpost was established close to her home in the occupied West Bank.

The number of these outposts has risen rapidly in recent years, new BBC analysis shows. There are currently at least 196 across the West Bank, and 29 were set up last year - more than in any previous year.

The outposts - which can be farms, clusters of houses, or even groups of caravans - often lack defined boundaries and are illegal under both Israeli and international law.

But the BBC World Service has seen documents showing that organisations with close ties to the Israeli government have provided money and land used to establish new illegal outposts.

The BBC has also analysed open source intelligence to examine their proliferation, and has investigated the settler who Ayesha Shtayyeh says threatened her. 

Experts say outposts are able to seize large swathes of land more rapidly than settlements, and are increasingly linked to violence and harassment towards Palestinian communities.

Official figures for the number of outposts do not exist. But BBC Eye reviewed lists of them and their locations gathered by Israeli anti-settlement watchdogs Peace Now and Kerem Navot - as well as the Palestinian Authority, which runs part of the occupied West Bank.

We analysed hundreds of satellite images to verify that outposts had been constructed at these locations and to confirm the year they were set up. The BBC also checked social media posts, Israeli government publications and news sources to corroborate this and to show that outposts were still in use.

Our analysis suggests almost half (89) of the 196 outposts we verified have been built since 2019.

Some of these are linked to growing violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Earlier this year, the British government sanctioned eight extremist settlers for inciting or perpetrating violence against Palestinians. At least six had established, or are living on, illegal outposts.

A former commander of the Israeli army in the West Bank, Avi Mizrahi, says most settlers are law-abiding Israeli citizens, but he does admit the existence of outposts makes violence more likely.

“Whenever you put outposts illegally in the area, it brings tensions with the Palestinians… living in the same area,” he says.

One of the extremist settlers sanctioned by the UK was Moshe Sharvit - the man Ayesha says threatened her at gunpoint. Both he and the outpost he set up less than 800m (0.5miles) from Ayesha's home, were also sanctioned by the US government in March. His outpost was described as a “base from which he perpetrates violence against Palestinians”.

“He’s made our life hell,” Ayesha says, who must now live with her son in a town close to Nablus.

Outposts lack any official Israeli planning approval - unlike settlements, which are larger, typically urban, Jewish enclaves built throughout the West Bank, legal under Israeli law.

Both are considered illegal under international law, which forbids moving a civilian population into an occupied territory. But many settlers living in the West Bank claim that, as Jews, they have a religious and historical connection to the land.

In July, the UN’s top court, in a landmark opinion, said Israel should stop all new settlement activity and evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Israel rejected the opinion as “fundamentally wrong” and one-sided.

Despite outposts having no legal status, there is little evidence that the Israeli government has been trying to prevent their rapid growth in numbers.

The BBC has seen new evidence showing how two organisations with close ties to the Israeli state have provided money and land used to set up new outposts in the West Bank.

One is the World Zionist Organization (WZO), an international body founded more than a century ago and instrumental in the establishment of the state of Israel. It has a Settlement Division - responsible for managing large areas of the land occupied by Israel since 1967. The division is funded entirely by Israeli public funds and describes itself as an “arm of the Israeli state”.

Contracts obtained by Peace Now, and analysed by the BBC, show the Settlement Division has repeatedly allocated land on which outposts have been built. In the contracts, the WZO forbids the building of any structures and says the land should only be used for grazing or farming - but satellite imagery reveals that, in at least four cases, illegal outposts were built on it.

One of these contracts was signed by Zvi Bar Yosef in 2018. He - like Moshe Sharvit - was sanctioned by the UK and US earlier this year for violence and intimidation against Palestinians.

We contacted the WZO to ask if it was aware that multiple tracts of land it had allocated for grazing and farming were being used for the construction of illegal outposts. It did not respond. We also put questions to Zvi Bar Yosef, but received no reply.

The BBC has also uncovered two documents revealing that another key settler organisation - Amana - loaned hundreds of thousands of shekels to help establish outposts.

In one case, the organisation loaned NIS 1,000,000 ($270,000/£205,000) to a settler to build greenhouses on an outpost considered illegal under Israeli law.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c207j6wy332o

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.