by Wendy Bacon

A new political group with far-right links is campaigning to put the Greens last in the Queensland state election this weekend for ‘promoting terrorism and genocide’. Wendy Bacon investigates the Queensland Jewish Collective and the rise of foreign politics in Australian elections.

Over recent months, the Queensland Jewish Collective (QJC) has funded large billboards and delivered 30,000 leaflets to households in Inner Brisbane. On Thursday, volunteers appeared for the first time on pre-poll booths and announced they would be stationed at booths on election day.

QJC states on its website, “Our goal is to support Queenslanders in making informed decisions when voting for our leaders”. It claims to be a “non-partisan and not left or right-wing” organisation that is committed to promoting freedom while calling out “undemocratic, illogical and exploitative ideologies and policies”.

In fact, QJC is a collection of far right-wing activists with a focus on global politics and conservative nationalist causes.

The QJC’s key message is crude: “Once a party that stood for environmental action, the Greens are now promoting terrorism in the Middle East, genocide of Jews and persecution of minorities elsewhere.”

Even when the Greens explicitly deny these allegations by pointing to policies that state the opposite, the QJC has continued to post a series of highly misleading statements about the Greens and shows no interest in the Greens’ domestic policies in Queensland or any other election. Independents such as David Pocock have also been targeted for their views on Gaza and Israel.

As reported here last month, a right-wing astroturfing group Better Councils was active in NSW local council elections specifically targeting Greens party local candidates. It is fair to assume that the Greens will also come under heavy fire at the Federal Election next year by similar interests. The recent defection of Senator Fatima Payman from the Labor Party – she has announced she is starting her own party – was due to her disaffection with government policy on Gaza.

Meanwhile, The Muslim Vote has gone national. It is contesting two seats in Western Sydney at the coming election. Describing itself as a ‘grassroots political group, Muslim Votes Matter, has come about as a result of the failure of the government and the opposition to address concerns of Australia’s Muslim community over policy towards Israel.

With these forces at play and high concern in the community about the Middle East, there is likely to be a fierce campaign at the Federal Election next year.

The Queensland Jewish Collective has stated on its website that they are not connected to far right campaign group Advance Australia.

Advance Australia has moved on from its campaign to defeat The Voice referendum to a fresh campaign resourced with $1m and 35 staff to diminish the Greens by putting them at the bottom of ballots at next year’s Federal election. Although there are no formal organisational links, the QJC approach mirrors the strategies of Advance Australia.

QJC has partnered with the far right Australian Jewish Association (AJA) for its Queensland State election campaign. AJA President David Adler is on the Advisory Board of Advance. The AJA is opposed to any state for Palestinians. The AJA has boasted of its links to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party.

In July, the Australian Jewish Association held a webinar to promote and introduce to its members the Advance campaign to destroy the Greens. The image used by the AJA to promote its July webinar to promote the Advance campaign is the same one used in one of the QJC billboards.

QJC is focusing its efforts on the seat of Maiwar that has been held by Michael Berkman for the Greens since 2017. In 2020, he won 41% of the primary vote with a huge swing to him of 13.5%. Berkman has always campaigned on a broad set of policies. In 2017, he campaigned on lower cost public transport, free childcare and housing for the homeless.

This year, Berkman is campaigning on cheaper rents, the cost of mortgages and groceries, real climate action, against the privatisation of public land and fully funded public services.

QJC is also campaigning to stop the seat of Moggill from falling to the Greens. This seat was once considered the most conservative seat in Brisbane, but the LNP’s winning margin has been steadily narrowing and in 2020 Labor won 28% of the vote and the Greens 20%. Although the seat is not one of those most favoured to fall to the Greens, it is on the party’s list of ten targeted seats. Its candidate, Andrew Kidd, is a high school teacher and long-term local.

The Queensland Jewish Collective claims to be a grassroots group but, in fact, is a small organisation that is not fully transparent. It registered as a company in July this year and as a third-party campaigning organisation for the Queensland state election in June.

The company has three directors and members. They are Hava Mendelle, who is also authorising its election material, her wife Rosyln Mandelle, and Joshu Turier.

Roslyn Mandelle was born in the United States and migrated to Israel and from there to Australia after she married Hava Mendelle. She is an experienced “strategic communications and stakeholder initiatives” manager who joined the LVCUp Consulting firm in August.

Turier has made a stream of Facebook posts demonstrating that he is an extreme right-wing supporter of Israel and its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He also called the progressive Lord Mayor of Sydney Clover Moore, the “most evil and reprehensible bitch in Australia” for not wanting to take sides in a conflict by lighting the Opera House in Israeli colours in October 2023 when many women had been raped to death” (a claim that has not been supported by evidence).

According to its constitution, the sole object of QJC is to be a “Jewish body to lobby government for changes to laws in order to stop antisemitism.”

The company’s registered office is based at the office of Insolvency Company Accountants on Hilton Avenue, Tewantin, near Noosa Heads.

MWM contacted this office. An accountancy partner who declined to be named said that hundreds of companies are registered at that address, and another ‘tax partner’ deals with the group. He suggested that we contact them through the Jewish Board of Deputies He was surprised that the three directors would use the address in Hilton Avenue Tewantin as their address when it is not.

In fact, the directors all live in Brisbane. (MWM has chosen not to disclose their personal addresses.) MWM attempted to contact the Jewish Board of Deputies, but the message bank was full. We are not suggesting that the Board supports the activities of the QJC.

In June, the QJC launched its activities with what was advertised as the first of its ‘multicultural impact network meetings. Speakers included a speaker from each of the Zionist, pro-Israeli, conservative Iranian Novim Party and the Hindu Council of Australia. An alliance was formed between the QJC, a group called the Hindu Media Association and the Iran Novim Party in Brisbane to campaign in the election. No further Multicultural Impact meetings have been advertised.

On October 21, Hava Mendelle wrote an article for the right-wing online magazine Spectator Australia, which was republished by the Times of Israel, that she was “shocked and disappointed to see the level of support given to pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Australia.”

“I am Jewish. I am Australian. I am Israeli. I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a great many things. But right now, the thing I am the most, is unsafe.”

She accused protesters chanting “End the occupation of Palestine” or “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” of “supporting the killing of Jews. They might condemn Hamas in public, and they might be peaceful (sometimes), but these demonstrators have shifted the attention away from the murder of our children, parents, and grandparents to an argument about land.

From the “River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is not a rally cry for peace, it is a rally cry to wipe Israel off the map.” (In fact, many of those who chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” are supporters of a one-state solution with equal rights for all citizens.)

Mendelle wrote that she did feel support from the Federal government but felt unsafe because her own Greens MP Amy McMahon was supporting pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

In a response to a letter from Mendelle, McMahon wrote, “The Greens and I condemn all forms of violence against civilians, including the attacks perpetrated by Hamas. We believe it is necessary to talk about the causes and context of these events and the need for the occupation of Palestinian territories to end.”

Further, she stated, “The Greens will always support the right to protest peacefully; it is fundamental to our democracy.”

While Mandelle’s sense of Jewish identity is shared by conservative Jews, it is rejected by millions of Jews around the world, including those who have joined the Jewish Council of Australia, the Jewish Voices for Peace and Justice and the Tzedek Collective, an intergenerational leftist anti-Zionist Jewish community and action group based in Sydney.

Tzedek supports the BDS Movement and today was hailing the decision of the Australian government to review its defence contracts with Israel as a victory. It has an active X (Twitter) presence, where it has been tracking and mocking the QJC.

Hava Mendelle declined to be interviewed by MWM – and to her photo being taken for in article for the Australian. However she did appear on a show for  “cultural warriors” on  Spectator TV in February 2024. Spectator TV has a regular show the right wing online channel ADV begun by Alan Jones after he was sacked by Sky TV and which is backed financially by James Packer. 

This followed a series of articles that Mendelle published in Spectator Australia critiquing Wikipedia for its left wing editing bias on international affairs and its posting on the anti- transgender activist and famous author J.K. Rowling.

On October 3, the QJC appeared on the Chris Smith show, another regular show on ADV. The group was represented by Iranian Hesam Orouji and an Israeli Australian Ayelet Rinon. The entire discussion was based on Chris Smith’s assumption that the Greens celebrate extremism. 

Orouji runs a construction company in Brisbane and is an Iranian Australian supporter of the Iran Novin Party and Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah of Iran who was exiled by the Islamic Revolution in 1979. He attended the recent Australian Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Brisbane. He strongly supports Opposition Leader Peter Dutton declaring on Facebook recently that “we need strong leaders and politicians like @PeterDuttonMP during this critical period of history. 

“This is a fight between light and darkness.The ideology of terrorism receives support from the Islamic regime in Australia while the Labor government remains inactive.”  Recently, he reposted  images of the leaders of the United Emirates and Saudi Arabia along with Netanhayu and Prince Pahlavi – “One day we will witness their gathering at a single table.“

Chris Smith framed the interview on the assumption that the Greens support extremists. Orouji then spoke for several minutes during which he accused the Greens of endorsing and supporting terrorist groups including the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp. Ambassador Rinon then spoke about how scared she felt with a banner across the screen ‘get rid of the Greens’.

Orouji’s suggestion that the Greens in any sense endorse or support  the  Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is false as this media release by Senator Jordan-Steele clearly shows. In fact, they have called for the listing of the IRGC as a terrorist group and oppose “unfair trials, egregious executions and continued removal of the rights of women and girls” in Iran and called for the  Australia government to maintain pressure on Iranian authorities to free peaceful protestors who are demanding freedom for their country.

Deputy Greens Leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi said the QLD claims about the Greens being racist “by far-right groups are false and offensive.” 

“The Greens are the only party with a standalone anti-racism portfolio and we stand up against racism in all its forms, here and everywhere. These desperate and deceptive tactics will not stop us from speaking out and strongly opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ” she said. 

A spokesperson for the Queensland Greens said the individuals associated with the QLD had “presented no evidence whatsoever for their outrageous and politically motivated claims.

“In criticising the war crimes of the far-right government of Israel, the Greens stand with Jewish people in Queensland and across the world who do not want to watch a genocide unfold, who want to see the hostages returned and want a ceasefire.”

In recent facebook posts, the QJC seems uncertain of their impact in Brisbane. They wrote last week, “ We are learning and improving as we go, all we can hope for is that we make a dent in this massive systemic toxic culture that has hijacked a perfectly good environmental party.” They did not have volunteers on pre-pols earlier last week. 

It is one thing to claim you are a ‘grassroots’, it’s another to organise people to cover voting booths for entire days. They are also confronting Greens MPs in Brisbane who have been organising regular community events including free breakfasts for years. It may be harder than QJC thought to convince Brisbane voters that these same people are threatening their safety rather than supporting their right to housing and food. 

The QJC campaign is less well resourced and professionally organised than the Better Councils’ Campaign a Labor/Liberal astro-turfing exercise that MWC media recently investigated. While it is not possible to know how successful the Better Councils campaign was, it is likely to have cost the Greens some votes in eastern Sydney where the Greens from two Councillors to one in Woollahra LGA and four to three in Randwick. 

The Greens maintained five councillors in Inner West with Labor maintaining its control over Council on a small number of preferences. Across the state, the Greens won more councillors than ever before, including in Western Sydney.

Both both QJC and Better Councils are part of a wider strategy which is spearheaded by Advance’s promised relentless focus on destroying the Greens at the Federal election. Each campaign was a standalone organisation which wanted to claim independent from Advance. But both have relied on support on explicitly far right organisations including Advance Australia and pro-Israeli companion organisation Never Again is Now. This broader campaigns have strong Islamophobic undertones. 

While QJC claims to be a grassroots movement, the QJC have struggled to build a social media following with their biggest boosts coming from supportive posts by Advance and AJA. But this support is more reflective of wider target audiences around Australia and even the US, than the voters of Inner Brisbane. While these local campaigns may or may not prove to  individually successful in dinting the Greens vote, they are part of a bigger longer term game of growing a far right voting constituency in Australia based on disinformation and fear. This is what is at stake.

https://michaelwest.com.au/far-right-israel-lobby-group-campaigning-hard-against-the-greens-in-queensland/

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Israel’s atrocities for which they are not held accountable, leaves a world feeling powerless to do more than watch and protest. Intervention to cope with a pandemic of despair, requires life enhancing responses to foster peace and revive respect for international humanitarian law.

In Gaza, on the West Bank, in Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere, the world watches death, destruction and famine, those atrocities committed by governments which regard overwhelming violence as the only way to dominate, destroy and govern.

In response to end of time slaughters, people cry. They plead ‘where will this end?’ A nurse who has worked for decades in Palestinian refugee camps, writes, ‘I am feeling so sick. It is unlike me to be despairing. The arms manufacturers have made billions. People are starving in Gaza and Sudan. Palestinians are being burned alive in their tents. A cowardly Australian government refuses to condemn Israel.’

In common with the spread of a pandemic with no cure in sight, her despair is widespread but felt directly by citizens in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Lebanon who experience awful violence, death, loss and grief. In other countries too, even people who regard themselves as not usually interested in politics, express powerlessness at brutalities they find impossible to ignore.

There is no aspirin for despair, no prescriptions easily applied. Ideally, a UN peace force should be sent to end the Israeli sadism underway in northern Gaza, but until that proposal is implemented, other ways must be found to overcome the fatalism that nothing can be done.

The following is not a shopping list of steps to follow, but a chance to learn how others have survived punitive conditions but found space to inspire, in particular in totalitarian states where resistance prompts imprisonment and torture.

In Corrections Colony No. 4 in Gomel, Belarus, the brave dissident for democracy, classical flautist Maria Kalesnikova nears death in solitary confinement. The Belarusian dictatorship aims to erase memory of Maria and refuses to allow her father to visit. To support her father, to not lose sight of Maria, Amnesty International tries to connect. We must not give up. She cannot be lost.

Near death in an Egyptian jail, the courageous, writer blogger Alaa Abd El-Fatah, proclaims that words still pour out of him, ‘I still have a voice even if only a handful would listen.’ The inimitable Indian human rights advocate Arundhati Roy recalls that her jailed friend recommends ‘the political necessity of honestly looking despair in the eye.’

Daily life is peppered with lessons learned by coping with despair in response to loss and powerlessness. Grief occurs in response to the death of loved ones, Indigenous Australians cope with rejection inherent in defeat of the Voice referendum, frustration is experienced by asylum seekers because powerful people do not listen to grievances and seem unable or unwilling to craft solutions.

In response to a government which turns a blind eye to Israeli atrocities and aids and abets by sending arms to that country, frustration at failure to persuade Ministers to drastically change their policies has become a chronic condition, a persistent political pain. In nations’ capitals, politicians build castles of indifference and the rationality in advocacy of human rights and for UN resolutions falls on deaf ears.

It is tempting to think that lessons learned in coping with diverse experiences of despair have depended on psychological adaptation, but the context in which slaughter continues, raises questions about political structure not just individual psychology. Western leaders’ claims about a rule based order are the century’s rank hypocrisy.

In response to despair, listing steps towards empowerment can be helpful as long as there is no forgetting the context in which abusive power is fostered, where inhumanity grows.

Together the despairing can share social and political awareness, be curious, questioning, never taking for granted media repetition of official views. When news readers churn out their nightly repetition, ‘Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis identified as terrorist organisations by western governments’, ask about the decades old terrorism of the US and other human rights abusing states, Russia, Myanmar, Israel.

When filled with sadness, anger and distrust, there’s a principle in peace negotiations which says un clutter your mind, join with others in clearing desks before crafting the next appeal, letter or article. Global solidarity has spread as millions around the globe have marched to free Palestine, their non violent protests acting as safety valves for despair, though in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, military depravity continues.

Steps in empowerment benefit when questions about the sources of helplessness are reframed, so feelings of individual shortcomings can be replaced by refreshing thoughts and new alliances. But political leaders and a compliant media don’t dare to wipe the mould in their views. Although witnessing carnage overseas, leaders in the major Australian political parties have squabbled about stands taken by the Greens, have been distracted by noise over anti-Semitism and even trumpeted that protesters disturb peace.

Immediate reaction to despair, as in tears, anger, turning away, resolving never to read the news, can be paralysing hence the benefit of a strategy for the future. Given objectives of striving to achieve justice for Palestinians and thereby security for Israelis – who dares to say that – where do we want to be in a week, a month, a year or five years’ time? As with children learning to tread water before swimming for the shore, time scales remind what may be achieved in response to a challenge made specific by context and time.

We are in 21st century times about which Irish poet W.B.Yeats would have written again, ‘ …every where the ceremony of innocence is drowned, the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.’ Yet inspiration can be found from diverse sources, not least in friendship, hospitality, humour, great art, poetry and music. From dark places lies a need to find hope, solace, defiance and eventually triumph. Beethoven’s unforgettable 5th Symphony traces that journey.

In regard to the cancer of violence spreading from Gaza to Beirut, from the West Bank to northern Israel, and potentially from Tel Aviv to Tehran, a certain honesty about history clarifies routes to peace. To limit despair, to respect the Geneva conventions, to foster freedoms world wide, peace agendas must replace racism, discrimination and arms sales. In the case of South Africa, similar objectives were achieved.

For Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, and their supporters, if the world is to be safer, if despair is to be coped with, even eroded, Israeli apartheid has to be dismantled. What other conclusion might there be?

https://johnmenadue.com/coping-with-despair-palestine-lebanon-and-beyond/

By As`ad AbuKhalil
Special to Consortium News

The Israeli war machine is accelerating its attacks on North Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank and as far away as Yemen. It even hit Egypt “by mistake.” 

The assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was supposed to eliminate the resistance group once and for all, especially because Israel also hit the command council of the elite military force Al-Rudwan. This was followed by relentless repeated daily bombardment of Beirut, the southern suburbs and the rest of Lebanon.  

Israel was intent on eliminating all leaders of the party. But it pursues once again a policy that relies solely on massive, indiscriminate violence without any observable strategy for attaining its (hitherto largely unknown) political goals. 

[Related: AS’AD AbuKHALIL: The Middle East After Nasrallah]

Israel, a year after it began its genocide in Gaza, is still not open about its end goal. (The Israeli public does not know, nor the U.S. government, the chief sponsor and enabler of Israeli genocide and aggression.)  

For Israel, which has been intoxicated with unconditional unlimited American support (U.S. President Joe Biden may have truly been the most indulgent president of Israeli savagery since 1948), the slaughter of the large numbers of civilians appears to be a goal in itself.

Since its founding, Israel has operated on the dictum that if it kills a large number of civilians, it will be able to subjugate and instill fear in them to drive them from their ancestral land. 

Zionist gangs introduced terrorism to the region as early as the 1930s for that purpose. They literally wanted to terrorize the native population to push it out of Palestine. Menachem Begin, a former Israeli prime minster, in his book The Revolt, bragged about doing this in the Deir Yassine massacre.

Strategy Failing  

That strategy, however, is not working: the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are not going anywhere despite agonizing displacement after displacement. 

Israel, after a century of conflict, wishes that through its callous and savage methods the population will surrender. Zionists still conceive of a time when the natives will simply embrace their occupation by a racist and brutal power.

In the case of Lebanon, Israel is already facing a big surprise: Hezbollah is not destroyed. Its obituary has been prematurely written in Israeli and Western media. 

This is an organization of (at least) 50,000 well trained, well indoctrinated individuals and no amount of bombardment is going to eliminate it from existence.

If anything, the paradoxical logic of this kind of asymmetrical conflict dictates that the assassination of Nasrallah and the decapitation of the command of the elite military wing will only inspire members in battle and to be better organized than before. 

The rise of a younger generation of commanders into the top leadership ranks will make the fighting force more agile and effective.  Younger members are better educated about modern technology and therefore less likely to fall into the trap the older commanders fell into through the presumably careless use of communication equipment that was laden with explosives after being intercepted by the enemy.

Hezbollah’s recent spectacular attack by a drone on a secret, elite Israeli military base south of Haifa reveals a sophisticated mixture of high-level intelligence and military skills. It also signals that Hezbollah has reorganized to fight back.   

Israel’s constant threat caused Hezbollah to adapt to the elimination of its leaders. The loss of Nasrallah is a devastating blow to the organization, no doubt. It is unlikely that he will ever be replaced, given the many roles he played as leader of an organization whose stature extended well beyond the confines of the party and of Lebanon. 

System of Quick Recovery

But Nasrallah instituted a system of quick recovery in the event of assassination. Every commander is assisted by a deputy who in turn is assisted by an aide; and all three have access to the same files and can easily play the role of a leader in the event of an assassination. And that’s exactly what happened when the command of Rudwan was directly targeted by Israel.

It’s also noteworthy that Hezbollah has remained committed to rules of combat that are far different from those of Israel.

Israel is willing to flatten six residential buildings to kill one man. Hezbollah has focused on military targets throughout the year of conflict and has deliberately avoided targeting civilians. It wishes to draw a moral line between its rules of war and those of the savage enemy that models itself after fascist regimes. 

But this could soon change. If Israel continues to slaughter civilians in indiscriminate attacks on residential neighborhoods, Hezbollah might find itself compelled to respond in kind and attack Israeli civilians. 

Thus far it has avoided that despite public demands (by supporters of Hezbollah and by displaced people from South Lebanon) for Hezbollah to attack civilians in Israel.

Hezbollah Changing 

Hezbollah is already a different organization without Nasrallah and it will continue to change in direction and leadership for months and years to come. 

When the dust settles the organization will undertake a thorough process of reform, reconstruction, punishment and accountability. There will be an attempt to plug holes and locate possible human infiltration within the ranks. 

Although it is most likely that the security breaches were almost all electronic in nature, the presumed failure of Israel’s attack on security chief Wafiq Safa last week may indicate that the party was finally able to trace the method by which Israel locates its leaders.

According to an account by Ibrahim Amin, the publisher of al Al-Akhbar, Safa used a phone that triggered the Israeli security system, which sent fighter jets to basically flatten two residential buildings while missing its target.  Safa may not have been in that area at all.  

Israel’s increasing conundrum is that it has all the tools of mass violence at its disposal and an unlimited supply of weapons and money from Western powers complicit in Israeli crimes, but it still has been unable since 1948 to win without direct military help. 

Israel, more than ever, needs to constantly inflict mass death on Arabs to try to prevail, only to provoke the dialectical logic of resistance.  The more you occupy and kill, the more you unwittingly educate and spur the natives to rebel.  

If this resistance movement fails, another will be around the corner. It is highly logical to assume that generations of Palestinians and Lebanese will grow up with a strong urge for revenge. Gaza will provide the ranks for new organizations that will strike back at Israel for the obliteration of whole families and the destruction of schools, houses of worship, and health centers.

The United States is making the same mistake it made in 1982 when it assumed an Israeli invasion of Lebanon could subjugate the population to enable the U.S. and Israel to reconfigure the political system and install a puppet president who could do Western bidding. 

This time around it will be different. In the early 1980s, the group that would become Hezbollah was no more than a few dozen committed men supported by Iran. 

This time around we are talking about tens of thousands of Lebanese aided by thousands more from other political organizations that will be determined to prevent the formation of Israeli-American order in Lebanon. 

And if that happens, and if the U.S. harbors those dreams of conquest, the results will be exceedingly bloody for American troops who might enter into Lebanon and for the local population as the U.S. and Israel will typically take it out on civilians.

As`ad AbuKhalil is a Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Lebanon (1998), Bin Laden, Islam and America’s New War on Terrorism (2002), The Battle for Saudi Arabia (2004) and ran the popular The Angry Arab blog. He tweets as @asadabukhalil

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/22/asad-abukhalil-lebanon-vs-israeli-savagery/

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