Thursday 7th of November 2024

a regime whose leaders have ignored international law......

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong has finally acknowledged that Israel is in gross breach of international law, and must not ignore the United Nations, as it continues its ruthless military attacks on the people of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

 

The Australian Government must impose sanctions on Israel NOW    By Margo Reynolds

 

In a statement this week rejecting the decision of the Israeli Parliament to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Minister Wong hit out at Israel’s decision to restrict the UN agency’s lifesaving work. This follows calls from Australia, Japan, South Korea, Canada, France, Germany and the UK not to impose the ban.

Minister Wong has called on Israel to comply with the binding orders of the International Court of Justice to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale in Gaza.

This statement is welcome, but the Australian Government must now immediately:

-Recall their ambassador.

-Impose sanctions on Israel.

-Cease any provision of military equipment or component parts to the Israel Defence Force.

Australians have been demanding government action for months to stop an out-of-control military and a regime whose leaders have ignored international law and all recognition of our common humanity. Yes, we do remember and condemn the Hamas attacks on Israeli families and have urged independent negotiation for the release of hostages. However, we could not have predicted the extent of brutal military retaliation that has followed, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including overwhelming numbers of women and children, U.N. staff, doctors, nurses and journalists. We did not expect the Prime Minister of Israel – “our trusted friend” – could be so ruthless in his determination to destroy the State of Palestine. We cannot understand how the United States “leadership” can spend months advocating for a ceasefire, while continuing to fund and supply Israel’s war machine. A freeze on US military funding is the only way to stop the Netanyahu regime and should have been the obvious response months ago.

In asserting “Israel has a right to defend itself”, the majority of Australian parliamentarians gave approval to a dangerous state that has committed war crimes and genocide. As the death and destruction continued the Australian Government seemed more concerned with attacking humanitarian Australians demanding action from their government. Community rallies, student protests and calls for a parliamentary condolence motion for the tragic loss of life in Gaza were ignored. Those articulating the truth were accused of anti semitism or political opportunism, when those very individuals have long worked to prevent human rights abuse whenever and wherever it occurs.

The Australian Government has used its “quiet diplomacy” to avoid any accountability for its complicity in a human tragedy. Furthermore, it has been absent in advocating for international law and the essential role of the United Nations in ensuring countries maintain agreed standards in times of conflict.

Now the Albanese Government has a clear choice… it can continue to hide from reality and avoid essential decisions, or it can assert Australian’s rejection of Israel’s policies and methods.

The international Court of Justice ruled on July 19 that Israel must end its historic oppression of Palestinians. Obviously, if its commitment to a “two state solution” is to have any credibility, it is long overdue for the Albanese government to recognise the State of Palestine in this term of parliament.

There is much work to be done in restoring peace for Palestinians and Israelis.

For months so many Australians have been warning the Albanese Government that its “quiet diplomacy” has failed to have any influence on the Netanyahu regime, so now the government must stand firm, and demand Israel accept a ceasefire, exchange of hostages and a negotiated plan for rehabilitation, reparations, and rebuilding.

Finally, our government must take action.

Thank you, Penny Wong. You have made an important start, but we need to see you strongly supported by your colleagues to prevent further suffering and destruction. Prime Minister Albanese must restore Australia’s reputation as a country that believes in international law as the only way to protect the global community.

All Australians are encouraged to continue expressing their views to end this devastating war.

It is extremely depressing when parliamentarians’ phones and correspondence are not answered, and their bland public statements ignore reality. However, we can be assured that public opinion does matter and is heard regardless of the barriers that exist.

Australians do care about our common humanity and will always find ways to defend it.

 

https://johnmenadue.com/the-australian-government-must-impose-sanctions-on-israel-now/

 

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

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without a stick…”

         Gus Leonisky

 

dead but diverse.....

 

Harvard “Embraces Diversity” on Day of the Dead, Unless the Dead Are Palestinian
I have been suspended from Harvard’s library for silently supporting students who protested about Palestine and Lebanon.

By Andrew Manuel Crespo , TRUTHOUT

 

In my inbox, there’s an email with a purple flier attached. Distributed by the Harvard Library, it depicts a white skull in a decorative hat, announcing a “Día de los Muertos” celebration. The event’s webpage boasts “performances by students and staff” and “remarks” from faculty. It was held yesterday in the Widener Library’s West Stacks Reading Room.

I had hoped to attend. Harvard has been my home for two decades. I am among the only 4 percent of its tenured faculty who are Hispanic or Latino. The event, which marks a traditional Mexican holiday honoring dead loved ones, is co-sponsored by multiple Latino student groups across campus.

I should have been there. But I wasn’t allowed in the building.

Two weeks ago, I walked into that same library’s main reading room with two dozen of my faculty colleagues. We sat down quietly at tables, reading texts about dissent and censorship while displaying small signs that quoted the library’s statement of values: “Embrace diverse perspectives.” We did not publicize the event in advance, and other library patrons continued reading quietly alongside us throughout the hour we were there.

We did this because, a few weeks earlier, the university suspended a dozen students from the library for doing essentially the same thing: reading silently, while wearing traditional Palestinian scarves and taping small signs to their laptops that said “imagine it happened here.” Like those students — and at least 60 others who have been disciplined since — my colleagues and I have been suspended from the library for our participation in a quiet study session.

With autocratic politicians banning books, outlawing library reading sessions and launching an all-out war on higher education in the U.S., one would hope to see university leaders resist dangerously illiberal attacks like these, not emulate them.

But Harvard has chosen a different path. In January, after our president was deposed by a right-wing pressure campaign and as student protests over the war on Gaza mounted, the university announced new “guidance on protest and dissent,” the first of many new protest-limiting actions that would follow over the ensuing months, at Harvard and at colleges across the country. According to this new guidance, “demonstrations” are “ordinarily not permitted” in “libraries or other spaces designated for study” and “quiet reflection.”

Is a quiet study session like the one I participated in a “demonstration” prohibited by these rules? Many faculty members, reacting to the students’ suspensions, say no. As Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman writes, usually in a library the rule is that “as long as you are sitting at your desk silently, you can do whatever you want there.” In these study sessions, Harvard math professor Melanie Matchett Wood explains, the students “did not interfere with normal campus activity, and Harvard thus has no compelling reason to prohibit their speech.”

The university administration sees it differently. In an essay posted on the library’s website the day I was banned, Harvard’s vice president overseeing the library, Martha Whitehead, argued that a silent study session like the one I participated in “changes a reading room from a place for individual learning and reflection to a forum for public statements,” and thus strips these special places of their “vital role as places for learning and research.” Activity that “compels attention to a specific message” is “inherently disruptive and antithetical to the intent of a library reading room,” Whitehead concludes, “no matter the message” being conveyed.

I disagree with Whitehead that silent study sessions are inherently disruptive. And I reject her vision of libraries as catacombs designed to insulate people from external, let alone challenging, ideas.

But I also think her position is unabashedly hypocritical. Days after suspending me from the library for reading quietly at a table, the library hosted a Day of the Dead celebration, complete with music, food, large crowds and faculty remarks — in a reading room in the same building. If a silent study session is “inherently disruptive,” isn’t a large and festive gathering all the more so? If reading quietly with a small sign converts a reading room into “a forum for public statements,” don’t actual public remarks in a reading room do the same thing? In fact, is not the whole Day of the Dead event designed to “capture people’s attention” and convey “a specific message” — about the library’s purported missionto “cultivate and celebrate diversity,” perhaps?

Make no mistake, the Day of the Dead event was held in a reading room just like the one where my colleagues and I gathered to read. When Latino affinity groups wanted to use that space to host a party celebrating diversity, the library printed a flier and circulated it across campus. When my colleagues and I wrote to Whitehead the day before our study session, letting her know that we wanted to use the reading room to read, we got no response. When we showed up the next day with small signs that read “embrace diverse perspectives” — a message literally printed on a banner outside the very room in which we sat — the library sent security guards to write down all of our ID card numbers.

A few days later, Harvard’s chief librarian published an essay declaring our reading session about the importance of academic freedom and dissent — like the students’ earlier reading session about Gaza and Lebanon — “antithetical to the intent of a library reading room.” And then the university suspended our library privileges.

Why was our event treated so differently from the Latino groups’ Day of the Dead celebration?

The answer should be painfully obvious. Invocations of “institutional neutrality” notwithstanding, Harvard’s leadership is perfectly happy to make political statements, as demonstrated by President Alan Garber’s recent condemnation of a pro-Palestinian student group’s social media post and by a recent university-wide message condemning antisemitic stickers posted in Harvard Square. Harvard is also perfectly happy to use its libraries to convey political messages. That’s true when the university librarian invites photographers into the library to capture her alongside the first lady of embattled Ukraine, as occurred a few weeks before our faculty study session. And it is true when the library invites Latinos across campus to come to the West Stacks Reading Room so that we can “embrace diversity” on the Day of the Dead.

The fact that I cannot walk into the library this week to mark the Day of the Dead is its own political statement from Harvard’s leadership, one as tragic as it is ironic. Because Harvard’s onslaught of illiberal, speech-restrictive disciplinary actions — first against its students, now against its faculty — exists for only one reason: Over the past year, our students have been protesting about death.

Over 40,000 deaths. Dead children. Dead parents. Dead teachers. Dead students.

This Day of the Dead, the Harvard Library opened the doors of its West Stacks Reading Room to all those hoping to “gather to celebrate our departed loved ones” — except for those who had gathered there before to remember departed Palestinians.

https://truthout.org/articles/harvard-embraces-diversity-on-day-of-the-dead-unless-the-dead-are-palestinian/

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

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

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without seeing the pain of others…”

         Gus Leonisky