This above article brings me back from the pleasant myths and stories of ancient Israel/Judah to the present and real inconvenient truths about a race who says that they only want a home of their own and will do whatever it takes to achieve it. Should we cheer? Apologies.

All logic and history denies the legitimacy of such a claim by the Zionists.

Can anyone consider the complete chaos IF ALL displaced races demanded a return to their original homelands?  So many changes have been made to the world’s national borders and titles that the recent Americanism of “moving forward” would make that impossible? If there was such a power as to demand that all Jews leave the countries of their birth and become citizens of a new “Israel” (without Murdoch’s duel citizenship) – and thereby give up any success they have had as a citizen of the country of their birth – would that resolve their dilemma?

The truth is that the existence of Israel is still a product of the historians of that and later eras.  It is sometimes said that “There is no history, only historians?” And “History is written by the victors”?

So, to consider the Zionist take-over of Palestine one would expect the current international laws to take precedent over the individual demands of “warlike” nations?  When matters become confusing and the media influence is as suspect as ever, some people rely on the K.I.S.S. principle – keep it simple stupid.

In my mind, it is amazing how many times this simple non-1984 thought gives me a “right” and moral attitude that I can stand by.

What the “Zionist Jews” have done in Palestine is wrong and nothing the massive killing power of the US Military/Corporate can change that.

Unfortunately I have a very sad feeling about the continued US/Zionist warlike attitude – we keep talking about oil and its supply but, isn’t that only because the US have used that as measure in their fear campaign against their own people?

And finally, what is the most constant destabilizing motive of nations in our “modern” world?  I believe that it is the excuse that “the end justifies the means”.  How many crimes are committed under that banner?

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

snd, from the same John Pilger speech .....

SBS has banned its journalists from using the phrase "Palestinian land" to describe illegally occupied Palestine. They must describe these territories as "the subject of negotiation". That is the equivalent of somebody taking over your home at the point of a gun and the SBS newsreader describing it as "the subject of negotiation".

In no other democratic country is public discussion of the brutal occupation of Palestine as limited as in Australia. Are we aware of the sheer scale of the crime against humanity in Gaza? Twenty-nine members of one family -- babies, grannies - are gunned down, blown up, buried alive, their home bulldozed. Read the United Nations report, written by an eminent Jewish judge, Richard Goldstone.

Those who speak for the arsenal of freedom are working hard to bury the UN report. For only one nation, Israel, has a "right to exist" in the Middle East: only one nation has a right to attack others. Only one nation has the impunity to run a racist apartheid regime with the approval of the western world, and with the prime minister and the deputy prime minister of Australia fawning over its leaders.

In Australia, any diversion from this unspoken impunity attracts a campaign of craven personal abuse and intimidation usually associated with dictatorships. But we are not a dictatorship. We are a democracy.

Are we? Or are we a murdochracy.

Rupert Murdoch set the media war agenda shortly before the invasion of Iraq when he said, "There's going to be collateral damage. And if you really want to be brutal about it, better get it done now."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23912.htm

The contradictions of common sense by our two most recent federal governments is amazing.

And I am sad to say, this includes Kevin Rudd who, in my opinion, has lost his moral high ground to whoever he now decides he must genuflect. A Murdochracy?

For one moment let’s consider that the East and the West are still at some idiots idea of a fight for supremacy.  That cannot be right since the West is continually attacking the “East” to achieve – what? Of course the obvious reason is to capture the oil that these “back-water” Easterners have in their lands and to make it available to the Western superior beings?

Isn’t that a para-Hitler arayan policy of the “untermensch”?

And if not – why is the Hebrew/Canaanite Semite tribe considered “Western” when that happy for them accident was a result of the supposed punishment of the Diaspora?  Crazy isn’t it?

Just take a look at the “Westerners” and their power who have resolved that the Zionists are, in fact, by inter-breeding and spreading all over the globe, considered a Western “tribe”.  This of course is just illogical and wrong.

The very illegal claim to the Palestine lands is based on their argument that it was theirs before the Palestinians! So the Saxons own England. Struth.

Some are of the opinion that the unnecessary and vicious attacks on the Muslim countries in the Middle East is the “need” to control the oil.

Even though that would itself be wrong in the minds of our civilizations, why can’t that be done like the “buddy-pal” attitude of the US and Saudi Arabia?

I believe that the US assistance in the destabilizing and illegal effect that the Zionists have caused in Palestine – and their almost suicidal desire to claim a land of their own – no matter who lives there – has suited the objectives of the Oil Industry in both the UK and the US.

But, the Oil is now being recognized as the dying “Dinosaur” of future energy, so how does the US put the brakes on the out-of-control aggression of the Zionist occupation of Palestine, and their murderous future intentions?

IMHO, the profit from wars will be a major factor in any decision of the all consuming Military/Corporate and, if the Zionists are still standing after a US “foreign war to protect them and their freedom” - they had better duck!

God bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

If we could only still sit back and consider what is right and wrong.  Probably, when the world was more intent on what was considered to be moving forward for the benefit of all humanity it would have been simple.

Certainly, depending mainly on the beliefs of the "in power" religions, right and wrong were pretty well understood by the majority of the people and dealt with according to the laws, religiously based in most cases, whether it was Christian, Muslim, Judaism or any other belief.

While we Australians sit back and watch nations - who we may have once considered our allies - invade, occupy and murder innocent people on the totally discredited untruths which abound in the “we say what is right” media - can anyone genuinely argue that we should condone and support that sort of action because…?

With all of the obfuscation in the countries governed by the not so “free” thinking Press like the US and Australia, I cannot come to terms with the claim that “we do it to protect ourselves from them”, when the biggest most voracious invaders and murderers have more than enough military hardware and technology to prevent such a fear being realized (including the Kennedy assassination and 9/11) so what happened?

We find ourselves supporting governments which have hoodwinked us into believing that their terrorism is “right” and those who defend their nations against that terrorism are “wrong” because….?

I well remember the hatred that Hitler could mould to his way of thinking.  It was based on the principle that hatred unites more than love.  I can remember thinking for example that – if several women loved the same man they would probably hate each other – conversely if they all hated him they would really bond?

So we must hate the Iraqi and the Afghans because……?

And with the blind eye of the NATO nations, the impotence of the UN, and the unholy alliance between the world’s most active terrorists, namely the US and the Zionists, we send our serving personnel to support such obviously wrong activities because….?

The descendants of the Elders of Mount Zion do not have any legitimate claim to the Palestine lands and yet, we support them and their murders because….?

God Bless Australia because…?  NE OUBLIE.

from Crikey .....

 Israel lobby funds another media tour. Read all about it

 Antony Loewenstein writes:

"Peter Hartcher is the Sydney Morning Herald's international editor. He travelled to Israel as a guest of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies."

Hartcher's latest piece for his paper tells a familiar tale. The UN Goldstone report on the Gaza war -- in which Israel and Hamas are accused of committing war crimes -- is summarily dismissed as biased, anti-Israel and pro-Hamas.

Hartcher alleges Hamas of "deliberately positioning themselves in residential areas", yet the UN report, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found no evidence to back these claims.

Hartcher interviews two major people in the piece -- Gerald Steinberg and Isi Leibler -- both very close to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Leibler recently called for "a global Jewish solidarity conference" in order to "exorcise the renegades from our midst". In other words, the purging of Jewish dissidents.

Furthermore, Leibler said J Street, the new "pro-Israel and pro-peace" lobby group, was "reminiscent ... of the Jewish communists who defended Stalin's state-sponsored Soviet anti-Semitism in the guise of promoting bogus 'peace' campaigns".

Hartcher's article fits into a long line of Australian journalists and politicians taking free, Zionist lobby trips to Israel and miraculously returning with glorious tales of Jewish heroism, Palestinian violence and Zionist democracy. Crikey's Margaret Simons investigated this tradition in January and revealed a number of participants on the trips failed to disclose the all-expenses paid jaunts (to its credit, the Herald acknowledged Hartcher's free holiday.)

Hartcher's article does not include the opinions of anybody other than those who wholeheartedly support the Jewish state and its military actions. Did he consider visiting Gaza and actually speaking to those affected by Israel's war? He would be shocked, as I was in July, with what he saw. 

Crikey asked Hartcher to respond to a number of questions about his story and experiences in Israel.

"I am not a partisan in any war," he said. "Indeed, a Crikey survey of the Australian political 'punditocracy' found that there was no more balanced commentator in Australia."

Hartcher told Crikey he rejects the allegation that his article is biased. In fact, after the article was published in the paper, he added the following addendum online:

A number of comments attach great significance to the fact that, as I pointed out at the end of the column, I travelled to Israel as a guest of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. Some impute a hidden agenda. Earlier this year I wrote about the United Arab Emirates after travelling there as a guest of the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

This attracted no comment. It is routine for journalists to accept paid travel. The question is not whether journalists take trips; it is whether they disclose them. Disclosure means that readers can take this into account in forming their views. This is the exact opposite of a hidden agenda.

"Every paid trip always has an inbuilt viewpoint," he explained to me. "The journalist's job is to take information from a trip, assess it in the usual way, and to draw on it as one input among many, as we do with every subject, every day."

Hartcher did not explain why there are no voices from Gaza or the occupied territories.

A token inclusion of a Palestinian voice at the end does not change the fact that the article could have been written in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, such is the acceptance of official claims.

The mutually beneficial relationship in these kinds of articles is revealing. Hartcher says that he simply visited Israel, heard a variety of voices and assessed the information fairly. But this is not "balance" or "objectivity". Being presented with only one side of the story reveals nothing other than what your hosts want you to hear.

In the Middle East, after decades of conflict, the bastardisation of language has resulted in the wilful ignoring of Israeli occupation and devastation in a war against the Gazan people. Relying on two voices, Leibler and Steinberg, both of whom back the illegal settlement project in the West Bank, seems grotesque when they whine about the "unreasonableness" of the Goldstone report.

The issue here isn't with the Zionist lobbies that send journalists and politicians on these visits -- after all, they are lobbyists for the Israeli position and need to sell their product as best they can -- but the individuals who continue to spin propaganda for a state increasingly isolated in the world due to the expanding occupation in Palestine.

During the research for my book, My Israel Question, I spoke to many journalists who had taken these free trips to Israel. Some were embarrassed and others didn't want to talk on the record about what they saw and with whom they spoke. I sensed many good journalists, in economically tough times, simply couldn't resist a free lunch. I found that dozens of producers, editors and journalists across all media in print, TV and radio had taken these trips and yet there was little transparency upon their return.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council's executive director, Colin Rubenstein, a key organiser of some of these visits, said in April that the visiting journalists and politicians are "mature people. We let them make up their own minds. They're exposed to a whole range of viewpoints."

Hartcher writes of concerns in Israel that the country will be tarnished as an "apartheid" state. It already is. A column in the leading, Israel paper, Maariv, said this week that, "most of the judges chose to ignore the big picture and practically helped creating judicial apartheid between Jews and Arabs".

SBS TV's Dateline program featured a compelling story in early November that showed fundamentalist, Jewish settlers receiving Israeli legal and military support to forcefully remove Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem.

This week Britain's Channel 4 ran a feature on the influence of the lobby in British politics. It found countless Tories funded by powerful Jewish interests who expect favours in return (namely being "pro-Israel"). It also investigated the number of free trips offered to politicians and journalists by Zionist groups.

Sir Richard Dalton, a former British diplomat who served as consul-general in Jerusalem and ambassador to Iran and Libya, said: "I don't believe, and I don't think anybody else believes these contributions come with no strings attached."

There is nothing illegal about this, but doesn't the public have the right to know whether Jews with investments in West Bank colonies are backing leading politicians?

When was the last time an Australian media group investigated the role of Australia's Zionist lobby? The Australian Jewish News this year absurdly claimed that the lobby had no influence at all but the evidence proves otherwise.

Hartcher's column in yesterday's Herald reveals yet another episode in the ongoing saga of minimising Israeli crimes.

Antony Loewenstein is a journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution

Colonel Efraim (Fein) Eitam was only following orders when he told his troops to beat Ayyad Aqel in 1988. They beat him to death.

Eitam, who since then has held several senior posts in the Israeli government, has recently toured the US as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "Special Emissary" to the "Caravan for Democracy" program of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). This is a marriage made in heaven. Since Israel was founded, the JNF has organized the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the settlement of Jews on their expropriated land; Eitam sees himself as the messianic soldier-prophet directing future expulsions of Palestinians from Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Hillel of Buffalo, New York, invited Eitam to speak at our campus, the University at Buffalo (UB), on the recommendation of UB Professor Ernest Sternberg, a board member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and a founder of its local campus chapter.

In February 1988, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin discreetly told the Israeli army to break the bones of Palestinians rising up during the first Palestinian intifada. According to the testimony of Israeli soldiers, Colonel Eitam relayed the message to his Givati Brigade, then occupying Gaza. On 7 February, he ordered four of them to break the bones of two brothers from al-Bureij refugee camp. They cuffed and blindfolded them, beat them for a while in their own home, then took them to a secluded olive grove, where they kicked and beat them for 20 minutes. Khalid Aqel survived; his 21-year-old brother Ayyad died. In 1990, an Israeli court martial convicted these soldiers of assault, reduced their ranks, gave suspended sentences to three, and sentenced the fourth to two months ("Soldier jailed for intifada killing will sue Rabin," Guardian, 2 November 1990).

Eitam's soldiers testified he had ordered and participated in the Givati beatings. He admitted driving around Gaza with four batons in his jeep, including a shatter-proof, non-regulation knout made of thick rope. The army judges found that Eitam's "violent behavior became the norm, and was taken as an example by those under his command" ("Soldier Sentenced for Palestinian Beatings," Associated Press, 31 October 1990; "Givati Commander Denies Telling Men to 'Break Bones'", The Jerusalem Post, 23 February 1990; "Givati 4 Are Convicted", The Jerusalem Post, 2 October 1990). Still, he received no judgment for almost two years. Then, on 13 July 1992, Rabin became prime minister, and three days later, Eitam got off with a reprimand and a recommendation against promotion. The Jerusalem Post quotes sources suggesting that his likely appeal to Israel's high court of any conviction might have implicated his higher-ups, including Rabin, in the beatings and murders ("Effi Fein Reprimanded to Prevent Him Appealing to Supreme Court", 19 July 1992).

http://www.countercurrents.org/morrison301109.htm

A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict -- 'Occupation 101' presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions.

The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been suppressed in American media outlets.

The film covers a wide range of topics -- which include -- the first wave of Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1880's, the 1920 tensions, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the first Intifada of 1987, the Oslo Peace Process, Settlement expansion, the role of the United States Government, the second Intifada of 2000, the separation barrier and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as well as many heart wrenching testimonials from victims of this tragedy.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24327.htm

G'day John,

My Wife and I have asked for more information regarding obtaining this DVD "Occupation 101".

Apparently all dollars are in US and we need to know how much would postage be - if and when we find out I will inform you and Gus.

Cheers Ern G.

A right-wing Israeli think tank has launched a scathing attack on retired Irish army colonel Desmond Travers, a member of the UN team that investigated the war in Gaza, accusing him of bias, possibly motivated by anti-Semitic prejudice.

The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs (JCPA), headed by Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, termed Col Travers "an individual who is not qualified to take part in any serious fact-finding mission" and urged the UN not to seek his services in the future.

Col Travers said the accusations of anti-Semitism were "derisory and nonsense". He told The Irish Times that although a formal response must come from Justice Goldstone of the fact-finding mission, the JCPA accusations "are not new and fall into the sort of category of misrepresentation that they in turn have accused me of".

Desmond Travers was one of four members of the panel headed by retired South African jurist Richard Goldstone, mandated by the UN to investigate last winter's Israeli military operation in Gaza.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0211/1224264198217.html