Free Palestine Melbourne - Freedom and Justice for Palestine and its People.

West rightly backs Ukraine but ignores Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan…,

by Gideon Polya

Both the Russian occupation of Ukraine and the Apartheid Israeli occupation of Palestine are wrong, inhumane, international law-violating, and have been hugely destructive. However a racist and specifically anti-Arab anti-Semitic West (the Anglosphere, NATO and the EU) utterly ignores the Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, while quite rightly condemning and sanctioning Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Largely missing from the present Mainstream media reportage are the following:
While thousands of courageous Russians are risking violence and lengthy imprisonment imposed by an authoritarian Russian state for protesting the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Russian Government forbids use of the terms “war” and “invasion” to describe the current invasion of Ukraine, in the rich, internally peaceful, human rights-cognizant and democratic West there is almost total silence in this context over the Apartheid Israeli invasion, occupation and ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine (and indeed US Alliance invasion of a swathe of Muslim countries post-9/11).
Ukraine was the heartland of Ashkenazi Jews (Eastern European Jews) who descend from non-Semitic Turkic Khazar converts to Judaism in circa the 8th century CE. After the Kievan Rus ended Khazarian independence in 965-969 CE, the forebears of the Ashkenazi Jews continued trading in Eastern Europe from the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. Ashkenazi Jews suffered periodic violent persecution (pogroms) and in the 19th century millions fled to make new lives in the US and elsewhere. After WW1 many Ukrainians settled in Canada.
Ukrainian fascists under Symon Petliura murdered 30,000-50,000 Jews in 1918-1922. 7 million Jewish and non-Jewish Ukrainians died in the 1930s Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) and the Stalinist purges. Ukrainian fascists under Stepan Bandera collaborated with Nazi Germany in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust. 4.5 million Ukrainians in the Red Army and 0.3 million Ukrainian partisans fought the Nazis. After Ukrainian independence statues were erected to Petliura and Bandera.
Of 15 million mostly impoverished Palestinians (50% children and 75% women and children), 1.9 million Israeli Palestinians can vote for the government ruling them but as Third Class citizens under 65 race-based laws; 5.2 million Occupied Palestinians are denied human rights under military rule and cannot vote for the government ruling them (i.e. they are subject to apartheid); and 8 million Exiled Palestinians represent about 10% of the world’s refugees and are violently excluded from the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 3,000 years.
Poverty kills and the GDP per capita is a deadly $3,400 for Occupied Palestine (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp), but is $46,400 for Occupier Israel that grossly violates Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that demand that an Occupier must supply its conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”. Indigenous Palestinians are 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel, Jewish Israelis 47%.
In the last 2 decades Gaza rockets have killed about 40 Israelis as compared to 10,000 Palestinians killed violently by Israelis, 85,000 Palestinians dying avoidably from imposed deprivation, about 1,000 Israelis killed by Palestinians, and an estimated 3,000 Israelis murdered by Israelis (on average some 11 Israelis are murdered by fellow Israelis each month).
While Palestine has not invaded any other countries, and Ukraine has not invaded any other country (apart from token support for the US Alliance’s Iraq War and Afghan War), this is in stark contrast to the record of the following countries (numbers of countries invaded in brackets): Britain (193), Australia (85), France (82), the US (72; 52 after WW2), Germany (39), Japan (30), Russia (26), Canada (25), Apartheid Israel (13), China (3, ignoring border spats) and India (0) (Google “stop state terrorism”).
Humanity and the Biosphere are existentially threatened by nuclear weapons and climate change. Palestine and Ukraine do not have nuclear weapons, in contrast to their invaders. The 9 nuclear weapons states (numbers of nuclear weapons in brackets) are the US (7,300), Russia (8,000), Apartheid Israel (90), France (300), UK (250), China (250), Pakistan (120), India (100), and North Korea (circa 10). India, Pakistan, Apartheid Israel and North Korea have not ratified the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
This is no excuse for the war criminal Russian invasion, but Russia evidently felt threatened by massive movement eastwards of nuclear-armed NATO in the years after the break-up of the Soviet Union, and by the US-, NATO- and neo-Nazi-backed 2014 Coup that removed the pro-Russian Ukrainian president Yanukovich. All but 4 of the 30 members of nuclear terrorist and anti-Russia NATO belong to the all-European, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic and holocaust-denying International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
With economic and political disaster facing Russia, one can ask whether Putin was tricked by the US into invading Ukraine, just as the US green-lighted Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that proved disastrous for Iraq, as summarized here (with dates and deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation in brackets): in the Gulf War and under Sanctions (1990-2003; 1.9 million), US Alliance invasion and occupation based on WMD lies (2003-2011; 2.7 million), and post-2011 (0.4 million Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation).
Deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation in Afghanistan have totalled 7.0 million, and the post-defeat war criminal US freezing of Afghan foreign reserves will mean that annual under-5 infant deaths and annual avoidable deaths from deprivation will increase hugely from the shocking 2020 values of 76,000 and 106,000, respectively.
It gets worse. 32 million Muslim have died from violence, 5 million, and from imposed deprivation (27 million) in 20 Muslim countries invaded by the US Alliance in the post- 9/11 US War on Terror. 1.7 million Americans die annually from ”lifestyle choice” and “political choice” reasons, and accordingly 34 million Americans have died thus since 9/11. The War on Terror has had a long-term accrual cost of $6 trillion, and accordingly successive US Administrations have committed $6 trillion to killing over 30 million Muslims abroad rather than trying to save over 30 million American lives at home (see my books “US-imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2021) and “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (second edition, 2022)).
Russia is a major exporter of wheat, oil and gas. The Ukraine is also a major wheat producer. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already resulted in markedly increased global oil, gas and wheat prices. Millions may die from starvation in the Developing World as a result of this reckless and evil war-making.
It is the inability to buy food that kills in famines. Thus in the WW2 Bengal Famine the price of the staple rice rose up to 4-fold, and those who could not buy enough food simply starved. In the WW2 Bengal Famine (WW2 Indian Holocaust, WW2 Bengali Holocaust) 6-7 million Indians were deliberately starved to death by the British with Australian complicity for strategic reasons in Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and Assam. Australia was complicit by refusing to supply its starving ally India with food from its huge wartime grain stores. The Russian invasion of Ukraine will not just kill Russian soldiers and Ukrainians. Already 7.4 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year.
For a detailed and documented account see Gideon Polya, “West Rightly Supports Ukraine But Ignores Brutally Occupied Palestine”, Countercurrents, 1 March 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/03/west-rightly-supports-ukraine-but-ignores-brutally-occupied-palestine/ . Whether US invasion or Russian invasion, war is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Please call out all wars and please inform everyone you can.




2022-06-24 01:28:28.000000
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Sick and hunger striking Palestinian prisoners need your support

by Admin

An advocate from the UK has made contact and asked for our support in this urgent matter. I have used their text with some minor corrections and additions.

I am contacting you about sick and hunger striking Palestinian prisoners, so that there can be urgent action taken especially for the cases of Nasser Abu Hamid and Abdel-Baset Maatan as they are both critically ill and should be immediately released. Actions such as statements, open letters, letters to the foreign minister, bringing it up in parliament to put pressure on the occupation so that there is intervention done for their release and proper medical treatment that they need and for the call to end administrative detention as we all know it is against international law and a violation of human rights. Details at the end of this post.

Nasser Abu Hamid from the Amari Refugee camp, has been detained since 2002 and sentenced to seven life sentences and 50 years. A cancerous tumour was detected in his lungs in august 2021. The prison stalled his treatment causing his health to decline, and now he is in a coma in the ICU for the past 5 days with his hands and feet shackled. Nasser Abu Hamid was the victim of a medical mistake during the implantation of a tube to empty the air from his lungs because the one who implanted the tube was not a specialised doctor and implanted it in the wrong place. The doctor confirmed that acute inflammation in his lungs, which was caused by a bacterial infection, led to the collapse of the work of his lungs and immune system, which led to him falling into a coma. From the family of Nasser Abu Hamid “The time allotted for our visit was only ten minutes, and the guards refused to let us approach Nasser on the grounds of the coronavirus. And when we were finally allowed to get a little closer, we could barely diagnose Nasser because he was lying on his stomach with his head connected to various tubes of life giving-devices near his bed”. It was also said how the occupation threatened to take Nasser off the medical equipment after “claiming” he wasn’t responding to it. There must be urgent intervention so that he will get the medical treatment he needs and to be transferred to a Palestinian hospital.

Abdel-Baset Maatan, 49 suffers from 2 types of cancer and has reached its final stage. He was detained without charge or trial since October 2021. The occupation refuses to provide him with the medical treatment he needs. The prisoners club say there is a real fear that the cancer has spread to his lung.

Prisoners affairs authority: Ofer prison administration continues to deny the prisoner suffering from cancer, Abdel Baset Maatan, the necessary treatment for his difficult and worrying health condition. After his arrest, the jailers confiscated the medicine he took with him from the house and gave him other medicines claiming they were similar to those he was taking. 

Quoting from the family of Abdel Baset Maatan: “The situation of cancer sick administrative detainee is difficult and it is getting worse day by day. His health is deteriorating and may reach the same stage as Nasser Abu Hamid. His court date was held on December 20th 2021, but the verdict was postponed for a week until examinations and x-rays will conduct. Unfortunately until today there is no examinations, no x-rays have been done, and no new court date has been set” 

Fikri Mansour who is on hunger strike over 50 days, no recent news about him. “The prisoner Fikri Mansour has been on hunger strike for 56 days, rejecting the abuse and the policy of constantly transferring him to solitary confinement.”

http://palestineonline.org/health-condition-of-cancer-stricken-palestinian-detainee-is-deteriorating-in-israeli-custody/

⁦‪Eyad‬⁩ ⁦‪Hrebat‬⁩ is a prisoner living in difficult and complex health conditions and needs surgery. He has been detained since September 21st 2002 and is sentenced to life imprisonment, plus 20 years. ‎Eyad contracted a prostate infection, which led to his inability to excrete urine. He was subsequently transferred to the hospital, and an external tube was installed to remove the urine. ‎Upon his return to prison, the tube ruptured, which led to a laceration in the bladder and prostate, after which he was transferred again to Soroka Hospital. Eyad needed real medical treatment and care. ‎Since his first surgery, Eyad underwent more than 6 surgeries. The doctors discovered he contracted a bacterial infection, caused by improper treatment of the cyst on his prostate, which spread all over his body including lung. Eyad cant speak, can’t talk, can’t sleep due to severity of the pain, he has open and bleeding wound from previous surgery. He also was shacked in hand, leg and neck!

What can you do to help:

Here are examples of tweets that can be tweeted, don’t use these ones as they are just examples, just make sure to use the hashtags for the respective person:

Critically ill Palestinian prisoners such as Nasser Abu Hamid are medically neglected under the occupation which is a crime, and administrative detention is a violation of international law. He must be released and transferred to a Palestinian hospital to recover #FreeNasser

Abdel-Basset Maatan suffers from cancer and he must be immediately released and be treated with the proper medical treatment he needs. The occupation medically neglect palestinians as an act of slow killing. This is unlawful and must be stopped #FreeThemAll #StopAD 

Letters and phone calls to:

Lidia Thorpe: senator.thorpe@aph.gov.au (03) 9232 8140, (02) 6277 3353
Ken O’Dowd: https://www.kenodowd.com.au/constituentenquiryform/ (07) 4972 5465, (07) 4982 4266
Adam Bandt: adam.bandt.mp@aph.gov.au (03) 9417 0772
Janet Rice: senator.rice@aph.gov.au (03) 9381 1446
Mehreen Faruqi: senator.faruqi@aph.gov.au (02) 9211 1500
Maria Vamvakinou: maria.vamvakinou.mp@aph.gov.au (03) 9367 5216, (02) 6277 4249




2022-06-24 01:28:28.000000
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Prisoners’ escape inspires Palestinian protest across West Bank – Updated

by Admin
PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS CLASH WITH ISRAELI FORCES FOLLOWING A PROTEST IN SOLIDARITY WITH PRISONERS AFTER THE ESCAPE OF SIX PALESTINIAN PRISONERS FROM AN ISRAELI PRISON, IN HEBRON IN THE WEST BANK SEPTEMBER 9, 2021. PHOTO BY MAMOUN WAZWAZ (C) APA IMAGES

https://mondoweiss.net/2021/09/prisoners-escape-inspires-palestinian-protest-across-west-bank/

Update: Four of the six fugitives, including Zakaria Zubeidi, were reported to have been captured in northern Israel on Sept. 10-11 since this post was published.

Israeli forces are hunting the West Bank for the six Palestinian prisoners who made their escape nearly five days ago, leading to angry protests over the military occupation of Palestinian land. A Palestinian doctor was reportedly shot to death in Jerusalem today.




2022-06-24 01:28:28.000000
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Targeting Israeli Apartheid: a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Handbook – Corporate Watch

by Admin

Targeting Israeli Apartheid examines the Israeli economy and details the Israeli and international companies complicit in Israeli state repression.

“Targeting Israeli Apartheid is the guide many of us in the movement have been waiting for. This forensic, clear and systematic account details the where, who, how and why of the flows of capital and contracts which enable the colonisation of Palestine to continue.”

Ewa Jasiewicz – Coordinator of the Free Gaza movement




2022-06-24 01:28:28.000000
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The Palestinians’ Inalienable Right to Resist

by Admin
Extract from a design by Ismail Shammout

Extract from a design by Ismail Shammout

https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/the-palestinians-inalienable-right-to-resist?s=09

Break the fear barrier and speak up for Palestine

Saying the Palestinian issue is ‘complex’ is no excuse for not speaking up against Israeli crimes.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/5/11/break-the-fear-barrier-and-speak-up-for-palestine

Want to be better informed? Check out our new reliable media sources page.




2022-06-24 01:28:28.000000
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THANK YOU!

by admin

Dear members,

Thank you for your solidarity and support during the last few weeks as we watched with horror Israel’s aggression and genocidal policies in Gaza, and ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem.

The tide is turning! We have seen this in the overwhelming number of people who marched with us in all major cities around the country. Tens of thousands gathered to express solidarity and to assure us that despite all of the silencing and attempts at erasure we have faced from the media and other power structures, our voices today are louder than ever.

At its core, the Palestinian cause is an anti-racist and anti-colonial struggle. We fight to dismantle the oppressive structures of settler colonialism imposed on Palestinians, including the system of apartheid in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the illegal and punitive blockade on Gaza, and the discriminatory laws that sustain and protect these structures. We fully recognise that our struggle is interconnected with other campaigns for decolonisation and justice both here in Australia and around the world, and we stand in proud solidarity with First Nations peoples.

As our movement continues to expand and grow, we urge everyone to continue to stand up against all forms of racism and xenophobia, including Islamophobia, antisemitism, and Zionism.

We have achieved a lot in the past few weeks, but sadly our struggle is far from over. While the ceasefire is a welcome step and a much needed reprieve for Palestinians in Gaza, they still suffer collective punishment in the form of a cruel and illegal blockade. In Jerusalem, plans to ethnically cleanse the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood are still underway. Palestinians in Israel endure a myriad of social, legislative and other challenges that Jewish citizens do not face, while Palestinians in the occupied West Bank face daily humiliation in the creeping theft of their land through forced evictions, demolition of homes, and restrictions upon their freedom of movement. Meanwhile, six million Palestinian refugees remain unable to exercise their inalienable right to return to their ancestral lands.

We must continue to demand an immediate and urgent end to the ongoing war crimes, human rights abuses, and violations of international law that Israel conducts on a daily basis with full impunity. We also demand that our federal and state governments suspend all ties with Israel until a just solution is achieved, and the Palestinians are able to live in peace and equality in their ancestral lands.

We will continue to demand freedom, justice, and equality for all Palestinians, from the river to the sea! 

Best regards 

Salam,

Organising Committee

Let’s act to stop another attack on the people of Gaza. Sign this petition and share it with your family and friends. We know that together we can do this!
To sign the petition go to https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN2715
Closing date: 23 June 2021 




2022-06-24 01:28:28.000000
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ISRAEL’S APARTHEID JACKBOOT IS ON THE NECK OF PALESTINIANS AND THEY CAN’T BREATHE

by admin

by Jerome Irwin

All human beings, like all living beings on this earth, deserve respect! It’s a basic fundamental right of life that cannot be denied at the peril of all of humanity and the earth!

Just as George Floyd once couldn’t breathe until he died gasping under the knee of an American Minneapolis policeman so, too, now, as they have been suffering since the Nakba Catastrophe in 1948, the Palestinians slowly continue to die under the oppressive boot of Benjamin Netanyahu, his IDF Forces and every Jewish bully-who follows their lead; pressing down ever harder, listening with gleeful anticipation for those last dying Arab gasps they long to hear.

Like the American policeman who didn’t respect George Floyd’s human rights, as so many other mean-spirited Americans over the course of time have done with Black-Brown-Asian-Native Americans they likewise have denied the same right to live as they would, so, too, the Jewish settlers in Occupied Palestine willingly and quite happily now march through the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the West Bank or wherever else a vulnerable Palestinian family is to be found, knowing full-well that they have the protected right to chant, ”Death to the Arabs!”. Jewish gang rage, its members bound by a common religion, race and place of residency, know they have the full protection of Israeli politicians and military forces to rage against whatever unsuspecting Palestinian they may find. In the end, another ugly ‘Rodney King’ bashing, Jewish-style, gets played out on live TV.

What an abomination! What an outrage! Is this what the United States and the rest of the so-called ‘free’ Western World once fought a second world over, and so selflessly died while trying to save the whole human race, especially Jewish people, from the Nazi gas chambers of the Holocaust?

Now, with U.S. President Biden’s blatantly-unshakable and unequivocal allegiance, along with every Democrat and Republican politician or American voter who have aligned themselves with Israeli PM Netanyahu and the Likud Party’s racist, apartheid debacle in Occupied Palestine, doesn’t that equally make them all terrorist partners-in-crimes against humanity? Don’t they all, equally, have blood on their hands, no different from the crimes the Nazi and their allies once committed? Shouldn’t they hate the Israeli fascists and defend the world against them as much as they once did against the hated Nazi fascists? Shouldn’t President Biden be choking on his own words when he once declared, “If Israel hadn’t ever existed we would have had to create one”? Or when Biden declares, “Israel has an inherent right to protect ourselves”, yet says nothing about the Palestinian people’s same right to defend themselves? Aren’t their rights the same as all the Brown-Black-Yellow-Red peoples of America whose same inherent human rights and entitlements have been violated for so long?

The ugly racist violence now wending its way throughout Occupied Palestine, busting into dwellings of innocent Palestinians, violating men, women and children, evicting them from their homes with no place to live other than the rubble of the streets and wastelands of their former spiritual homelands, continues unabated; while Israel’s apartheid regime and a hamstrung, if not blind or indifferent United Nations Security Council, is repeatedly blocked from doing anything by Biden and America’s racist veto powers that continue to deny Palestinians any remote guarantee of common, basic human justice and equality.

The on-going human indignities occurring in Israel in 2021 are no different than so many other ugly scenes from a century or two ago, up to the present day, in the United States where Black, Brown Asian Americans and Native Americans still find themselves in the same predicament. As in American history, it’s now Israel’s turn, as America’s proxy in the Middle East, to act as yet another giddy apartheid regime that has gone berserk over its power to achieve near total control of the entire area between the Jordon River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Heartbreaking, terrifying, reprehensible violence, intended to unequivocally assert Jewish Zionist-American Christian supremacy in the region, reigns supreme as: airstrikes employing the latest in tactical aerial bombardment payloads, courtesy of American taxpayer monies, are strategically dropped in residential areas on buildings that house Hamas political leaders or Arab and world media outlets alike; and journalists who attempt to tell the world the truth of what actually is going on in their midst in Gaza, or the West Bank are blocked at every turn; while stun grenades, again courtesy of American taxpayers monies and American arms manufacturers, continue to be hurled into crowds of protesting Palestinian youth or those praying in their mosque; Israeli citizen-soldiers supremely confident that their Israeli commanders and Likud Party henchmen-bureaucrats will cover for them to continue to uphold an apartheid system that remains all but invisible to the outside world.

In the end, after all the latest violence has subsided, and Palestinians can crawl from out of the rubble of their lives, if one can call their existence ‘lives’ that shouldn’t be wished upon one’s worst enemies, the Jews will return, virtually unscathed, to reclaim their white privileged lifestyles in neighborhoods formerly inhabited by Palestinians, who instead will have now been even further reduced to homeless refugees in their own lands, forced to take up residency in one of the Jews new ‘stalag compounds’, forever pinned down by the jackboots of their oppressors.

Yet, once upon a time, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed, in 1948, that “It is essential, if man is not compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, their human rights should be protected”.

But who exactly is it who will now ensure justice and quality of life for the Palestinians, with the same rights as the Jews to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, with the freedom to learn, dream and love as is the desire in life for every human being? Will it be U.S. President Biden a Cheshire Cat politician whose alliance with Israeli Zionism goes back to the beginning of his political career? Or will it be a re-elected PM Benjamin Netanyahu, a former elite IDF commando, resolute hard-liner, who is about to stand trial in a Jerusalem District Court for bribery, fraud and breach of trust or, with luck, may even stand trial for apartheid by the United Nation’s International Criminal Court of Justice (ICC)? Or perhaps Israel’s new leader will be Ben-Gvir, a lawyer notorious for his anti-Palestinian rhetoric, who is a disciple of the late racist rabbi Meir Kahane, a violent anti-Arab once considered so repugnant that even Israel banned him from parliament and the U.S. listed his party as a terrorist group? Or maybe it will be Moshe Ya’alon, a staunch opponent of the two-state solution, much beloved in what some call the right-wing Likud Party and Israel’s Sudentenland in Occupied Palestine, where Palestinians are forever targeted?

Meanwhile, the results of any vote may have to await the outcome of an Israeli-Palestinian Civil War bloodbath that presciently seems just around the corner.

Bio Note: Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American writer who once upon a time in university was a Criminology student while working in one of America’s local police departments. For decades, Irwin has especially sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by a host of environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting world philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a spiritual odyssey among the native peoples of North America that has led to numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & the U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; the many violations constantly being waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul

jerome_irwin@yahoo.com




2022-06-24 01:28:28.000000
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Should Australia strengthen trade and investment with Israel?

by admin

FPM members have been busily preparing submissions to DFAT to deter the Australian government from strengthen trade and investment with Israel. One of these very detailed submissions is provided here for your information.

The summary of the submission reads:

When considering any international agreement, countries must consider a broad range of factors- compliance with international law, any effect, beneficial or otherwise, to that country’s international standing and of course, economic benefit. It is not something to be done lightly and without due consideration to all ramifications and implications.

Israel blatantly ignores international law and disregards UN resolutions, receives widespread international condemnation for its actions in the occupied Palestinian territory, is being investigated by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and is the subject of a global boycott, divest and sanction campaign

To openly increase our ties with such a country would make Australia a complicit partner. It normalises the blockade of Gaza, severely damages our international reputation and standing, and potentially puts us at risk of economic sanctions. In fact, it is for exactly this reason that where a country is engaging in such serious violations of international law, that Third States like Australia have our own international law obligations to not engage with that State in ways that give recognition, legitimacy, assistance and aid to maintain the status quo.1 In other words, if Australia is to enter into this agreement with Israel, we will be in violation of our obligations under international law.




2022-06-24 01:28:28.000000
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