Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, averted a public humiliation by abandoning her position on the Palestinian Authority’s application for observer state status at the UN, thus demonstrating her poor judgement & feeble authority within her party.

If this circumstance was a ‘rare & real humiliation’ for the Prime Minister, imagine then the scale of her humiliation & that of our government had they opposed the Palestinian proposal, only to wake-up the following day to Israel’s announcement that it is proceeding with the expansion of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem & the West Bank with the construction of another 3,000 housing units, followed by today’s effort wherein they have decided to seize more than $120 million in tax revenues due for payment to the Palestinian Authority.

It would seem that the Prime Minister should not only be eternally grateful to the Labor caucus for having saved her from being on the wrong side of history, but also for having prevented her further humiliation at the hands of Israel, as a result of its latest disgusting & cowardly attacks on the Palestinian peoples’ struggle for self-determination & the so-called ‘peace process’.

Has Labor's position on Israel really changed?

One week Julia Gillard cheers on Israel's murderous assault on Gaza, the next the parliamentary ALP caucus rolls her over recognition of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly.

The shift does not mean that Labor is now hostile to Israeli apartheid. Labor has a slightly different view from Israel, the United States and the Coalition about how best to preserve Israel as a racist state. Labor's Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, understands that the Arab Spring means that minor concessions have to be made to prop up the credibility of the Palestinian Authority, which is Israel's policeman on the West Bank.

The laws that define Israel as a Jewish state mean that its Palestinian citizens have second-class status. They are not allowed to live in most areas, their separate schools are underfunded, they are ineligible for many welfare services and public sector jobs, Arabic is treated as inferior to Hebrew.

After living for decades under Israeli occupation, the Palestinians of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem have no say at all over Israel's policies. Jews - like me - have a right of ''return'' to Israel so long as they can demonstrate their hereditary Jewishness through their mothers' lines. Palestinian refugees born in what is now Israel and their children and grandchildren have no right to return.

Australia abstained in the General Assembly's overwhelming vote to accept Palestine not as a member of the UN but just as an ''observer state'', like the Vatican. Gillard had wanted Australia to vote against the resolution, with Israel, the United States and a handful of its clients.

The General Assembly decision will not improve the lives of ordinary Palestinians.

At best, it gives the issue of Israel's repression of the Palestinians a little more profile and will probably lead to cases in the UN's International Court of Justice, which will also help publicise the issue. Neither the US nor Israel accepts the authority of the court. The US's veto on the Security Council still ensures that the UN's executive body will not act against Israel and that Palestine will not become a member of the UN.

If we want to understand the main reasons for Labor's marginal departure from the Israel/US script for the Middle East, we have to look to Palestine and the Arab world rather than to New York and the Hague, where the UN and court sit.

Since its establishment in 1948, with the backing of Labor foreign minister Bert Evatt, who was then an influential figure in the UN, Israel has implemented the doctrine of the ''iron wall''. This holds that the dispossession of the Palestinian people can only be maintained by armed force and that if the Palestinians ever accept the Jewish state it will only be because Israel's military actions have made them give up hope.

The right-wing Zionist Zeev Jabotinsky formulated the doctrine in 1923. But all Israel's governments, including the Labour administrations of the country's first decades, have pursued it.

Gillard's support for Israel's ''right to self-defence'' is an endorsement of the iron wall.

The Arab Spring is revolutionising much of the Middle East, including Israel's neighbours Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The vast majority of Arab people want democracy and better living standards. And, unlike the dictators and kings who formally or informally came to terms with Israel, they have real sympathy for their Palestinian sisters and brothers. And Palestinian hope has never died.

Israel and the United States, which backed the dictators Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt and still backs Abdullah the absolute monarch in Jordan, are much more isolated in the Middle East today than two years ago. Israel is even more dependent on US military and diplomatic backing. The United States needs Israel more than ever, as its one really reliable, powerful and relatively stable ally in a region whose location and oil give it outstanding global strategic importance.

The Australian Labor government's minor shift on Palestine recognises that it is necessary to prop up the dictatorial Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, his Fatah party and its allies on the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority is invaluable to Israel. Shawan Jabarin, director-general of Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq, in Australia, this week said: ''To be honest, the Palestinian Authority serves the Israelis.'' The Palestinian Authority's ''security co-ordination'' with Israel is co-ordination in the repression of Palestinians. Without consulting the Palestinians, Abbas recently gave up on the Palestinian right of return.

Particularly after the Palestinians of Gaza resisted the latest Israeli attacks and were even able to secure some concessions from Israel, the credibility of the Palestinian Authority is at a low ebb. The government of Gaza is run by Fatah's equally dictatorial but less corrupt Islamist rival Hamas.

The success of the Palestinian Authority's project of gaining observer state status at the UN will be a small boost to its prestige and the declining plausibility of the two-state solution of the conflict in Palestine, which the Israeli, the US and Australian governments claim to support. That solution would leave Israeli apartheid in tact.

The ALP caucus deal no doubt also reflected other considerations much less directly connected with the Middle East. Bob Carr wanted to stay on the right side of some of the governments that voted for Australian membership of the UN Security Council in October.

Although the Labor left had wanted Australia to actually support Palestine's observer-state status, the caucus deal seemed to show that the left was not entirely irrelevant, through a concession on an issue of significance. The decision may help Labor hold some seats in Sydney with substantial Arab and Muslim populations. Finally, there has been a major shift in wider public attitudes in Australia to Palestine over the past three decades, as opposed to the solid bipartisan Zionism of the ALP and the Coalition.

But the government has been quite willing to ignore overwhelming public rejection of some of its policies, even on issues like equal marriage, where it figures that Australian national interests, that is, corporate interests, are not at stake.

Australia's abstention in the General Assembly vote is part of a strategy intended to advance those interests. Whether it will strengthen the capacity of the US government to impose its will on the world, and hence Australia's ability to call the shots in the south-west Pacific and south-east Asia, is another question.

Rick Kuhn wrote Labor's Conflict: Big Business, Workers and the Politics of Class with Tom Bramble and has been involved in the Palestine solidarity movement since the 1970s.

Israeli Apartheid Left Intact

Israel has seized more than $120m (£75m) in tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in response to last week's overwhelming vote at the UN general assembly to recognise the state of Palestine.

The move came as the PA president, Mahmoud Abbas, returned to cheering crowds in Ramallah in the West Bank following Thursday's vote, in which 138 countries backed enhanced "non-member state" status for Palestine. Only nine countries opposed the move and 41 abstained.

The financial sanction is Israel's second punitive response to the vote. On Friday, it announced a big settlement expansion programme.

An Israeli official said Israel was entitled to deduct the sum from a debt of more than $200m (£125m) owed by the PA to the Israel Electric Corporation. But he conceded that the move was in response to the UN vote, and that it could be repeated next month. "A lot depends on what the Palestinians do or don't do," he said.

The Israeli finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, told Israel Radio: "I do not intend this month to transfer the funds to the Palestinians. In the coming period I intend to use the money to deduct debts the PA owes to the Israel Electric Corporation and other bodies."

A spokeswoman for the PA declined to comment, saying Palestinian officials had not been officially notified of the move. But Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official, said Israel was guilty of "piracy and theft" by refusing to hand over the funds, according to news agency reports.

Israel had been expected to take punitive measures following the UN vote. A Palestinian official said the withholding of tax revenues was an "act of desperation" in the face of overwhelming international support for a Palestinian state.

In the past, Israel has frozen the monthly revenues as a sanction against the PA, resulting in the late payment of salaries for thousands of public servants in the West Bank and Gaza.

Sunday's decision followed the announcement – within hours of the UN vote – of a big settlement expansion programme, including the controversial development of highly sensitive land close to Jerusalem.

On Friday, Israel said it would build 3,000 new homes in settlements across the pre-1967 Green Line. It also said it would push ahead with the development of an area known as E1, which would close off East Jerusalem – the intended future capital of Palestine – from the West Bank. The announcement drew condemnation from the US and Britain.

Around 5,000 people gathered near the PA presidential compound in Ramallah on Sunday to greet Abbas on his return from New York. The world had said a loud "yes to the state of Palestine", he told the crowd. Among the chants from supporters were demands for reconciliation between the dominant and rival Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, and unity between the West Bank and Gaza.

At the Israeli cabinet meeting, Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said: "The PA's one-sided step at the UN constitutes a gross violation of the agreements that have been signed with the State of Israel; accordingly … Israel rejects the UN general assembly decision."

The country would "continue to build in Jerusalem and in all areas that are on the map of the strategic interests of the State of Israel", he said.

Israel Seizes $120m In Palestinian Tax Revenue Over UN Vote

“No, it doesn’t change things,” an insouciant Foreign Minister Bob Carr told the Weekend Financial Review after he led a successful revolt against Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s insistence that Australia vote against upgrading the status of Palestinians at the UN.

“Australia is, and always will be, a friend of Israel. They have their own democracy. They have a system that enables them to throw out prime ministers and ruling parties. They have the rule of law and their Supreme Court can overrule the government of the day on difficult issues.”

However, “good friends speak the truth to one another and, as a friend of Israel, we have a duty to highlight our concern about the settlement activity which is illegal under international law.”

Carr’s pro-Israel credentials date back to his formation of the Labor Friends of Israel group in 1977 which, along with one-time Labor prime minister Bob Hawke and prominent Liberals, maintained close relations with powerful members of the Jewish lobby such as businessmen Frank Lowy, Jack Liberman and the late Peter Abeles and lawyer Mark Leibler.

But at the end of the week it was Carr and Hawke, with former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans, who played such an effective role in lobbying caucus against taking a stand at the UN opposed to an upgraded Palestinian status.

Carr et al were responding to recent events concerning the Middle East conflict. Locally, these events have made headlines. But they have also become partial editorial road-kill due to the opposition‘s headline-grabbing race to link Gillard to illegal actions in helping set up a union-connected slush fund in the early ‘90s.

The first, unreported, event was a large social gathering in Sydney, where a group of prominent Maronite-Catholic Australians of Lebanese origin heavily lobbied members of cabinet to vote in favour of a UN resolution upgrading the Palestinian authority to “non-member state” status. The loud, vehement nature of their pro-Palestinian advocacy represented, among other things, a crude wake-up call to Labor politicians that there was now a complex mix of lobbying pressures in Australia related to the Middle East conflict.

The UN vote in New York on Friday morning Australian time was carried by 138 votes to nine, with 41 countries, including Australia, abstaining. This new “non-member” status at the UN might make it easier for the Palestinians to pursue Israel in legal forums like the International Criminal Court.

Palestinians view the vote as a symbolic endorsement for their cause. A growing group of Palestine supporters in Australia, including Australian Muslims, would have regarded any Australian “no” vote as one which effectively meant continued support for the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

A mark of the increasing sophistication of the local pro-Palestine-state lobbying effort is reflected in the fact that Ross Burns, a former Australian ambassador to Israel, appears at public events on behalf of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network.

“No one should doubt Australia’s commitment [to Israel]”, Burns says, “but Gillard is taking it all too literally by agreeing with everything [current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu wants.

“This is a very significant development in terms of the debate in Australia,” Burns says, due to the manner in which a hotly contested issue “has come out in favour of the Palestinians,” although Australia formally abstained in the vote.

Neither party in this conflict likes to dwell on simple statistics. But Burns’s comments also go to the fact that there are about five times as many Muslims in Australia as there are Jews, who number about 100,000. While nearly two-thirds of Australia’s Jewish population lives in Melbourne, the proportion of Muslims in Sydney is equally concentrated, where they enjoy significant electoral clout in federal seats in the city’s western suburbs like Werriwa and Blaxland.

Peter Manning, author of the book Us and Them: Media, Muslims and the Middle East, detects a move away from strong local public support for Israel in the ‘60s, ‘70s and early ‘80s, partly a result of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, quarantining of the Gaza Strip, and increased Israeli settlement of the occupied territories.

According to Manning in 2007, after the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon 68 per cent of those taking part in a poll had a negative view of Israel but two years later, after an Israeli invasion of Gaza, a more equal 24 per cent sympathised with Israel, 28 per cent with the Palestinians and 26 per cent with neither.

In 2010, according to Manning, another poll showed 55 per cent described the conflict as “Palestinians trying to end Israel’s occupation” while 32 per cent preferred “Israelis fighting for security against Palestinian terrorism’’. Last year, yet another poll showed sympathies were almost evenly divided, but 63 per cent were against settlers building on occupied land and 51 per cent thought we should vote ‘‘yes’’ for Palestinian statehood, compared to 15 per and 20 per cent “abstain’’.

For other reasons Friday’s UN vote resonates with those interested in post-war Australian history. It marked the 65th anniversary of an early UN General Assembly vote, with a strong role played by then Australian external affairs minister H.V. Evatt to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

At first blush, Australia does not even have bit-part status in international attempts to solve one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. But this sits awkwardly with the local tussle over our UN vote, Australia’s long history of involvement with Israel and, before that, the region known as Palestine.

Meanwhile, Julia Gillard last week sought to reassure the Jewish lobby with strong words of support in Parliament. However, such is the feeling about the Middle East that some senior ALP figures privately speculate that Gillard’s leadership might have been in jeopardy if she had not backed down on the Palestinian status at the UN issue.

Gillard wanted Australia to join the US, Israel, Canada and some small Pacific states in voting “no” to the Palestinian authority being granted “non-member” status at the UN but faced overwhelming resistance from Carr, at least nine other cabinet members, and Left and Right members of caucus.

The entrenched quality of Gillard’s position was, according to Leibler – national chairman of the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council – “an instinctive reaction when the [Hamas-launched] rockets [from Gaza] were landing specifically in civilian areas in Israel. This is unacceptable and you have a right to defend yourself.”

“Julia Gillard has understood the reality and has understood it from day one. She’s been less concerned about the company we keep, as distinct from doing the right thing in the circumstances.” Gillard has a long history of close connections with prominent figures who have close connections with Israel.

Albert Dadon, who runs the Australia-Israel Leadership Forum, which has annual meetings alternating in each country, included Gillard in his first group to Israel and, more controversially, employed her partner, Tim Mathieson, as a consultant before she became Prime Minister.

Leibler is more blunt: “Do we look at what other countries are doing and fit in or do we do the right thing?

“This PM has always been far more supportive of us than Bob Hawke. When Gareth Evans was foreign minister I was president of the Zionist Federation of Australia and even at that stage we had substantial issues with him.”

But “I don’t think one can draw conclusions about the Labor Party as a whole from this one vote. It’s not for me to comment on internal Labor party matters but there were a variety of factors at play, not all of them directly relevant to the issue on which the vote was taken.”

Friday’s UN vote “does have significance in the sense that this is an attempt by the Palestinians to achieve through unilateral means in breach of the Oslo accords something which will only be attained by direct negotiations,” Leibler said.

Meanwhile, the fight to achieve Doc Evatt’s cherished two-state solution goes on.

A Loss For The Jewish Lobby

from Antony Loewenstein …..

how the Australian zionist lobby corrupts political process (and politicians and reporters join in) …..

It’s nearly Christmas and that must mean yet another year of the Australia-Israel-UK Leadership Forum. The Australian media has virtually ignored the whole thing because they’re a) lazy b) not curious and c) clueless how to write about the shamelessness of witnessing so many politicians pall around with pro-occupation Israeli figures. These are the same sorry folk who in years to come will claim they were the finest opponents of Israeli criminality. As if.

We won’t forget.

The program is run by Australian Albert Dadon (the man has a history of being a younger face of the same, old Zionist lobby that re-hashes Israeli propaganda over a few glasses of chilled shiraz). This year former Israeli minister Avi Dichter appeared in London despite his deeply troubling past.

This off-the-record conference revolves around insulating against ever-growing voices damning Israeli violence and colonies. Keep having your secret meetings, people, Israeli actions are clear for the world to see.

JWire:

Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Minister for Homefront Security Avi Dichter and Sir Malcolm Rifkind were among the high-profile politicians and powerbrokers at a major conference of Australians, Israelis and British in England this week.

The Australia-Israel-UK Leadership Dialogue, founded and chaired by Melbourne-based businessman and philanthropist Albert Dadon, brought almost 50 leading opinion makers and shakers to London for a two-day off-the-record conference at the House of Commons.

Among the issues debated in the tri-lateral dialogue were Iran, the UN vote on Palestine, the Arab Spring and the BDS campaign.

Dadon said the idea for the conference was to discuss “issues of mutual strategic interest” and to help delegates understand the “difficulties facing our democracies”.

Dadon, a Melbourne business identity, founded the Leadership Dialogue in 2009 between Australia and Israel. In January, at the Leadership Dialogue in Jerusalem, he included British delegates for the first time.

Among the Australian delegates in London were Labor MPs Michael Danby, Mike Kelly and Bernie Rippoll and Liberals Kevin Andrews, Josh Frydenberg, George Brandis, Kelly O’Dwyer and Christopher Pyne.

Joining Olmert and Dichter among the Israelis were MKs Ronnie Bar-On,Nachman Shai and Ronit Tirosh. Silvan Shalom and Avi Dichter had to return to Israel early.

The UK delegation included John Spellar MP, James Arbuthnot MP and Stuart Pollak, the director of the Conservative Friends of Israel.

This is the sixth edition of the Leadership Dialogue, with previous sessions held in Australia and Israel. It is the first time it has been held in Britain.

The Jerusalem Post:

Home Front Defense Minister Avi Dichter will attend a gala dinner in London on Tuesday night, as part of the Australia-Israel-UK Leadership Dialogue (AIULD), a forum designed to strengthen the three-way relationship between Australia, Israel and the UK through bringing together opinion leaders and decision makers from each country.

Dichter will travel to London without fear from arrest. Last year the British government amended the controversial universal jurisdiction law, used by activists to obtain arrest warrants for alleged war crimes aimed at Israeli dignitaries who visit the UK.

The law previously allowed private complaints of war crimes to be lodged against military personnel even if they were not British citizens and the alleged crimes were committed elsewhere. High profile targets in recent years have been former foreign minister Tzipi Livni and outgoing Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Dichter will join MP Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia; former prime minister Ehud Olmert; and Alistair Burt, Foreign Office minister for the Middle East at the prestigious dinner in central London, organized by the London-based think tank The Henry Jackson Society.

The speakers are set to discuss topics of mutual geopolitical interest, bringing together perspectives from all three countries along with the global context.

The Australia-Israel Leadership Forum (AILF) was launched in 2009 when Australian Albert Dadon took a delegation of leading Australian politicians, academics, businesspeople and media to meet their counterparts in Israel. The trip was led by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who was then deputy prime minister.

In January 2012, UK participants joined the forum for the first time. The inaugural Australia- Israel-UK Leadership Dialogue included 15 senior politicians and decision makers from both government and opposition from all three countries along with key journalists.

Subjects that the group have discussed include national security, international relations, health, education, water technologies and climate change A two-day conference will kick off on Tuesday in parliament, organized by the Conservative Friends of Israel with AIULD delegates set to discuss an array of issues including the US leverage in the region following the presidential elections; working towards a two-state solution; the battle for Israel’s democracy, Arab Spring, Iran and the campaigning against Israel and how it is played out on campuses in Europe and Australia.

 How the Australian Zionist lobby corrupts political process (and politicians and reporters join in)