21 comments

1. WilliambtmDecember 10, 2023 at 2:15 pm

   How Smart are our nation’s leadership government to remain in an AUKUS military alliance attached to the most murderous nation’s on the entire of our planet Earth? (UK colonising Queen Victoria bloodletting era and the USA external wars initiated by their CIA And Pentagon)
   Not only is this insane policy the works of Australia’s elected leadership party officials, the US is currently plundering from Australia’s annual GDP for our Mickey Mouse Arms and Weapons procurements which is overseen by the US military retired US Defence officials now positioned on our Arms And Weapons military procurements board!!!

   Why our nation’s leaders continue to be so dumbschitt foolishly subjugated to the murderous & treacherous US of A will ever remain, is a question that has long been put forward by many of our non-government intellectuals.

   Australia lays in bed with the murderously treacherous, most untrusted, bankrupt ($34 Trillion dollars) nation ever known to exist, can someone tell me why?

2. Phil PryorDecember 10, 2023 at 2:19 pm

   The world’s deepest, twisted, evil superstition, and there are pretenders for the title, has driven Israelis to commit the foulest crimes in order to keep control of the original sin, Zionist pretension to be entitled to anything written in old scribble. Fantasy and fraud, fiction and filth. Anybody rational knows that there is no god, whether out of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Rome, Mecca, Delhi, Beijing, Canterbury Cathedral, Trump’s arse, the Pentagon, Wall St., and they ALL know that ALL the others are totally wrong. No personal appearances, DNA samples, Photos, fingerprints, honest reliable witnesses, NOTHING, and the world’s best ever telescopes and microscopes indicate all this is sense. Murder and theft for a line of fakery and preposterous myth is horrible crime, nothing else. But.., with two sides ready for a permanent punchup, for righteous supremacy, exclusive possession, it is on, always on.

3. Douglas PritchardDecember 10, 2023 at 2:43 pm

   The true cynic has to ask why the worlds policeman (self appointed) is prepared to challenge every conceivable notion of being civilized, abandoning all human values, and Washiington just does what it is told from Tel Aviv?
   It cant be military might because both Israel and USA only hold their positions by military strength.
   So if its not physical, is it some sort of knowledge blackmail that is going on?
   Does Israel know something about the workings of USA that they are not keen to see the light of day
   The US taxpayer is paying plenty of hush money , over a long time, and this is not simply swinging an election.
   Both USA, and Israel, are now out on a long, very slender limb, and the recruiting drive for Hamas , or something similar, has never been more robust.

4. LyndalDecember 10, 2023 at 3:27 pm

   So the arms dealer has decided that HAMAS is the terrorist group du jour, and is to be exterminated at any cost in its own treasure let alone the blood of innocents who get in the way. I should be glad the term, “collateral damage” is no longer in vogue.

   Can someone explain why what is happening in Gaza does not qualify to be named as “ethnic cleansing” ?

5. New England CockyDecember 10, 2023 at 4:35 pm

   Zionism is a 19th century political ideology borne of 1,000 years of persecution directed by Rome against the Jewish religion allegedly for ”crucifying JC. Naturally, the convenient error is that Christianity was originally a religion commenced in Palestine by/for Jews that was exported to Rome by Paul et al after the epiphany on the road to Damascus. Guess what?? JC was Jewish.

   Zionism is a colonial settler policy to give Zion@zis Palestinian land in the same way the 19th century European colonial powers forced themselves upon Africa, Asia, the Americas, NZ and Australia.

   The present Zion@zi government in Jerusalem has little interest in anything except ”pushing the Palestinians into the sea” to remove any claims of residential & commercial real estate to the incoming Zion@zi settlers.

   The present situation was likely encouraged by by the Zion@zi misgovernment to allow unmitigated genocide, or racial profiling, so that AFTER the ”war” the re-building programme using foreign investment form Europe & the Americas will provide housing for the fresh settlers.

   The Zion@zi misgovernment would push all Palestinians into the Egyptian desert where they would be housed in concentration camps as the responsibility of international aid agencies.

   Meanwhile, the US NE Military Industrial Complex directs their puppet US government to encourage more fighting that requires more weapon systems and so generates more profits for the American manufacturers & theose shareholders..

   Any country that has the USA (united States of Apartheid) as an ally and armaments supplier has little need for any other enemies.

6. Terence MillsDecember 10, 2023 at 4:42 pm

   I see the IDF is arresting all able bodied men in Gaza, stripping them to their underpants, blindfolding and cable tying their hands behind them and humiliating them. The IDF are not saying that these hundreds of men are Hamas fighters or even sympathisers just that they are men.

   The IDF have a sense of religious symbolism, wasn’t it Herod the Great, king of Judea, who ordered the slaughter of all male children two years old and under in case one grew up to challenge him ?

   Collective punishment seems to be their thing.

7. ClakkaDecember 10, 2023 at 5:47 pm

   Me being lazy again ….

   I wrote this on the 8th commenting on the ‘Oxfam’ article:

   “Aside from the millennia of hocus-pocus sectarian excuses applied to domination of the Levant, the reality is plainly one of geographic control of trade and commerce more often than not facilitated by military superiority. Although the west’s efforts through the ‘crusades’ failed, the byzantine mindset has never been far from front and centre.

   The west has demonstrated time and again via their various accommodations and controls on the Jewish diaspora, that commerce and trade is the sine qua non, with sectarian practice a suitable excuse to peddle to the god-fearing public. And for the west, as for those “crazy” Mongols, Persians,Turks, Arabs, Berbers and Saracens, who could ever seek to control them? Perhaps only the Jews particularly with their proven track record of wrangling the tribal theatres?

   Well, from the Great War onward, circumstance and opportunity coalesced and under the cover of blood, death and destruction, and the fog of war the plans evolved, along with the balance of power of the imperia. And so it has progressed under the full control of the west, never letting modernity get in the way of the old tried and tested colonialist m.o., especially when oil and gas continue to be the elixir to hegemony.

   The Levant is critical to the maintenance of the hegemony, not only now, but ever more so in the future with the inevitable rise of Africa. To suggest that the west’s arming and control of its suzerain is out of some noblesse oblige is absurd. And to suggest that the west does not observe and control in microscopic detail all the goings on is equally absurd.

   The entire business is yet another sordid, bleak and bloody story involving that hideous euphemism ‘collateral damage’. And in conjunction with proximity of the shadow-play that is COP28, one can be left in no doubt about the lengths of recklessness, brutality and carnage the wielders of power are prepared to exercise, and the lies peddled to give cover.

8. A CommentatorDecember 10, 2023 at 6:27 pm

   Once again, I’ll point out that those using provocative and exaggerated language aren’t looking for peace, they’re barracking for their side.
   If both sides were able to achieve a sense of respect for security and their borders there would be a basis for peace**
   The Oslo accords were an attempt, but they failed because plenty of people in both Israel and Palestine considered that too many concessions had been made.
   In the case of Palestine, the reaction saw the decline in support for the PLO and the rise of Hamas.
   **There are examples of the types of borders that are conceivable between Israel and Palestine. For example – Baarle-Nassau ( Netherlands and Belgium) and the enclaves within enclaves in Oman/UAE.

9. Michael TaylorDecember 10, 2023 at 6:44 pm

   Irrespective of that, AC, THIS POST is about an event in the last 24 hours. America played the arsehole. They should be called out.

   I have many American friends – Democrats – who are rightly disgusted.

10. A CommentatorDecember 10, 2023 at 7:02 pm

    On this occasion I wasn’t referring to the article, I was referring to use of terms such as “Zion@zi” and the associated rant.
    Should that simply be ignored?

11. Michael TaylorDecember 10, 2023 at 7:15 pm

    Oh, my error.

    I was referring to one of your other comments then. 😁

12. Keitha GranvilleDecember 10, 2023 at 7:31 pm

    How dare they !!!!! How bloody dare they !!!!! The USA is now complicit in every Palestinian death, in every square foot of destruction. The State of Israel is now WORSE than the Nazis. The world KNOWS what is happening in Gaza, we see it on our screens every day. I cannot believe that ordinary Israelis believe this is righteous and justified !!! And if they do, SHAME ON THEM ALL. A pox on Israel, it is very close to annihilating its own right to exist. The world might just do for Palestinians what was done for Jews at the end of WWII – they will be GIVEN a place, a nation, and much of it might just be much of what is now yours. ISRAEL MUST BE VERY CAREFUL WHAT ITS ACTIONS MIGHT SET IN MOTION.

13. CanguroDecember 10, 2023 at 8:49 pm

    It’s an entirely common aspect of individual opinion to take a point of view based on a limited perspective; ignorance, after all, being an almost default position of the majority, and almost certainly for those who lack the lived experience of the matters on which they postulate their views. Such would seem the case with respect to those who continue to champion the position of the Israelis in the current context of their unbridled slaughter of the Palestinians.

    It might be helpful to endeavour to understand the position of the Palestinians more acutely, more accurately. History furnishes much of value, if truthful sources are studied. Or if not actual ‘factual’ history – given the problematic issues surrounding historical writings per the biases of authors – perhaps novelised forms, and in this context I can think of no better a source than the author John Le Carre´ and his 1983 novel The Little Drummer Girl.

    If the exercise of reading the whole novel is too much to expect, then Chapter Ten ought to suffice; where the commentator will find Le Carre´ puts language such as the following excerpts into the mouths of his protagonists:

    ‘For the British,’ he tells you, ‘whoever fights the terror of the colonialist is himself a terrorist. The British are my enemies, all but you. The British gave away my country to the Zionists, they shipped the Jews of Europe to us with orders to turn the East into the West. Go and tame the Orient for us, they said. The Palestinians are trash, but they will make good coolies for you! The old British colonisers were tired and defeated, so they handed us over to the new colonisers who had the zeal and the ruthlessness to cut the knot. Don’t worry about the Arabs, the British said to them. We promise to look the other way while you deal with them.

    Over two million Christian and Muslim Arabs driven from their homeland and disenfranchised since 1948. Their houses and villages bulldozed—he tells you how many— their land stolen under laws they had no part in making—he recites the number of dunams—one dunam is a thousand square metres. You ask him and he tells you. And when they reach exile, their brother Arabs slaughter them and treat them like scum and the Israelis bomb their camps and shell them because they continue to resist. Because to resist being dispossessed is to be a terrorist, whereas to colonise, and to bomb refugees, to decimate a population—these are unfortunate political necessities. Because ten thousand dead Arabs are not worth one dead Jew.

    “There is not a Western liberal who will hesitate to speak out against the injustices of Chile, South Africa, Poland, Argentina, Cambodia, Iran, Northern Ireland, and other fashionable trouble spots. Yet who has the simple courage to tell out loud the cruellest joke in history: that thirty years of Israel have turned the Palestinians into the new Jews of the earth? You know how the Zionists described my country before they seized it? ‘A land without a people for a people without land.’ We did not exist! In their minds, the Zionists had already committed genocide; all that remained for them was the fact. And you, the British, were the architects of this great vision. You know how Israel was born? A European power made a present of an Arab territory to a Jewish lobby. And did not consult a single inhabitant of the territory concerned. And that power was Britain. Shall I describe to you how Israel was born?

    and further…

    “I was born of a patriarchal family in a village not far from the town of El Khalil, which the Jews call Hebron. El Khalil is a great centre for the pure faith of Islam. In Arabic the word means a friend of God. The people of El Khalil or Hebron are the élite of Palestine. And I will tell you a small joke that will make you laugh very much. There is a belief that the only place from which the Jews were never exiled is the Hebron mountain south of the city. It is therefore possible that Jewish blood flows in my veins. Yet I am not ashamed. I am not anti-Semitic, only anti-Zionist.”

    “Our village was famous for its figs and grapes, for its fighters, and for its women, as beautiful and obedient as you are. Most villages are famous for one thing only. Ours was famous for many. It was most famous of all, however, for the wise counsels of my father, who believed that Muslims should make a common society with Christians and Jews, exactly as their prophets lived harmoniously together in Heaven under one God.”

    “My father admired the Jews. He had studied their Zionism and he liked to summon them to our village and speak with them. He obliged my elder brothers to learn Hebrew. The Zionists will tell you we had no culture, that we did not exist. They will tell you we were degenerate and lived in mud huts and went about in stinking rags. They will tell you word for word the things that were formerly said of the Jews by the anti-Semites of Europe. The truth, in both cases, is the same: we were a noble people.

    “I refer to the war of ’48 as ‘the Catastrophe.’ Never the war—the Catastrophe. In the Catastrophe of ’48, I tell you, the fatal weaknesses of a peaceable society were revealed. We had no organisation, we could not defend ourselves against the armed aggressor. Our culture was tended in small communities, each one complete in itself, our economy also. But like the Jews of Europe before their Holocaust we lacked political unity, and this was our downfall, and too often our communities fought each other, which is the curse of Arabs everywhere and perhaps of Jews. Do you know what they did to my village, those Zionists? Because we would not flee like our neighbours?”

    “They made barrel bombs filled with petrol and explosives, and rolled them down the hill, setting fire to our women and children. I could talk to you for a week, just of the tortures of my people. Hands cut off. Women raped and burned. Children blinded.”

    “Once more I answer as if I saw it happen yesterday with my own eyes. In the small Arab village of Deir Yasseen on April 9, 1948, two hundred and fifty-four villagers—old men, women, and children—were butchered by Zionist terror squads while the young men were working in the fields. Pregnant women had their unborn children killed in their bellies. Most of the bodies were thrown down a well. Within days, nearly half a million Palestinians had fled their country. My father’s village was an exception. ‘We will stay,’ he said. ‘If we go into exile, the Zionists will never let us come back.’ He even believed you British would return to save us. He did not understand that your imperialist ambitions required an obedient Western ally to be implanted in the heart of the Middle East.”

    “For almost twenty years after the Catastrophe, my father clung to what was left of our village. Some called him stubborn, some foolish. Outside Palestine, his compatriots called him a collaborator. They knew nothing. They had not felt the Zionist boot on their necks. All round us in the neighbouring regions, the people were driven away, beaten, arrested. The Zionists confiscated their land, flattened their houses with bulldozers, and built new settlements on top of them in which no Arab was allowed to live. But my father was a man of peace and wisdom, and for a time he kept the Zionists from our doors.”

    “But in the war of ’67, as the tanks approached our village, we too fled across the Jordan. With tears in his eyes, my father called us together and told us to assemble our possessions. ‘The pogroms are about to begin,’ he said. I asked him—I, the smallest, who knew nothing—‘Father, what is pogrom?’ He replied, ‘What the Westerners did to the Jews, so the Zionists now do to us. They have won a great victory and they could afford to be generous. But their virtue is not to be found in their politics.’

    “ ‘I fight, therefore I exist,’ ” he announced quietly. “You know who said these words, Charlie? A Zionist. A peace-loving, patriotic, idealistic Zionist, who has killed many British and many Palestinians by terrorist methods, but because he is a Zionist he is not a terrorist but a hero and a patriot. You know who he was when he spoke these words, this peace-loving, civilised Zionist? He was the Prime Minister of a country they call Israel. You know where he comes from, this terrorist Zionist Prime Minister? From Poland. Can you tell me, please—you an educated Englishwoman, me a simple stateless peasant—can you tell me how it happened, please, that a Pole came to be the ruler of my country, Palestine, a Pole who exists only because he fights? Can you explain to me, please, by what principle of English justice, of English impartiality and fair play, this man rules over my country? And calls us terrorists?”

    There’s more, but these few excerpts concisely convey the seething sense of injustice suffered by the Palestinians at the hands of the Zionists and their American and English protectors, and they also give rationale as to why the term Zion@zi appears in this thread. As I’ve often averred, it’s necessary to step into another’s shoes and walk a mile with him before it even becomes remotely possible to understand his position.

14. Steve DavisDecember 11, 2023 at 7:19 am

    When AC says that NEC’s use of terms such as Zion@zi should not be ignored, just what is he saying?
    Let’s be frank, when Zionists act like nazis then they have to accept whatever condemnation comes their way.

    But more to the point, just what is AC thinking?
    Is he concerned that his favourite superpower might be tarnished by association with alleged nazi activities? It’s a bit too late for that to be a worry. The US has already made its choice.

    But there might be deeper underlying worry for AC.

    Given his determination elsewhere to link the separate tragedies in Gaza and Ukraine, is he struggling with an emotional and intellectual crisis to see the superpower that he supports as it prolongs the suffering of innocent people in Ukraine, suddenly being on the side of evil as it prolongs the suffering of innocent people in Gaza? Just how much prolonging of suffering can a reasonable person bear?
    Is he concerned by a nagging feeling that there appears to be a US pattern of behaviour here?
    Does he try to reconcile this?
    Does he disengage for a moment, stand back and ask, can my favourite superpower be both noble and evil at the same time?

    The questions that follow such a self-examination will become ever more difficult.

15. New England CockyDecember 11, 2023 at 7:24 am

    @ AC: You may be offended by ”Zion@zi”, I am offended by middle class armchair hypocrites endorsing the ” provocative and exaggerated” genocide of Indigenous Palestinians by followers of a 19th century colonial settler ideology, that in Australia, resulted in the racial profiling and attempted ethnic cleansing of Aboriginal persons ….. until well into the 20th century (some say 1967).
    .
    I am offended by a Prim Monster being allowed to remain in office while being investigated for alleged criminal actions.
    .
    I am offended that this Netanyahu Nakba has freely stated that the objective is to ”drive all the Palestinians into the sea”, or the Egyptian desert proposed concentration camps then under the responsibility of international aid agencies.
    .
    .I am offended that European & American investment bankers will rush to fund the re-building of Gaza and the West Bank for the benefit of fresh Zion@zi settlers on the lands of Palestinian s dispossessed & displaced with the military arms support from the USA puppet government who preach ”democracy” and practice everything but.
    .
    Just for the record, would you be so kind as to explain the difference between the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 where a N@zi storm-trooper was shooting Jewish teenagers with impunity and 2023 on the Gaza Strip where Palestinian teenagers are regularly shot by IDF with impunity?
    .
    The answer is 80 years. Both situations are genocide, only this time the jackboot is on the foot of the Zion@zis …..

16. A CommentatorDecember 11, 2023 at 9:45 am

    I’ve said repeatedly that there is no right side in this human tragedy.
    I’m not going to repeat a truncated history about why there is legitimacy in both claims to Palestine/Israel and why the war is so deeply entrenched.
    I will point out that 2 decades ago people were optimistic about the prospects for peace with the signing of the Oslo Accords.
    However the public on both sides considered too much had been conceded. The results was regression to war.
    On the Palestinian side the PLO lost huge public support and the result was the election of Hamas as the governing authority in Gaza.
    It was the written policy of Hamas –
    * Killing Jews is a responsibility
    * There is no place for Jews in Palestine
    * There can be no compromise
    * Reject all international efforts to find a solution
    As this was the written policy of Hamas, and it hardly makes sense to use Nazi labels on Israel in isolation

17. ClakkaDecember 11, 2023 at 10:46 am

    Thanks Canguro for your extracts from The Little Drummer Girl. I have it on my bookshelves, inherited from my fathers estate, and I’m now prompted t read it.

    In the history of the Levant, after the eras of conquests and power struggles involving the regional tribes, the Romans, the Greeks, central Asians and various others of Persia and the orient there can be no question of the persistent and divisive interference of the ‘west’. And on all occasions that interference was to gain control of trade, commerce and land, and typical of all colonialist ventures, under a sectarian cover. The Jews were pawns in their games, and were readily dispatched hither and yon as convenient ‘collateral damage’.

    From the Great War onwards through 1948, the ‘west’ continued to hone its filth, manipulate the remnant Jews, bringing them back to the ‘Holy Land’; all conquering Britain’s (and now also America’s) suzerain, to deal with those obstinate Palestinians and surrounding Saracens. And they progressively armed them to the teeth to ensure success of their strategic blockade. Of course, the French / British mandate was as incompetent and divisive as the later UN resolution 101 – incompetent and divisive by design.

    Today, nothing has changed, except the dogged determination of Israel to wipe all comers or remainers from the map is more assured by the ballistic and technological supplies advanced to it by the masters of the suzerain. What an astounding, internecine, self-fulfilling bloodbath of a collaboration.

    To me it appears that it is seen as the most critical strategic patch of turf on the planet, and to that extent nothing and no-one will be spared to keep it armed to the teeth and to maintain control of it.

    To think that the 5-eyes (Or is it in this case 6-eyes?) aren’t inextricably involved, and aware and controlling of every minute detail of operations there is ludicrous. To the extent that their cover is on the precipice of being mangled by the lunacy of the crazed and incompetent Netanyahu and Likud is no surprise. One gets a compounded evil, when one uses evil as currency to buy into a deal.

    Once in a world of millions only, children were sacrificed to El’s Baal, Yahweh et al, the progression of lessons from the writs of history seem not to temper the actions of madmen and their consorts. Today in a world of billions, we witness live on-screen the sacrifice of children, innocence and the future by the selections of greedy madmen and their consorts, who now, in a revamped euphemism, disgustingly call it collateral damage.

    Yet the truth of it all goes on being concealed by the divisive lies peddled by the increasingly corrupted and crumbling excuse for a mainstream fourth estate, and those remaining unreconstructed participants in sectarian collaboration with power and dominion.

    Other than the ineffable press of man-made infertility, there appears to be little evidence of just how and when the despotic dregs of colonialism, hegemony and war are going to be neutered.

18. New England CockyDecember 11, 2023 at 11:01 am

    @ AC: You attempt to defend the indefensible. ”Gaza. It was the written policy of Hamas – * .
    .
    Killing Jews is a responsibility
    .
    How many Palestinians were killed, or dispossessed and displaced by the first 1948 Nakba?
    .
    There is no place for Jews in Palestine
    .
    .
    There is no place in Palestine for land stealing Zion@zis <
    .
    There can be no compromise
    .
    The Zion@zis have refused to compromise since at least 1948, and the Netanyahu Nakba strategy has been stated as aiming ”to drive Palestinians into the sea”.
    .
    Reject all international efforts to find a solution
    .
    The Zion@zis reject or delay any attempts at a two state solution
    .
    As this was the written policy of Hamas, and it hardly makes sense to use Nazi labels on Israel in isolation”
    .
    This is the real life track record of successive Israeli governments, especially the too many Netanyahu governments that now include FRWNJs.

19. Steve DavisDecember 11, 2023 at 11:04 am

    AC says he is “not going to repeat a truncated history about why there is legitimacy in both claims to Palestine/Israel and why the war is so deeply entrenched.”

    Of course he won’t.

    To explain why the war is so deeply entrenched would require admitting the role of his favourite superpower in prolonging the suffering.

    If the US had not propped up Israel financially and militarily for decades, geographic, demographic and political realities would have forced Israel to live in peace.

    Israel is playing its allotted role as a vassal of the US empire. Its role is not to live in peace, its role is to prevent the emergence of a regional power bloc that would reduce US influence in a central hub of global trade and resource management.

    As Australia becomes more deeply entangled in the warm embrace of the US with each month that passes, let there be no doubt that the time will come when we will be called upon to play a similar role.

20. A CommentatorDecember 11, 2023 at 2:13 pm

    And yet there is no acknowledgement that the path to peace -the Oslo Accords – fell apart because people on both sides thought too many concessions had been made.
    The PLO, previously a terrorist organisation, was too moderate and accommodating for the people of Gaza. They elected an organisation with the written policy of killing Jews and eliminating Israel.
    It is wilful ignorance of overlook this fact.
    There is no right side in this human tragedy

21. Douglas PritchardDecember 11, 2023 at 2:39 pm

    AC,
    If you sincerely want peace then the stop the flow of armaments from your favourite world power to Israel.
    This could equally be said of the Ukraine conflict which only continues while USA is subsiding war.
    The conflict could have been short lived without outside interference.
    In the ME they could hammer out a settlement over a table rather that letting loose the Zionist vision being imposed by those who benefit financially.