Hypocrisy at the United Nations Human Rights Council

After the carnage. A seat on the UNHRC of course.

Surprise, surprise.

Syria murders 500 of its own civilians and the human rights world barely blinks an eye - UN council issues tepid rebuke of Syria. Does it want to avoid another Libya?

This article suggests that UNHRC's watered-down condemnation of Syria for its attacks on civilian protesters came about because it wanted to avoid a repeat of the Libyan disaster.

A better suggestion would be that the Syrians are our buddies and the Assad family can butcher as many of its own as it wants. Now let's get down to the business of condemning Israel for defending itself.

Hamas and Fatah kiss and make up

A single sentence from the Australian's Middle East correspondent John Lyons in Hamas and Fatah kiss and make up tells us everything we need to know about the state of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians in the wake of the announcement that bitter rivals Hamas and Fatah are "joining forces".

Hamas publicly supports violent "resistance" against Israel while Mr Abbas publicly opposes violence.

The emphasis is on what Abbas opposes publicly.

Can you really be publicly opposed to violence and at the same time honour suicide bombers?

The truth is now nailed to the floor

There's a brilliant piece from Howard Jacobson in the Independant - Ludicrous, brainwashed prejudice

The truth is now nailed to the floor. Jews went through hell only to build a hell for others. Trying arguing otherwise and you are an apologist for that hell.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SYRIA

OK, so the death toll of demonstrators against the dictator Assad has passed 400.

Yawn

OK, so Syria is the frontrunner for a place on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Yawn

OK, boycott, anyone?

Yawn

OK, no fly zone?

Yawn

Good night.

CUT, PASTED AND BYRNED

This is the absolute last coverage that dim wit Byrne gets here (at least until the next time she opens her mouth)

From Cut and Paste in the Australian:

Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne on boycotting Israel, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 18:

The campaign has widespread support from organisations and individuals including the peace activist Desmond Tutu.


Not to mention The Australian Jewish News, April 22:

Thanks Fiona! . . . The backlash against her boycott resolution has not only rallied political parties against the policy but has created unprecedented public awareness of the Jewish state's achievements.

PASSING OVER

More magic from Yaakov Kirschen's drybonesblog

Marrickville admits Israel sanctions pointless: plans full nuclear strike

According to Chaser, Fiona Byrne's intended purchase is already painted green

This is supposed to be a fiction but the people at Chaser have the unprincipled loons at Marrickville Council pegged just about right.

Having been shamed into rescinding the divisive, racist stance taken with their BDS policy, the idiots compounded their stupidity with a one-sided resolution condemning, among other things, "the Wall" and confirming their ignorance about the Israel/Arab conflict as if there ever was any doubt.

Israel's security barrier is not a "Wall". A small length of the barrier is walled but only those parts where it's necessary to prevent terrorists from firing at Israeli civilians. The barrier has saved Israeli lives but Fiona Byrne and her council don't care about Israeli lives - they proved it with their resolution which ignored the murder of an Israeli family in Itamar, the bus bombing in Jerusalem, the fatal school bus attack near Gaza, the firing of countless missiles at southern Israel, the racial incitement and calls for genocide by Palestinian leaders.

Byrne and her acolytes at Marrickville deserve this because it sums them up perfectly:

Marrickville admits Israel sanctions pointless: plans full nuclear strike

Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne has conceded that her council’s plan to impose sanctions on Israel will have no impact on its troubled relationship with Palestine. But Byrne remains committed to the Palestinian cause, and has threatened that unless Israel complies with UN resolutions, Marrickville will launch an atomic assault on it.

It just keeps on getting better from there.

They surf in prison?

Thanks to Israelycool blog, here's the lastest offering from unhinged Israel basher Kevin O'Keefe in Gaza. "KOK" is so putrid that even the usual ISM crowd loathe his presence -

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY AT THE ZOO

I'm informed that although it's Good Friday today, today's masthead says "THE SATURDAY AGE".

I know times are tough and they have problems but did they really have to consign the entire Friday edition to the blank pages?

NEED I SAY ANY MORE?

The hangers on and apologists of the Hamas regime who claim the organisation is not a hateful and racist movement should take a look at this piece of bigotry - The "Jewish state" and us

"Jewish text books prevent the achievement of peace with the Arabs," wrote Dr Eli Budya, a lecturer at the University of Haifa. Russian journalist Dmitri Sumakov, who specialises in international drugs control, claims that "Israel is one of the most important world centres for the drugs trade and this trade is linked to senior Israeli officials". During an academic conference held in Kiev, Ukrainian academics accused Israeli companies of kidnapping 25,000 Ukrainians for their organs.

Need I say any more?

DOUBLE STANDARDS DAY

DOUBLE STANDARD NUMBER THREE:

Greens forced to back down on Israel boycott

Shame on the three councillors who voted to continue with a boycott.

She on those who who gloat that "thanks to (Marrickville mayor) Fiona Byrne, they have put BDS on the national agenda". Rubbish, BDS is now dead in the water and accepted by the majority of observers as a poisonous, divisive programme designed to prevent a peaceful two state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Shame on the delusional Loewenstein who tweeted that Byrne entered the Marrickville Council chambers to "thunderous applause". I'm reliably informed that Byrne had her fan club there who cheered her entrance but there were also boos from different parts of the audience. Of course, had the meeting been held on an ordinary day and not one on which Jews celebrate their holy day of Passover, the boos would almost certainly have been thunderous too.

Shame on the Marrickville Council for having a boycott in the first place and then ignoring the missile attacks on Israeli civilian targets, including the firing of an anti-tank missile at a clearly marked schoold bus (killing a 16 year old boy), for its silence on the incitement to hatred in the Palestine Authority and from Hamas, for not commenting on the bombing attack which killed a bible translator in Jerusalem or having an opinion on the capture of a boatload of lethal weapons bound for Gaza. Shame for their support of the disgusting, racist BDS policy aimed at deligitimising and dehumanising the people of Israel while they are under attack from those who would commit genocide against them.

That's what I call a double standard.

DOUBLE STANDARDS DAY

DOUBLE STANDARD NUMBER TWO:


The death of any individual should never be cheered, especially a gruesome death such as that which fate dealt to so-called "peace activist" Vittorio Arrigoni who was slain by Salafist extremists in Gaza last week. Arrigoni was an ISM mover and shaker of the second tier (which means he didn't make Paul McGeough's notorious list in that pathetic six page Age Good Weekend lift out last year). Irrespective, ISM operatives like Arrigoni are not advocates of peace. They support the fascists thugs who rule Gaza and they are racists to boot.

The above picture is from Arrigoni’s Facebook account. It shows a shop window in Jordan. The sign reads “Sorry we do not receive dogs and Israelis”.

Arrigoni’s comment is this:

It may be excessive, but if Palestinians cannot get out, why
should entrance be conceded to Israelis?

Judge for yourself as to whether the deceased was a man of peace or not.

Hat tip: Harry's Place - Amnesty’s Claudia Milani and “Our Fearless Captain”

DOUBLE STANDARDS DAY

DOUBLE STANDARD NUMBER ONE:

It is believed that thousands of civilians died in the final bloody months of the three-decade conflict in Sri Lanka between Sri Lankan government forces and the rebel Tamil Tigers. Estimates range between the United Nations' strongly contested figure of 7,000 to 60,000 civilian deaths from January to May 2009. At the end of the war, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution commending the Sri Lankan government for ending the war but which failing address allegations of misconduct by government forces.

So despite the fact that the number of civilian deaths was around one hundred times the number in Israel's Operation Cast Lead launched to put an end to Palestinian terrorists firing missiles at Israeli civilian targets, there was no Goldstone, no UNHRC condemnation of Sri Lanka or the Tamil Tigers and no dehumanisisng of the Sri Lankan people or their government. No allegations of war crimes and no signs of cried of hatred directed towards Jews or Israelis.

Read about the double standard in today's Australian - UN called to account on war in Sri Lanka

Just a routine crime

This report from the Age makes the Itamar massacre sound like a teenage frolic - Teens held over killings

Strange that there isn't the usual Age background about the conflict. No mention of the atmosphere of incitement to violence created by a Palestine Authority that celebrates Jew killers.

Ehud Fogel, his wife, Ruth, and three of their children, Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, a three-month-old girl, died.

It's true that Hadas "died" but before she died the barbarians slit her throat and virtually decapitated her.

PASSING OVER

HAMAS FORCES ARRESTING

One would have to be delusional to describe Vittorio Arrigoni a "peace activist" but it at least there has been an arrest - Hamas forces arrest four over execution of peace activist. Two points of interest from this article -

Hamas officials called the killing of Vittorio Arrigoni "a shameful act, contrary to the tradition of the Palestinian people".

Two weeks ago Hamas admitted to attacking a clearly marked yellow Israeli school bus with an anti-tank missile killing a 16 year old boy. If that's how Hamas which was elected in some long ago election to rule the Palestinians behaves, then the brutal murder of Arrigoni is very much in tune with tradition!

Two years ago, hundreds of Hamas fighters attacked a mosque during prayer services in which the leader of one of these groups announced the creation of an Islamic "emirate" in southern Gaza. In the shootout, 24 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.

Hamas attacked a mosque during prayer services and killed 24 worshippers? Why wasn't the Age told?

ITAMAR ARRESTS

Haaretz Newspaper reports that two Palestinian teenagers from a West Bank village have been arrested over last month's Itamar massacre.
- Two teens from West Bank village arrested over Itamar massacre.

This rules out as baseless the claim made after the crime was committed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas that the murders were committed by Thai workers who were employed at Itamar.

No apology is expected to be forthcoming, nor do we expect this to make it out of the Blank Pages.

MICHELANGELO RECANTS

First it was Goldstone, now Michelangelo has recanted with an amended version of The Last Supper

AN UNUSUAL JEW AND A JEW HATER

Benny Morris on the murder of an unusual "Jew", Julian Mer-Khamis - Activist-Actor's Tragic Murder in Palestine

The murder casts a bleak light on prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Many Israelis and some Palestinians may talk about eventual peace. But Mer-Khamis, who embodied Israeli-Arab co-existence, splitting his life between Haifa and Jeninin in the end fell victim to those who would uproot both Israel and the Jews from the country, those who won the Palestinian parliamentary general elections in 2006. What the murder tells Israelis is that whatever moderate, or pretend-moderate Palestinian voices enunciate, peaceful intent and propagation will always, ultimately be drowned out, and overpowered, by the fundamentalist true believers and their Brownings.

Mer-Khamis supported a one-state solution; "If the Jews want to live among us [Arabs], ahalan wasahalan [they are welcome]", but the murder doesn't bode well for the prospect of either one or two states living in peace with each other.

Yesterday, another hater was killed in Gaza. ISM activist Vittoria Arrigoni who hated Israel with a passion was kidnapped by Salafist goons and apparently died in a bungled shootout with Hamas thugs. The Hamas Interior Ministry denounced the killing as "a heinous murder which does not represent our religion, values and costume" while the PA condemned the murder for harming the Palestinian cause. Others have blamed Israel but then they always do, don't they?

Whether the murder was just plain evil is apparently not an issue for either Hamas or the PA and, as far as some in our local media are concerned, because the story is a Palestinian bad news story it has been consigned to the Blank Pages.

LETTER OF THE WEEK

Marrickville resident Sandra K. Eckersley makes a good point in today's Australian:

Marrickville Greens must be tired of the derision caused by the Israel boycott and be keen to return to their core activity, already flagged in council, being to secure independence for the people of West Papua.

ABOUT FACEBOOK

THE GREENS' CREDIBILITY PROBLEMS PERSIST

Revelations in yesterday's Australian about Greens Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon being forced to admit that she marched in protest with Taj Din al-Hilali after initially denying any association with the controversial Islamic cleric have further tarnished the party's image - Rhiannon marched with Hilali.

What was she thinking?

Was she worried about this headline - Covered Meat marched with Hilali?

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN

Another magnificent contribution from Yaakov Kirschen's Dry Bones Blog

... and speaking of dry bones, here are some dry bones being used as human shields -

THE MISAPPROPRIATION OF WORDS

The ridiculous Israel Apartheid movement has received another blow last week.

This time at the hands of African-American student leaders from a variety of historically black colleges and universities who took out full page ads in numerous American college newspapers displaying an "Open Letter to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)," to convey that they were offended by SJP’s use of the term "apartheid" at recent Israel Apartheid Week events at campuses across the country - Black student leaders slam 'apartheid' characterization

KA BOOM

Now all they need is a system that returns missiles back to their original source but then again, somebody is going to say that the use of such a weapon is a war crime because it targets the "civilians" originally firing them.

A DAILY SHOW RIPPER

The Daily Show - Libya Majora
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

THE WEALTHY PALESTINIANS

Maan Newsagency picture of Palestinian "poverty".

They don't have oil but the Palestinians appear to have the best propaganda machine that money can buy. Although, we are constantly being told that Palestinians are impoverished by such things as Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip (to prevent lethal arms from getting to Hamas such nas those used two days ago to attack a school bus), Maan Newsagency tells us that the Palestinians have a percentage of home ownership of over 80% which puts them near the top of the world. PCBS: 84% of Palestinians are homeowners Hat tip: Israellycool

UGLY DOUBLE STANDARDS

Today's Age has an Op Ed from Jonathan Freedland - The ugly double standard behind the Goldstone Report, a very balanced and sensible opinion piece coming from the Guardian and from a journalist who got things so wrong with his recent coverage of the Palestine Papers. There's also a marvelous cartoon from Spooner that makes fun of Goldstone's current predicament.

What a pity it is that the Age's own coverage of the conflict isn't as balanced as Freedland's piece!

The news reports filed on the Hamas attack on an Israeli school bus by the Australian and the Age highlight the difference between honest reporting and poor agenda based journalism that has had the effect of making terrorist thugs look respectable. Remember, this is about an attack on a school bus with an anti-tank missile.




John Lyons in the Oz - School bus attack may spark Gaza war

THE possibility of another Gaza war heightened yesterday after Hamas used an anti-tank missile to hit a school bus in Israel and fired a further 50 rockets.

Last night, tensions between Israel and Hamas reached a new high after Hamas claimed responsibility for hitting the bus and injuring the driver and a 16-year-old boy.

Israel immediately responded with air attacks on Gaza which Palestinian media said killed five people and injured dozens.

The missile was a Russian-made laser-guided Kornet. Most missiles from Gaza are often made locally from scrap metal and are usually inaccurate.

Hamas said last night it had convinced most of the armed factions in Gaza to agree to a ceasefire but Israel made it clear there would be further retaliation. The attack on the school bus appeared to have been intentional, given that the missile was laser-guided, and unleashed public outrage in Israel.

That's the news story. Here is what the Age published - Israel plans more strikes in Gaza Strip

Instead of a photograph of the burned out school bus or the type of missile that Hamas fired at it (heaven forbid that the sensibilities of Age readers should be hit with pictures of a school bus targeted by Palestinian terrorists), we are treated to a photograph of the wreckage of a car in far away Port Sudan with a brief mention that "Palestinian militants fired 45 rockets into Israel on Thursday, one targeting a school bus and critically injuring a 16-year-old boy," before the article moves on to other things.

Militants?

Good grief. What pack of bastards would refuse to identify as "terrorists" a government that openly admits to attacking a school bus with an anti-tank missile?

Ugly double standards indeed!

Celebrating the massacre of the truth

It's been a long week but the Palestine Lobby's Israel Apartheid Week is now officially over and it's time to move on to the commemoration of the so-called Deir Yassin massacre. A large body of mythology has developed over the events that took place at Deir Yassin outside Jerusalem 62 years ago. The PL version is, as usual, skewed away from the factual. Deir Yassin was an Arab village from which their was constant sniping at Jewish travellers and which had been infiltrated by Iraki soldiers by April 1948. According to this article in the Jeruslem Post -

The attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem (today, the Har Nof neighborhood) was not, as claimed, a "massacre" nor was it a premeditated killing. As we now know from Arab sources and other independent research, (see Bregman, Ahron & El-Tahri, Jihan, "The Fifty Years War, Israel and the Arabs," Penguin Books, BBC Books, London, 1998. pp. 27-34 and Klein, Morton A., “Deir Yassin History of a Lie, ZOA, NY 2005) the number of dead at the village was between 93 and 110, at the most. All of them were killed during the course of the battle, in house-to-house fighting. There were no mutilations or atrocities caused to the corpses as per testimony from the villagers themselves. The attacking combined force of Irgun and Lehi units brought with them a loudspeaker to the village entrance to warn the inhabitants. They also left an escape route open, which led to Ein Karem, so as not to have to harm the inhabitants unnecessarily and hundreds took advantage of this Jewish act of kindness in battle. All these preparations and actions belie any intent of a massacre. ... The fighters were instructed before the attack specifically not to harm unarmed civilians. The survivors were provided transportation to the Old City of Jerusalem and no physical injury was done to them after the surrender. True, the battle itself was not conducted with the utmost professionalism. The underground combatants were not fully trained in urban warfare of this type. The house-to-house character of the fighting, the shooting from within the homes and the lack of knowledge of who was in the houses, all led to the use of dynamite rather indiscriminately causing thus many of the deaths. The portrayal in another recent docudrama, “The Promised Land” shown on Britain's’ Channel Four, is so ludicrous as to be a stain on film professionalism. The battle at the village, part of the “Nahshon” campaign to relieve Jerusalem of the siege the Arabs were applying to the city by blocking the main highway, was approved by the Hagana commander. Deir Yassin provided a base for the Arab attacks on the Castel and the Histadrut Davar newspaper issue of April 4, 1948, contained a report that the previous Friday night, shots from snipers had been fired from Deir Yassin towards Bet Hakerem and Bayit VeGan Jewish neighborhoods (see here). A local Palmach unit provided mortar support fire at one point. Claims of rape, butchering of bodies and other atrocities is simply not true.

BUS

The Harry's Place blog has a piece about the  anti-tank missile fired from Gaza hitting an Israeli school bus – Pictures: Israel Bus Attack

The author makes the point that you won't be seeing much in the mainstream media of the bus or the victims of the attack (who include a 16 year old teenager pictured above) or that this was just one of about four-dozen rockets fired into Israel from Gaza yesterday.

Naturally, Hamas which controls the region from which the missiles were fired, will not carry out an investigation or do anything to prevent the attacks (and I'm not discounting the likelihood that Hamas itself was behind the attacks).

"In any other situation, in any other county, it would be considered a barrage, and certainly an act of war. But of course it’s Israel and it is just something the world expects the Israelis to put up with."

You will, of course, see or read about the aftermath. That's right, although the victim of the bus attack will not be given a name in the media, you will soon discover in detail the nature of Israel's retaliation (clearly "aggression") and you will be told about the magnanimous gesture of terrorist leaders calling for a cease-fire a la Ghaddafi's Clayton's cease-fire of convenience in Libya which was never intended to be honored or achieved but nice guys who target school buses just don't get the publicity they deserve these days.

Israel boycott harms Arabs, too

An important article on BDS from Philip Mendes, Nick Dyrenfurth and Suzanne Rutland - Israel boycott harms Arabs, too

MORE ON GOLDSTONE

Marty Peretz on Goldstone - Tel Aviv Journal: Richard Goldstone Recants a Blood Libel

Goldstone was crystal clear in his Washington Post disavowal of the report’s accusations of intentional killing by Israel of non-Hamas Palestinians: “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” Hamas’s rockets, by contrast, “were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.” Here is the judge’s pathetic confession: “If I had known then what I know now, the ‘Goldstone Report’ would have been a different document.” But why didn’t Goldstone and his fellow judges know? Well, for one thing, two of his three companions on the U.N. Human Rights Council judicial panel on Gaza—Christine Chinkin of the London School of Economics and Hina Jilani, a Pakistani jurist—had already condemned Israel even before the hanging court had been formed. And Richard Falk, the Council’s designated rapporteur on these issues, has been nothing less than an enemy of the Jewish state for decades. You don’t believe me? Google Falk and Israel. There will be no surprises. Anyway, the Council endorsed the report by a margin of 25 to 6. Were you surprised by that?

He continues ...

There should be many shamed faces in the crowd. The foreign high priest of the Palestinian cause is Desmond Tutu, who, like his rival Jimmy Carter, finds no charge against Israel too preposterous to leave to, well, the gagasphere. But they have neither been heard from on Goldstone nor explained their silence. The Financial Times, which is the most consistent and hyperbolic critic of Israel in the United Kingdom, initially went bananas in praise of the “Goldstone Report.” It has now welcomed the jurist’s mea culpa, but reiterated its criticism of Israel. Human Rights Watch? Ditto. Stephen Walt, Juan Cole, John Esposito, Naomi Klein, Michael Lerner, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, J Street (which peddled the report door-to-door on Capitol Hill): I predict that not one of them will come clean. As is the case with the Israeli “peace left”: not Peace Now, not the New Israel Fund, not B’tselem, not Agudah Lezchuyot Haezrch. And not Ha’aretz, either. They have too much invested in Goldstone’s original lie.

The Age goes into damage control over Goldstone

Having given prominence to the Goldstone Report on a number of occassions since it was first issued in 2009, the Melbourne Age is doing its best to keep it alive despite admissions by its author Richard Goldstone in a Washington Post Op Ed that 
"civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy" by Israel and that "if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

Jason Koutsoukis today fashions an interesting spin on Goldstein's backtracking in Goldstone rejects Israeli allegation highlighting a disagreement between Israel's Interior Minister and Goldstone over whether the Judge said he would move to rescind his critical United Nations report on Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza two years ago.

"After writing last week in The Washington Post that new information had come to light that made him rethink some of his conclusions, Judge Goldstone said he still stood by most of the final draft that was published in September 2009".

"Further information as a result of domestic investigations could lead to further reconsideration," Goldstone said. "But as presently advised I have no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time."

We all know now that this is utter nonsense. Any reading of Goldstone's Op Ed makes it obvious that the creator of the Goldstone Report believes that it is now flawed beyond redemption and that it has cut the ground from under those who wrongfully allege war-crime charges against Israel.

Further, (and in true blank pages fashion Koutsoukis fails to mention this) Goldstone has categorically stated that his hopes, "even if unrealistic, that Hamas would" investigate the launching of rocket and mortar attacks into Israel have been unheeded and "that the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying."

Hamas continues to be the benefactor of kindly reporting from the Fairfax organisation and one must ask "why"? It routinely ignores reports of the arrest of Hamas operatives for involvement in terror such as this one. In Actor-director mourned we are told for the second time in two days about the murder "by suspected militants" of of Israeli-Palestinian actor, theatre director and filmmaker Juliano Mer-Khamis but nowhere does it mention that the prime suspect was once a member of Fatah who subsequently defected to Hamas. Either way, it's good to know that the Age believes that assassins are mere "militants" and not "terrorists".

As far as Richard Goldstone’s Report is concerned, it clearly belongs in the sewers with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Goldstone has discredited himself and the libels directed against the Jewish State in the wake of Operation Cast Lead have been exposed as lies.

Nothing will change that now.

BROWN SITS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE

In his own words from Cut & Paste:-

CUT & PASTE

I oppose the boycott of Israel. Bob Brown, April 1:

THE NSW Greens have taken to having their own shade of foreign policy. That's up to them. It was a mistake. I differ with Lee [Rhiannon] on that and she knows that, and so do the other components of the NSW Greens who handled so badly that part of the campaign against my advice.

Really? Senate Hansard March 23:

SENATOR [Mitch] Fifield (Victoria -- manager of opposition business in the Senate) -- I move: That the Senate -- (a) notes: (i) the boycott of Israel instigated by Marrickville Council part of the Global Boycott Divestments and Sanctions banning any links with Israeli organisations or organisations that support Israel and prohibiting any academic, government, sporting or cultural exchanges with Israel, (ii) letters from Marrickville Council to members of parliament asking them to support the GBDS, and (iii) reports of the intention of the Greens Marrickville Mayor, Ms Fiona Byrne, to seek to extend the boycott of Israel to the entire state of NSW; (b) acknowledges that Israel is a legitimate and democratic state and a good friend of Australia; and (c) denounces the Israeli boycott by Marrickville Council and condemns any expansion of it.

Question agreed to.

Senator Bob Brown (Tasmania -- Leader of the Australian Greens) (4.06pm) -- I ask that the Australian Greens' opposition to this motion be recorded.

Israel has its day of atonement

The editorial in today's Australian on the Goldstone Report and on the repercussions of Goldstone's moment of truth is spot on - Israel has its day of atonement. The Israel bashers will continue doing what they do best - it will be business as usual as they continue to tell lies and spread their anti-Israel rhetoric. The more ignorant will even continue to rely on the Goldstone Report as they have done with Al Dura, Jenin and the Gaza flotilla as if nothing as happened to rebut the falseness. They will not repent.

CAMERA UNCOVERS BBC LIES

CAMERA uncovers how the BBC reveals a complete disregard of its own Editorial Guidelines defending an egregiously one-sided and inaccurate documentary about Jerusalem - BBC Ethics Unveiled: Lies About Jerusalem, Lies About Guidelines

GOLDSTONE RECANTS

Richard Goldstone has finally admitted that he was gravely wrong in suggesting that Israel might have committed war crimes in his infamous Goldstone Report - Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes.

He blames Israel in part for not co-operating with his commission but as we know the terms of reference given to the commission were slanted from the start.

"The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that 'Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza' while 'the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.'"

Even as news of Goldstone's retractions was emerging, anti-Israel propagandists were bleating that Goldstone proved the Jewish State's inhumanity while turning an eye to Hamas war crimes.

The conclusions of McGowan Davis and of Goldstone are so damning of Hamas that they must see the light of day in much of this enlightened world's media which has to start accepting that there is no end to the blood libels of the anti-Israel side and that the BDS movement, Israel:Apartheid and the coming Nakba accusations are nothing short of vicious and racist blood libels.

GREENS' ISRAEL STANCE "HYPOCRITICAL"

Greg Sheridan is right on the button here - Party's Israel stance 'hypocritical'

THE Rhiannon Green position in favour of boycotting Israel is deeply offensive in principle and profoundly hypocritical.
It must go very close to being outright anti-Semitic because it applies standards to the Jewish state which it applies to no other state on Earth.

On any standard, on democracy, rule of law, an independent media, a vibrant civil society, equality for women, academic independence and free speech, Israel stacks up well.

Its unique security circumstances force it to take tough security actions from time to time, which certainly deserve to be assessed from a human rights point of view. And Israel is certainly not above criticism.

But even if everything that is alleged against Israel is true, and only a tiny portion of it is, how come the Greens don't want to back a boycott against Russia for its treatment of the Chechens?

A SAD STORY

The Daily Show - The Thin Jew Line
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

More problems for Marrickville Council

Today's Australian reports that the NSW Greens-led Marrickville Council boycott illegal according to Israeli trade commissioner Ehud Gonen.

In addition, Greens leader Bob Brown has finally and quite rightly distanced himself from the NSW Greens' policy for a boycott of Israeli goods. He has described it as a "mistake" that cost the party votes in the state election campaign but, of course, it also happens to run counter to the party's national policy which favours a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

It must be reiterated that the BDS campaign is one that must, by its very nature, exacerbate the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Its proponents have made it clear that their end game is the dismantling of the Jewish State.