Human Rights

Joe Biden’s response to the Hamas attacks of October 7 was to fuse the wars in Israel and Ukraine into a single struggle. Immediately after he returned from his visit to Tel Aviv, where he had both literally and figuratively embraced Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden addressed the US public from the Oval Office. “You know,” he […]

The post Biden’s Selective Outrage appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

"We have failed you. This is the awful guilt we carry. We tried. But we did not try hard enough." -- Chris Hedges

The post Chris Hedges: Letter to the Children of Gaza appeared first on MintPress News.

Is the Albanese government aiding and abetting the Israeli military and intelligence services in actions in Gaza which are serious violations of international human rights laws?  Successive Australian Defence ministers have assured us that any weapons or other military hardware that is exported cannot be used to enable the commission of war crimes and other Continue reading »

Israel’s strategic choices, as Israelis see it, are rather like those sometimes argued for Australia. It wants powerful friends but cannot take them for granted. Ultimately it must depend on itself, if needs be alone. Surrounded by deadly enemies, it must make the cost of conquest so high, and so uncertain, that invaders are deterred. Continue reading »

If war is supposed to be the continuation of politics by other means, Israel’s assault on Gaza seems to be the continuation by other means of the absence of politics. It does not seem that Israel understands what its endgame is. Without a clear sense of an ending, there can be no answer to the […]

The post No Endgame in Gaza appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

The world is appalled that the US has backed a war of vengeance by Israel on the captive Palestinian population. A US-led global peace process is critical to ending decades of violence in the Israel-Gaza conflict. It is hard to know what else to say about the awful conflict that is playing out in the Middle East. Continue reading »

Albert Einstein once said that Palestinians (Jews, Christians and Muslims alike) lived in peace and worked together before the European Jews were sent to Palestine. He also said that if Jews could not co-exist peacefully with Arabs “then we have learnt nothing in 2000 years of civilisation”. I once interviewed numerous elderly Palestinian refugees who Continue reading »

An aside to what is happening in Gaza is events occurring in the West Bank, where there has been little focus. Reports in recent days have drawn attention to attempts by settlers – read the Israeli government – to “Judaise” Area C and to push Bedouins out of the West Bank. Some 98 families, numbering Continue reading »

Blame for what has and will unfold in Gaza will be shared with Israel by those States, all acting with presumed impunity, which blindly support Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law. Since 2017, Australia and Israel have expanded cooperation on national security, defence and cyber security. We have a resident Defence Attaché to the Embassy Continue reading »

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will have plenty to talk about when he meets with US President Joe Biden this week. The Middle East, China, AUKUS and submarines will no doubt dominate the agenda. But there is one matter in respect of which Mr Albanese should insist on a quick resolution. That is the case of Continue reading »