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 »
Human Rights
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 […]
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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 »
Leaders of the US, Britain, Australia and Western countries, instead of learning from history, are failing to bear their responsibility for the creation of an Israeli colonial regime in Palestine at the expense of the Palestinian people. Despite the massacres, ethnic cleansing, aggression, wars, occupation and gross violations of international law committed by Israel since Continue reading »
On BBC Newsnight, host Kirsty Wark listened to Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, describe how six of his family members had been killed by Israeli air strikes. Wark reacted oddly: ‘I’m sorry for your own personal loss. I mean, can I just be clear, though, you cannot condone the killing Continue reading »
One of the privileges of being civilized is that it gives you the right to do very uncivilized things to the barbarians. In his public address to Joe Biden in Tel Aviv on October 18, Benjamin Netanyahu remarked, “You’ve rightly drawn a clear line between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism.” History […]
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