Palestine I
GLW #743 carried a front cover headline "End Gaza Holocaust", to which I object. There is no justification, factually or ethically, to abuse the memory of the victims of Nazi genocide by describing Israel's actions as a holocaust. This conflict is not characterised by systematic murder of millions of totally defenceless civilians. The truth is all you should need to relay the horror of this conflict to your readers.
There is no need to abuse the Jewish people by making puerile analogies to the Holocaust every time you want a reference point for suffering or to put a radical slogan on the front page.
One has to wonder if some "leftists" get caught up in the ultra-nationalist, anti-Jewish sentiment that emanates from the more reactionary elements of Palestinian society such as Hamas, which aims to wipe Israel of the map and promotes the killing of Jews.
One gets the impression that GLW is uncritical of Hamas, ignoring the reality that it is just as bad as extreme Zionism — it is racist, ultra-religious, murderous and totally belligerent. You do the Palestinian people no favours by ignoring the real nature of Hamas.
The position of demanding Israel recognise Palestine is absurd without a corresponding strong support for Israel's existence in the face of a hostile region and in spite of the Israeli government's appalling record.
Jirri Booth
Hobart
Palestine II
Green Left Weekly is to be thanked for including Sonja Karkar\'s article in GLW#743 about the plight of the Palestinians, while Rudd — our "fair go" prie miniser — exposes his hypcrisy in celebrating Israel\'s Independence Day. It is no surprise that the Coalition\'s Brendan Nelson supports him. She exposes the insidious ploy by the Peres Centre for Peace in Australia to enlist the AFL for its propaganda. If not for newspapers like yours, Australian fans of hte AFL might not see through this blatant cringing. As Karkar points out, the South African regime was brought down by popular protest. THey suffered when they tried to bring their rugby side here some years ago and where booed off the field. The key word here is "apartheid".
Thanks also for your other articles in this edition highlighting the ongoing humanitarian crimes of the Israeli government. Australians should express their shame at our own complicity.
I also appreciate Peter Boyle\'s regular requests for funds and enclose $100 to that end.
Michael Goldstein,
Enmore, NSW
Kosova
Matthew Davis (Write On, GLW #473) claims that when "then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic withdrew Serbian troops from Kosova in 1999, NATO annexed Kosova just as surely as it did Guantanamo Bay from Cuba — by building a huge military base, Bondsteel."
It is true that the US built the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba and Bondsteel in Kosova (both countries that had been at war with former colonial rulers, Spain and Serbia) after brutally taking advantage and intervening in the conflicts to head off the victory of national revolts. However, in suggesting Milosevic should have kept his army in Kosova, against the opposition of the totality of the Kosovar people, Davis does not draw the logical conclusion — that revolutionaries at the turn of the 20th century should have demanded the return of Spanish rule in Cuba.
Davis also makes up a story that Kosova is "run by a war criminal in President Thaci along with a consortium of drug lords who have forced over 330,000 Jews, Roma and Serbs to flee their pogroms since 1999\". It is certainly true that following the genocidal war Milosevic waged against the Kosovar Albanians in 1999 — killing 10,000, driving 850,000 from their country, destroying 100,000 homes and 215 mosques — the revenge by Kosovar nationalists was also quite brutal. This result of Belgrade's policy should also be condemned (though blaming Thaci for this, whatever his other faults, is a stretch in my opinion).
However, making up any figure you want does not help one's argument. According to official Yugoslav statistics, there were just under 200,000 Serbs in Kosova in the 1990s. According to the official Serbian Kosovo Coordination Centre, there were some 130,000 Serbs in Kosova a few years ago. You do the maths. And nearly half live in their north Kosova statelet, which has prevented Kosovars from returning.
The partition is ugly on both sides, and can only even begin to move towards something better if the right of the Kosovars to self-determination is recognised, taking away the basis of their hostility to their former Serb overlords.
Davis' mention of Israel is off-target, considering the obvious parallel between Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and Serbia's occupation of Kosova, both based on some ancient or medieval obscurantist "historical" claims. This parallel was very clear to Ariel Sharon who, when he was Israeli foreign minister expressed his solidarity with Milosevic in 1999, claiming "NATO aggression" might encourage the Galilee Arabs to demand the same right to secede and join Palestine just as the Kosovar Albanians were, then, demanding unity with Albania.
Finally, it is dishonest to claim I support an imperialist neo-colony when the article I wrote opposed this "supervised independence" oxymoron in favour of real and complete independence for Kosova.
Michael Karadjis
Sydney
Carer's allowance
The way the federal Labor government is responding to the rumours concerning claims that the annual carers' allowance and the $500 grant for pensioners will be abolished indicates that it is making a rod for its own back. If the rumours are correct, it will come as a shock to a high percentage of Labor voters. Two ALP cabinet ministers, when questioned about it, said that we wont know until Treasurer Wayne Swan brings down the May budget. This thoughtless explanation will not prevent the capitalist media and Coalition politicians from continuing to spread the rumour that a government that claims to be Labor will disadvantage those who attend to the needs of the sick and disabled and who depend on this allowance.
If the rumour is correct, the ALP caucus have adequate time to completely reject it. If it is incorrect, the ALP politicians should reassure the public that it is completely false. Whether the ALP leaders realise it or not, they are inadvertently paving the way for the emergence of a mass left-wing party. The Socialist Alliance will be the motor force that will bring this about.
Bernie Rosen
Strathfield, NSW
SIEV-X
Last month my branch of the NSW Nurses' Association tried to pass two resolutions at the committee of delegates meeting — for a full judicial inquiry into the SIEV-X sinking in October 2001, in which 353 people drowned, and for the end of mandatory detention of asylum seekers (with 580 still locked up). There are also 60 people who have been detained for over five years. Even though both resolutions failed, there was a new awareness of human rights: Unusually for the NSWNA, the discussions on both had their own momentum and were the not "shot down".
Despite setbacks, we just have to keep banging away, as GLW has for so long. Many people deserve accolades, but I will just mention three: Ian Rintoul, Mark Goodcamp and Tony Kevin (who has worked so tirelessly on the SIEV-X affair). While the ruling class can celebrate the rich and famous, we can celebrate the people who are working for truth and justice even if we sometimes get it wrong.
We cannot "move on" from the Howard era, the years of shame, without dealing with the war crime of the attacks on Afghanistan and mainly Iraq, done in our name: More than 1 million Iraqis killed and a fifth of the population made refugees, to divide and conquer, and control the oil to make bigger profits.
Stephen Langford
Paddington, NSW [Abridged]
It is a modest victory, but one that will give cheer to thousands of lefties and other progressives all over the world. The computer social network facility Facebook has succumbed to mass pressure and no longer restricts users when they enter their political views in their Facebook Profile. Before this update, Facebookers who rejected the tags "very conservative", "conservative", "liberal", "very liberal", or "libertarian" had to make do with "other". Facebookers can now list their political party affiliation in the political view field.
Rohan Gaiswinkler
Hobart
Corruption
The corruption in the Wollongong local council has two major causes — the one Premier Morris Iemma proposes to tackle (corporate donations and bribes), and the electoral system which produces two major parties and their factions. Democracy would be served well if election campaigns were entirely and only funded from public revenue, with a cap in place. Since 1981 (in NSW) and 1984 (federally) some public funding has been made available but, thus far, it has not had the desired effect of reducing reliance on private funding.
The other major cause of the trouble in Wollongong is the dominant electoral system in Australia, based on single-member electoral districts, which is productive of the two-party tyranny and, as a result, the often appalling internecine factionalism in both major parties. The remedy here is the introduction of proportional representation, preferably the party list variety common in the Netherlands and all Scandinavian countries. This is the remedy the major parties don't want to know about but it would clean up all forms pork-barrelling and create diversity in parliaments.
Moreover, wrong-doing in public office is not just the result of a lack of personal ethics, but more often than not of systemic flaws in governance structures and practices.
Klaas Woldring
Pearl Beach, NSW