BY NIKOLAI HADDAD
On August 30 in Melbourne, opposition leader Simon Crean delivered an address at the Werdiger Family Hall. The event was organised by the Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), the State Zionist Council of Victoria and the Jewish Community Council of Victoria.
The speech was so unashamedly pro-Israeli that it can only be described as sycophantic. At one point, the "opposition" leader recalled standing on the Golan Heights, Syrian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and from there being "concerned" about Israel's security. Not once did he mention the UN resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, nor indeed the UN charter, which prohibits outright the acquisition of land by force.
Crean's uncritical support of the Israeli narrative further erodes the credibility of Labor's foreign policy. For Crean, the August 19 suicide bomb in Jerusalem "shattered the cease-fire". He chose to ignore the fact that since the declaration of a cease-fire, or hudna, by Palestinian groups on June 29, Israel had continued its policy of assassinating political and military leaders, killing 25 Palestinians, including civilian bystanders.
As expected, the bombing gave the government of Ariel Sharon the opportunity to resume its open war against the Palestinian people. In late August, the Israeli defence minister threatened to expel Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat and to carry out a full-scale invasion and reoccupation of the entire Gaza Strip. At least another 15 Palestinians have been killed since the August 19 bombing, in missile strikes and military invasions across the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Since the hudna, Israel has de facto annexed more land, demolished more than 20 homes, destroyed yet more olive groves and expanded illegal settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem.
Beyond the statistics of dead and wounded civilians, the real horror of the occupation is the day to day suffering it brings to the entire Palestinian population. Palestinian life in the West Bank and Gaza remains choked by a stranglehold of checkpoints, sieges, curfews, road closures and the ever-expanding apartheid wall that, in effect, annexes 10% of the entire West Bank. The wall completely encircles the city of Qalqilya — the entire population can only go in and out through one checkpoint.
Unemployment in Palestine is at least 60%, with the majority of the population living at or below the poverty line of US$2 per day. Both US AID and the World Bank have reported that children in Gaza suffer from malnutrition, directly attributed to Israel's policies.
Israel has apartheid laws that distinguish between its citizens on the basis of their race, such as the recently passed marriage law, which precludes the spouses of Palestinian citizens of Israel from obtaining citizenship and subsequent rights. This should come as no surprise — in 1948 Israel was established with racist violence and the ethnic cleansing of two-thirds of the entire Palestinian population.
More than 7000 Palestinian political prisoners still languish in Israeli prisons. The Israeli Society Against Torture reported that during the past three years, the "use of torture" against Palestinian prisoners had become the "norm" rather than the "exception".
And yet in his speech in Melbourne, Crean saw fit to commend Israel on its "implementation of the road map" and laid the blame for its failure squarely with Palestinians. While he was fawning over Israel's commitment to peace, an eight-year-old Palestinian girl, Aya Fayad, was shot dead by Israeli occupation troops in the Khan Younis refugee camp.
Conspicuously absent from his speech was a call for an immediate end to the military occupation. The week before, the Labor leadership had silenced two of its backbenchers from speaking against a motion put forward in parliament to commend Israel. Instead, former Labor leader Kim Beazley, Crean and Labor foriegn affairs spokesperson Kevin Rudd vied with Liberals to heap the most praise on the Zionist state.
The ALP's reaffirmation of its support for imperialist Israel follows a report issued by the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) on June 13, entitled "Israel and the ALP". The report is highly critical of what it perceives as "burgeoning criticism" of Israel amongst some ALP backbenchers. This was sparked by a parliamentary debate on a motion put forward by Labor MP Julia Irwin calling for nothing more than that "Israel return to the 1967 borders and that a UN force be put into the West Bank and Gaza to assist the creation of Palestine".
The ADC report quoted a number of influential Jewish leaders critical of the ALP and concluded with the unveiled threat that "opinions like that must worry ALP leaders concerned with ensuring the maintenance of political, electoral and financial support for the party from Jewish Australia."
Following this report, Rudd was invited to Israel for a three-day visit, during which he spent less than half-a-day meeting with Palestinians.
The statements made by Crean, Beazley and Rudd represent the historic attitude of the ALP in supporting an imperialist Israel at the expense of Palestinian human rights. Indeed, Crean himself makes reference to the ALP's Doc Evatt, the Australian who chaired the UN committee that first carved up Palestine, paving the way for the expulsion and dispossession of more than 750,000 Palestinians in 1948.
By caving in to the pro-Israel lobby, Crean has exposed further the spinelessness of the ALP leadership and its absolute contempt for the Palestinian community in Australia and, indeed, all people with any regard for human rights and international law.
From Green Left Weekly, September 10, 2003.
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