It’s remarkable that there has been little in the general press about the killing of another Palestinian protester, Ahmed Salem Deeb, by a sniper in the Gaza strip 3 days ago. It’s another case of a protester suffering from ‘overkill’ and the creation of a popular martyr.
Month: April 2010
Rudd’s backflip on the CPRS and emission trading is of a piece with his underwhelming backpedalling on child care centres, asylum seeker refugee status processing, the development of Australian Human Rights legislation, solar energy rebates and insulation roll-outs.
The following statement was issued by the AJDS’s
official spokesperson Les Rosenblatt.
The 9 April Australian government decision to stop processing the asylum/refugee entitlements of Afghanis and Sri Lankans – predominantly from the persecuted minorities of Hazaras and Tamils – combined with the threat to force their return to their countries of origin – based on completely untenable claims of “durable security” in these countries – is intolerably inhumane.
The Australian Jewish Democratic Society agrees with the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring
[Yasher koah is a traditional Hebrew expression meaning “May your strength be firm”]
Unlike the liberal Haaretz, the English-only Jerusalem Post is way to the right of Centre. These days it has only two progressive columnists left, so often, like others I miss Larry Derfner. And he is good. This one of those rare articles that comes close to a must read. Not only does he expounds on aspects of Richard Goldstone’s decision to the commission named after him that I haven’t seen before it tackles other issues as well.
Watch this space!
The past week or so has seen strong responses to Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel’s full page ads in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, in which he made a number of claims about Jerusalem being ‘above politics’, or that Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran.
I thought this commentary demonstrates how terrible is the divide between geographically adjacent communities, even though there are such enormous possibilities for conflict resolution. Joharah Baker often has very, very strong opinions, but this one seems to offer a lot of possibility for bridging that gap through getting Israelis to take the lead in breaking the culture and practice of occupation and all that goes with it. Joharah works in Palestinian media in Jerusalem.
Don’t Tell Them, They Already Know
Hagit Back has been active in Machsom Watch in the Hebron area for many years. This video interview makes it clear that the work is a great challenge in the face of human rights abuses. She is currently in Melbourne.
Well, it’s all over the internet, that the South African Zionist Federation, and others, have heavied a ‘shul’ in Sandton, Joburg, not to let that mortal enemy of the State of Israeli, Richard Goldstone, attend his grandsons’s Barmitzvah. It makes the Australian Zionist leadership look like a bunch of pussies.
For details, it’s worth a straight link to Magnes Zionist for all the pathetic dirty detail.
From Amnesty International:
The Australian Government has announced a blanket suspension on the processing of new asylum claims by Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals. This as an appalling act of political point scoring and fundamentally inconsistent with our obligations under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Support their online campaign by sending an email to government though their website.