In August last year, I wrote that whilst people and organisations who identify as supporters of Israel often call themselves Zionists, they can more properly be thought of as Stalinists.
One of the major features of the Stalinists was their unquestioning obedience to the Party Line. One day, the dear leader would announce one political position, and everyone in the Communist Party during Stalin’s era would passionately adopt that position, and vehemently denounce anyone who disagreed.
Then the party line would change, and suddenly the Stalinists would adopt the new line, with the same passion, vehemently denouncing anyone who disagreed.
At one point, there was a line that it was illegitimate to collaborate with social democrats, who were identified as “social fascists”. After this helped paved the way for the rise of Hitler in Germany and the ensuing assault on communists, the party line changed: there would now be a popular front.
No longer claiming that other leftists were just another form of fascists, now the Stalinists would work with other leftists to fight fascism. The most important thing was to resist fascism: until Stalin signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Germany 1939. Then communists were expected to loyally support the new line of advocating peace. Until the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Then communists in Western countries were expected to become patriots and support the war effort against Germany and its allies.
At each step, the Stalinists obeyed the party line. Those who were too slow in doing so would be denounced in the most withering terms, and would face expulsion from the party for such transgressions.
The party line would change on a dime, and people around the world were expected to follow the new line from the USSR, regardless of the arguments they had been making so passionately the day before.
One of the defining features of Stalinism was the intellectual dishonesty. Something true one day would become false the next, because the Party said so. The abuse and fabrications in polemics were also a standard feature of Stalinism.
A neat illustration of the new Australian Stalinism can be seen today. In July last year, the Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu publicly flagged his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, which he noted is what “I always say”.
To win the elections in March, he announced that a Palestinian state would not be created if he won the election. He said, “I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel”.
So – no Palestinian state, because if a Palestinian state is created, Islamist terrorists will attack Israel.
This shaped up as a neat way to expose the Stalinism of Zionists in the West.
When the United Nations General Assembly started voting in favour of a two-state solution in 1976, Israel was one of the few countries in the world which opposed the creation of a Palestinian state.
Not long after Ehud Barak proposed the creation of a Palestinian state in 2000, it became standard for Western Stalinists to declare that they too, finally, supported the creation of a Palestinian state.
When Netanyahu claimed in 2009 to support the creation of a demilitarised Palestinian state without Jerusalem, Stalinists declared that Israel supported the creation of a Palestinian state.
It was hard not to notice that Netanyahu did what he could to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, and was determined to continue the colonisation of the West Bank, but Stalinists had their party line. Israel wants peace, it supports a two-state solution, but alas, they lacked a partner for peace.
Though Israel negotiated a prisoner exchange and repeated ceasefires with Hamas, and Fatah devoted its energies to enforcing Israeli security in the West Bank, Stalinists professed their yearning for Israel to finally acquire a partner for peace.
Then Netanyahu declared no to a Palestinian state, because it would give territory for terrorist attacks against Israel. Media around the world covered the shift. Would Stalinists be up to the challenge of embracing the new Party line?
Yes, yes they would.
In a recent issue of the Australian Jewish News (24/7/15), the editorial warns the ALP against embracing a policy of recognising a Palestinian state. The editorial notes that the ALP,
“Needs to ask itself whether the unstable Palestinian Authority, with its refusal to negotiate with Israel, with its on-and-off alliances to terrorist group Hamas, with its grand vision of a “Palestine from the river to the sea”, obliterating the world’s only Jewish state, XXXactually makes a convincing case for its own statehood.
At a time when the Middle East is a powder keg of violently extremist groups, and Iran, a sponsor of regional terrorism, looks forward to shaking off sanctions and cashing up to sponsor more global terrorism, the ALP needs to ask itself whether recognising an undemocratic Palestine, that would serve as a magnet for terrorism on Israel’s doorstep, is justified.” (emphasis added)
So you see? The editorial writers are not convinced of the case for a Palestinian state. Because it would serve as a “magnet for terrorism on Israel’s doorstep”. The transition from supposedly supporting a Palestinian state to being unconvinced was seamless. It also featured boilerplate arguments about how settlements aren’t really the underlying problem here.
Funnily enough, in an article also printed on 24/7 in the Australian, Labor Senator Joe Bullock announced that he opposes the ALP recognising a Palestinian state. Bullock began by claiming that this proposed policy would “undermine the bipartisan commitment to a two-state solution”.
He gave five reasons for opposing it. The first was asking “how can a state exist without agreed borders”. Which is an interesting argument, considering that Israel hasn’t defined its borders, let alone agreed upon them either.
Argument four was more interesting:
“Fourth, and perhaps most important, what incentives would exist for the Palestinian leadership to renounce terrorism, cease attacks on Israel and negotiate a settled, comprehensive peace if they are recognised as a state without being required to do any of these things?” (emphasis added)
The point of this is to add conditions to the creation of a Palestinian state. Whilst not quite overtly stating the new Party line, the point is that the ALP cannot support the creation of a Palestinian state, because it might not lead to the end of attacks on Israel.
If one thought the two peoples equal, one might similarly veto Israel’s existence as a state until the Palestinians could be sure Israel won’t attack them. This is only understandable on the premise that one group of people have rights which trump the rights of the other people.
Bullock will perhaps support the creation of a Palestinian state: implicit in this argument is that right now, he does not. Bullock also made the same boilerplate arguments about how settlements aren’t really the “cause of all the trouble”.
Further right in the Murdoch Press, Andrew Bolt showed his support for Bullock’s op-ed. He posted extracts from it, and headlined his blog “Why does Labor’s Left want to give terrorists a state?” That’s right. Andrew Bolt identified the creation of a Palestinian state as giving “terrorists” a state. This naked bigotry passed unnoticed, as usual for Bolt, because no-one seems to expect any decency from him.
Also on the 24th of July, the Guardian ran an op ed on the subject by Michael Easson, who used to hold a variety of positions in the ALP, and has served https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Easson on various boards of companies.
Easson wrote of his opposition to the proposed ALP policy. And for some reason, it sounded a bit like the editorial of the AJN from the same day:
“The fact is that especially since the collapse of the PLO-Hamas coalition, a unilateral, no pre-conditions, recognition of a Palestinian state without clear borders and Hamas running one part of the country, would see Labor turning a blind eye to the consequences of its actions: Labor would be supporting Hamas.
What is needed is a negotiated settlement. Resolutions “gifting” recognition are a cruel hoax. Nothing changes on the ground.
Preoccupation with this issue in isolation is miscued as the Middle East is a maelstrom of conflict, terrorism, brutality on an industrial scale, including devastation by the Islamic State (Isis), Iran’s genocidal threats and sponsorship of terrorist organisations, human rights abuses by the Assad regime in Syria, and resulting civil, refugee and human tragedies in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon.” (emphasis added)
The party line was announced – give back the West Bank and Gaza, and the Islamist terrorists of Hamas will attack Israel. The AJN and the Guardian loyally reprinted this thesis, with similar talking points. Bullock in the Murdoch press presented a less explicit version of the arguments that Palestinians would have to meet certain conditions before they’d be entitled to their own state. All in articles published on 24 July (though the AJN is released on Thursday the 23rd, but dated Friday the 24th).
To be fair, Fairfax also got in on the general action. Kim Rubenstein wrote an op ed on July 23 accusing Bob Carr of anti-Semitism for referring to the “Israel lobby” repeatedly. Rubenstein doesn’t deny that one exists, but still identifies Carr’s talk as “full of mixed insidious messages”, and claims Carr’s point is “clearly about the alleged ‘influence’, or even ‘control’ of the Jewish community. He has tapped into classical anti-Semitic tropes from the medieval past alleging Jewish conspiracies and dual loyalties.”
No proof is given, and no anti-Semitic remark is cited. It’s just the vibe. Which I suppose is a different form of Stalinism as noted above – the fact-free denunciations Stalinists became so well-known for.
I’d like to conclude by noting a bit of context. In 2013, I spoke at the festival of Jewish learning called Limmud Oz.
Unlike Peter Slezak, who was banned from speaking, I was allowed to speak on a panel, on the condition that the moderator be excluded and replaced by someone they chose, and that Yair Miller be placed on the panel.
Miller was the President of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, and a Vice President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry at the time. In response to my talk, he admitted that Jewish organisations at times of conflict are given talking points by the Israeli government.
This was corroborated by an article in 972 by Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf. Sheizaf obtained a recording of a lecture by Israeli Brigadier-General, Avi Benayahu. Benayahu served as Israeli army spokesperson from 2007-11, and is credited with revolutionising its propaganda.
In 2011, he was elected “Media Man of the Year” by the Israel Public Relations Association.
Sheizaf notes Benayahu’s frank admission about how the Israeli army uses the support of organisations around the world to push its message during wars:
“The most influential front is [being fought] on social media. During Cast Lead I built a tool [...] it was called “global distribution.” […] We mapped hundreds of organizations […] Israelis, Jewish and Christian [groups] that love Israel, church organizations, we did all this leg work.
And the system works like this: if I have a message from the IDF Spokesperson, a message that I am also publishing in Israel, and I translate it to English — a photo, video, map, or document, I pass those onward with a single click through “global distribution” […] to hundreds of headquarters on every continent.
[…] I send it to Hillel, and Hillel sends it to every Hillel house in universities all over the world […] viral distribution. That defeats anything. We built this system, it works, the way we distribute our newsletter videos, pictures…
[…] In every war, all the Jewish communities around the world identify with the IDF. They raise money and send us packages. They hold rallies in support of the army. [Now], for the first time in history, they can actually take part in the war from their homes. With the tip of their fingers, they can make an enormous contribution to Israel’s hasbara.”
“Hasbara” is a Hebrew word. It means “explanation”; that is, advocacy for the Israeli government – also known as propaganda.
Stalin, and the Communist Parties at the time, might have been envious of this level of propaganda coordination. In an instant, a Party line can be sent around the world. In fact, it’s gotten so impressive, that in the course of a few days, every major media outlet in Australia can push the same line, and advocate for or against the same policy.
There was a time when Stalinism was controversial, and Stalinists could only publish their intellectually dishonest screeds in marginal communist publications.
Australia is clearly in a different place right now. A rather depressing one.
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Adam100
Posted Sunday, August 2, 2015 - 19:25
Make no mistake. This is not journalism. This is opinion. Which you are entitled to however incorrect it is.
MazelMan
Posted Sunday, August 2, 2015 - 19:57
@Adam100, this article is a particularly virulent kind of opinionated drivel that is deeply rooted in a perverse form of obsessional anti-Judaism. Brull whose ideological predecessors sought succour at the feet of communism during the Stalinist years is dumping Stalinism, which viciously practised anti-semitism, on to the Jews. This is the same kind of abhorrent, twisted Jew-hatred that likes to compare the behaviour of Jews to the Nazis as a means of discrediting the Jewish people.
This user is a New Matilda supporter. Australian Muslim
Posted Sunday, August 2, 2015 - 22:01
Thanks Michael. I found your article objective and fair in essence.
To show my opinion on the subject I add two of my last posts on NM:
Australian Muslim
Posted Monday, July 6, 2015 - 03:39
My brief thoughts on the matter
Disproportionate use of force by Israel is not acceptable in civilised world.
Palestinian state has to be established within 1967 borders.
After establishing Palestinian state, If Some Palestinians (Hamas or alike) does not recognise Israel. Then United Nations peace keeping forces can maintain border security until complete peace succeeds.
- See more at: https://newmatilda.com/2015/07/05/weak-un-report-gaza-slaughter-betrayal-palestinians#sthash.ZGcDHYxV.dpuf
Australian Muslim
Posted Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - 02:45
Australia is an accomplice in Israel's disproportionate use of force against Palestinians by supporting and protecting Israel alongside US and UK (Europe). Most of Muslims around the world observe this deliberate negligence.
West can preach Muslim world on many shortcomings but cannot defend itself about the constant killings and devastation going on in Palestine (Israelis also suffer albeit mildly compared to Palestinians).
Australia and its allies have to take the leadership and establish a Palestinian state within 1967 borders and settle Palestinians in the Swiss cheese like Israeli settlements in those areas.
With this goodwill, in the near future both nations can develop mature relationships even swapping land like Gaza Strip and giving more space to Jewish population in and around the wailing wall (Aqsa Mosque).
- See more at: https://newmatilda.com/2015/07/05/weak-un-report-gaza-slaughter-betrayal-palestinians#sthash.ZGcDHYxV.dpuf
This user is a New Matilda supporter. Rychard
Posted Sunday, August 2, 2015 - 23:01
Well done Michael, as ever. We can tell you are on target because the resident hasbara clones have broken cover. Again. They probably spend all day waiting for something to moan about.
It is actually unlikely that a separate Palestine will ever exist. As more and more young Israelis and more and more Jews all around the world, turn away from the crimes that zionism commits in their name, then it bring the likelihood of a confederated state ever closer.
It is a horrid, murderous irony that Sharon and his pastrami plan paradoxically and largely put a stop to the mad dream of Mr.Herzal... What an irony, eh? Mr Unit 101/Sabra and Shatila himself, responsible for the end of the bloody and futile zionist experiment.
macida
Posted Sunday, August 2, 2015 - 23:13
On the mark Michael, and particularly in exposing the effective collaboration between media and state in pushing the Zionist narrative. It is indeed depressing.
I could add too, that the ABC in reporting events from the Labor conference, focused on the gay-marriage issue on Sunday, and another issue, but ignored the Palestinian state debate - I didn't even find out if it had been discussed till a couple of days later. Not of course that what the ALP proposed was even vaguely adequate, as the 'two-state solution' is long rotten in its grave. At some point this week, the new ABC correspondent for the Zionist Entity, Sophie Macneill, told us that there were now 400,000 'Israeli settlers' in the West Bank. Given that her reports are quite overwhelmingly biased towards the 'little democracy defending itself against Arab terrorists', I am interested in this figure, which is about 150,000 less than the previous estimate. Is it possible that some of the illegal (under international law) settlements have already been reclassified as Israel under the 'agreed land swaps' ruse?
But then now we have Bibi and Regev getting weepy over the death of a Palestinian baby - making us remember that IDF T-shirt with the pregnant woman and 'one shot - two kills' written over the target sign...
Keep at it.
MJoanneS
Posted Monday, August 3, 2015 - 00:39
Resolution 181 used by Jewish illegal immigrants and terrorist groups to commit ethnic cleansing of Palestine did not expunge the long known and occupied country called Palestine.
That was done entirely by the said Jewish terrorist gangs with the support after the act by the U.
The rest is total nonsense.
Thor111
Posted Monday, August 3, 2015 - 02:26
It appears that 1000's of years of opression have taught the Jewish people nothing!
The worst criminals in the Soviet sytem (Under Lenin and later under Stalin) were Jews,
They murdered the Tzar and his family in cold blood, just one example! Yurovsky, Goloshchekin and Medvedev (they were all Jewish and the principal killers) and were responsible for many of the terrible actions carried out by uncle Joe and his henchmen across the Soviet Union before the war and after it. These wonderful people all held party post in the USSR for many years ( I wonder why?).
Stalin was of Jewish / Georgian origin, Stalins 3 wives were all Jewish. Quite a few of the Bolsheviks leadership were Jews and even in the Menshevik faction many were Jews (Trotsky was Jewish). Stalin actually banned anti semitism, MazelMan try reading your history books a little closer!
Name changing has been a common attribute of Jews, many of whom now in the Western societies you cannot even recognise, Goldberg becomes = Gold ect, They have been very succesfull using this means of disguise... Since when was the name Pratt a Jewish name? ect ect,.
Oh yes I can hear it now ... Anti Semitisam... !! they drag this out each and every time somebody mentions a Jew in relation to Criminal acts undertaken against Arabs or anybody else for that matter.
Some politicians will bend over backwards to accomodate them for a hand full of votes and some favours in kind, shame on them.. gutless wonders.
The ancient Hebrews that once lived in Palestine are barely recognisable, a great deal of the leadership of the Jewsih state have their origins in in the dark past of Russia..
MJoanneS
Posted Monday, August 3, 2015 - 06:12
I am watching a US series called the Making of the Mob and the death squads hired in New York were all Jews who slaughtered over 1,000 people in cold blood.
MazelMan
Posted Monday, August 3, 2015 - 09:35
@Thor111, it is you who needs to read the history books. Heard of the Doctors' Plot? It is ignorance like yours (and that of the self-loathing Jew Brull) than helps spread the kind of lies that encourage anti-semitism.
"In his Secret Speech at the Communist Party's Twentieth Congress, Nikita Khrushchev asserted that Stalin intended to use the doctors' trial to launch a massive party purge.
"According to one source, Nikolai Nikolayevich Polyakov, Stalin purportedly created a special 'Deportation Commission' to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps.Poliakov, the secretary of the commission, stated years later that, according to Stalin's initial plan, the deportation was to begin in the middle of February 1953, but the monumental tasks of compiling lists of Jews had not yet been completed. "Pure blooded" Jews were to be deported first, followed by "half breeds" (polukrovki). Before his death in March 1953, Stalin allegedly had planned the execution of Doctors' plot defendants already on trial in Red Square in March 1953, and then he would cast himself as the 'savior' of Soviet Jews by sending them to camps away from the purportedly enraged Russian populace."
O. Puhleez
Posted Monday, August 3, 2015 - 19:32
Thor111:
We can all do that, Thor. You may recall that Stalin had Trotsky murdered.
The Jews were in fact an oppressed minority in Russia, where rampages of mass murder of Jews ('pogroms') became a national sport; something to liven up an otherwise dreary Russian reality.
Russia and modern Israel were and are colonialist powers; with mentalities to match. The Jewish Bolsheviks knew at first hand and damn well how minorities living inside an imperial power get targeted, and the Bolsheviks' policies opposed everything the Tsarists stood for. Of course, the irony is that the oppressed turned oppresssor is a common motif in history: as you will doubtless find out in the course of your further reading.
This user is a New Matilda supporter. swarmi
Posted Monday, August 3, 2015 - 21:29
A good read Michael. But you must be worried, MazelMan thinks you are self-loathing. Thus your facts matter not. With a powerful critic like that at large, who needs a world full of hate-filled bigots? MazelMan probably wears his underpants on the outside.
But aren't we lucky that the zionists don't hate Palestinians as much as the Nazi's hated the Jews. Otherwise, you might see a huge wall that seperated the two peoples: one side a modern western colonial power, the other, a bantustan, an open air concentration camp.
Otherwise you might see the forced repatriation of Palestinians, in the zionists 'final solution', to a default state where once Jordan existed.
Otherwise you might end up witnessing the murder of Palestinian children, their imprisonment, destruction of critical infrastructure, crimminal use of weapons like phosphrous bombs, rendom acts of abuse and denigration at boarder check-points and in their homes, embargoes of medicines, foods and construction materials and a global propanganda tirade based on a convenient myth of Judaic entitlement not unlike the one Hitler unfurled to support his 'master race' rants.
But it goes without saying, or shouldn't at least, that the Jews did not deserve their treatment at the hands of the Nazi's anymore than the Palestinians deserve their genocidal treatment, their on-going Nakba, at the hands of the zionists.
Thor111
Posted Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - 02:29
Just ask yourself a simple question ... why is it in human history that not one single people have been so pursued and vilified, there has to be a reason?. why Jewish people have been so disliked! .. this does not happen of its own accord.. no matter where they have been its always the same story.
And Jews where not opressed in Russia not before and not now either .. Most of the Oligarhs today are of Jewish origin ... in the USSR and throughout Stalins reign they held the highest positions in the goverment .. just like today in many countries in the world they have a nack of getting into positions and then utilising them to forward their cause.. if it had not been for the Jewish lobby in Britain after the war there would be no so called Jewish state. Ben Gurion and his crew were terrorists and murders .. and those that have followed them are much the same.. peace there will never be .. they simply dont want it. peace can be achieved, if it is wanted ... but the Jews do not want it! must be terrible thinking how Iran are on the way to nuclear weapons ... keep watching your back Zionists .. the Persians are comming.
zeroxcliche
Posted Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - 03:20
Thor needs a head check. I just spent time in Lublin Poland and then Krakow, the erasing of a people is an ominous thing. Jewish people played a seminal role in the political developement of a Polish Lithuanian state, one of the largest of the time (around 15th to 17th century) that included territory not far from Moscow and half of Ukraine. It had an active parliament and was agruably the most democratic, it was a renaissance in culture and political development that as you can imagine the surrounding autocracies wanted to crush, which they eventually did.
Another factoid I came across is that during the beginning of WW1 two to three million Jews were pushed from Russia into Germany as a kind of weapon - and they would have been, no doubt, a burden on the German war economy before being able to make a contribution, thats a lot of people - history is complicated. As Brull has identified, contemporary times seem to have a much more reductive quality.
I have said this before - but I will say it again - The 1967 borders for Israel are not militarily viable. Their military industrial complex is not going to give it up. You can look down from the west bank plateau and fire on Tel Aviv too easily, also the Jordan valley is defensive gold. Long term the thin coastal strip of Israel is not viable and they have never really been interested in peace - hence their early clandestine support of Hamas, because they desired a perpetual enemy. A possible solution - Palestine gets a state but has to have a pacifist constitution but has its sovereignty and military security supported by a small international force. Israel gets a security ring around Palestine down the Jordan valley and a Highway that bisects the West Bank as it does now. Any break out of violence is met with proportional economic measures from the global community and a proportional military response on military targets. The centre of Jerusalem becomes an international zone - Palestinians get most of the settler housing and a large wad of cash - right of return is a drawn out plan of repatriation or compensation. The money can principly come from Germany, the Catholic Church and to lesser extent Russia. All states complicit to differing degrees in the Holocaust, including the west and the United States (they funded Hitler in the 30s and chose not to disrupt the Holocaust).
O. Puhleez
Posted Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - 08:21
zc:
Too late now, but at the end of WW2, the Jews could have been given part of Germany for their new homeland: Bavaria, the most beautiful part of Germany and the province where Nazism began would have been appropriate. But for all the usual religious reasons it had to be the poor innocent bloody Palestinians who footed the bill. Plus, Germany had to be kept sweet; she was too important in the Cold War environment just then beginning.
MazelMan
Posted Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - 09:58
@Thor111, jumping on to the trope that Jews are to blame for anti-semitism. Jews - the perennial scapegoats. It's like blaming the woman who has been raped because she supposedly enticed the rapist. It is people like you with their distorted minds who adopt views that are devoid of logic and understanding.
There is a seminal book Anti-Judaism - The Western Tradition by David Nirenberg’s whose thesis is that this idea of Judaism, which bears only a passing resemblance to Judaism as practised and lived by Jews, has been at the very center of Western civilization since the very beginning. From Ptolemaic Egypt to early Christianity, from the Catholic Middle Ages to the Protestant Reformation, from the Enlightenment to Fascism, whenever the West has wanted to define everything it is not—when it wants to put a name to its deepest fears and aversions—Judaism has been the name that came most easily to hand. “Anti-Judaism,” Nirenberg summarizes, “should not be understood as some archaic or irrational closet in the vast edifices of Western thought. It was rather one of the basic tools with which that edifice was constructed.”
So there you are Thor111 like so many others you have been sucked up into the vortex of anti-Judaism, a Western construct that needs the Jews to blame for all its problems. All this predates your particular flavour of anti-Judaism i.e. anti-Zionism.
DrGideonPolya
Posted Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - 13:38
Excellent article by Michael Brull on Zionist fanaticism. However the Zionists resemble the Stalinists not just in slavish devotion to the official racist Zionist (RZ), neo-fascist, Likudnik “party line” but also in complicity in the following:
(1) invasion and occupation of other countries (the Stalinists, with some justification, occupied 4 Baltic states and 7 other European states in defeating the Nazis in WW2 ; the racist Zionists criminally invaded 12 countries and occupied the territory of all of its 5 neighbours);
(2) ethnic cleansing (Stalin deported millions of Germans and hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tartars, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Finns and Hungarians; the racist Zionists expelled half the Palestinian population of Palestine in 1948 and today 6 million Palestinians are forbidden to step foot in their own country; Apartheid Israel has ethnically cleansed 90% of Palestine and crucially contributed to the Mayan Indian Genocide in Guatemala and the Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka);
(3) mass murder (Stalin was responsible for the 1930s Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor) in which about 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death and in purges in which further millions of Soviet citizens were executed or died prematurely in the Siberian Gulags, as well as the killing by deprivation of about 1 million German POWs; 2 million Palestinians have died from violence (0.1 million) or from violently-imposed deprivation (1.9 million ) since 1936; avoidable deaths from deprivation in countries occupied by Apartheid Israel total 24 million; see Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes a history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).
(4) gross human rights abuse (Stalinism deprived all Soviet citizens and subjects of democratic rights; Apartheid Israel denies human rights and the vote to the 36% of its subjects who are Occupied Palestinians; see “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ );
(5) mass imprisonment (Stalin imprisoned millions in the Gulags; most of the 7 million Palestinian refugees are confined without human rights to refugee camps; Apartheid imprisoned 1.8 million Palestinians in the Gaza Concentration Camp and a further 2.5 million Occupied Palestinians in West Bank ghettoes; “Gaza Concentration Camp”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/gaza-concentration ).
(6) nuclear terrorism (Stalin acquired nuclear weapons in circa 1950; nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel reportedly has 80-100 nuclear warheads with the material for 200 more ; see “Nuclear weapons ban , end poverty & reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/nuclear-weapons-ban ).
The racist Zionists and their supporters - notably the vilely racist Australian Lib-Labs (Coalition and Labor Right) - should be sidelined from public life (as have been like racists such as the Nazis, neo-Nazis, Apartheiders and KKK) and subject to world-wide Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) (see “Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/ ).
O. Puhleez
Posted Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - 15:13
Q: What does Tony Abbott have in common with Joseph Stalin?
A: Before setting out to change the world as politicians, each was a seminarian. One ratbaggery leads to another.
talknic
Posted Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - 00:19
@ M Brull
Israel proclaimed its borders in the Israeli plea for recognition "I have the honor to notify you that the state of Israel has been proclaimed as an independent republic within frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947, and that a provisional government has been charged to assume the rights and duties of government for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel, for defending the state against external aggression, and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law. The Act of Independence will become effective at one minute after six o’clock on the evening of 14 May 1948, Washington time.”
It is indisputable. Australia, Russia, the USA in fact every state that recognized Israel acknowledged that as Israel's sovereign extent. Israel has not since legally acquired ANY further territories and states are prohibited from recognizing any territories acquired by force(war) or any coersive measure.
Israel itself on the 22nd May 1948 confirmed Jewish forces had military control (occupation) of territories "outside the State of Israel" ... "in Palestine" territories it has never withdrawn from or legally acquired thru any agreement.
Australia recogized Israel thus “… on the basis of the resolution of the United Nations Assembly of November 29, 1947…” Australia has not since, nor can it legally, recognise any territories acquired by war by Israel as Israeli.
Israel was recognized and admitted to the UN while it and it's terrorist factions were at war in territories "outside of the State of Israel" ... "in Palestine".
None of the reasons Israel gives for refusing to end the occupation so Palestine can declare itself indepedent, have any legal basis what so ever.
Recognition is not mandatory. Numerous UN Member States exist without recognizing each other and no other state has recognized Israel as the Jewish State. It's official name is "The State of Israel" and Israel did not recognize any state in order to gain recognition itself. States are only required to have "respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence ... and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
Permanently taking non-Israeli territories for its self defense is illegal. Territories are required to be either legally annexed by agreement with the legitimate residents of the territories to be annexed, or withdrawn from BEFORE peaceful relations can be assumed. Read the Egypt Israel Peace Treaty.
The demand to dis-arm Palestine has no legal basis, all states have equal right to self protection
Hasbara like "we made the desert bloom" and whatever cherry pickings they spout of Mark Twain, have no legal bearing on the matter what so ever! They're mantras for people who don't think.
Israel is a rogue state, protected from any action only by the US UNSC veto vote
EarnestLee
Posted Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - 23:24
Thanks Tacknic for bringing the conversation back to living memory.
Nazi or Soviet treatment of anyone can never justify the treatment of the innocent Palestinian people.
Shame on Australian Politicians for falling far short of the decency required of Representatives of the Peoples of Australia.
This user is a New Matilda supporter. MattQ
Posted Saturday, August 8, 2015 - 11:15
Any group in conflict must claim the best of humanity for themselves, and ascribe the worst aspects of human nature to their perceived enemies. That's why God is on 'our' side. Propaganda 101. It's not religion, never was. Just good old fashioned politics, which is always about land and resources.
Argh when will we bother to get to know ourselves, free from material agenda? Self-honesty is hard.