Thursday, July 18, 2013

The Law For Jews -- Back To The Ghetto

geoffff

The Elder has published a poster that catches in a single picture the ideology that declares Jews building homes for themselves or even living beyond an imaginary line to be illegal. The picture depicts one of the streets child rapist and arch-terrorist killer Yasser Arafat would have shown Henry Kissinger from a street directory in a Jerusalem restaurant was to be the boundary beyond which Jews, and only Jews, were never to be permitted;  in an anecdote fondly recalled by Bob Carr, the Australian Foreign Minister, in The Australian.  The Elder's work shows how utterly gormless, self defeating, hypocritical and more than vaguely sinister European and now Australian policy in relation to Israel now is.

This blog wrote to Mr Carr over two weeks ago with a couple of questions about Australia's Middle East foreign policy.

1. What is the Government's attitude to the so called "Palestinian right of return"? Is the Government aware that this is explicit and "unchangeable" policy of even the "moderate"  factions and is code for the destruction or  "euthanasia" of Israel ?

2 What is the basis of the opinion that  Israeli "settlement activity" is illegal and will the Government release any legal opinion it holds in that regard?


Mr Carr is yet to reply. I'm not holding my breath. 


That Jews building and living in Jerusalem and Judea are illegal under article 49 of  the Fourth Geneva Convention is perhaps the most dangerous legal lie of the twentieth century. If this is indeed "international law" then we have witnessed the death of the rule of law as an international concept. This is not law. This is law that could have been taken straight from the Jim Crow states of the US in the forties and had to be squeezed out of American jurisprudence by Federal intervention.

None of this is to suggest that the evacuation of Jews from some towns as part of a genuine two state solution or even some kind of shared capital arrangement has never been on the table. They have been. But that is one thing. That is something for the Israelis and in my opinion ultimately the Israelis alone.  We need however to be very clear what we are witnessing. This is ethnic cleansing. The parties can negotiate about the extent of it but ethnic cleansing it is. There can be no clearer breach of article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention than what Australian and European policy now expects of Israel as a matter of law.   

To expect this of any other nation or people on the planet as a matter of law is unthinkable. I can not think of a single example. But it is not unthinkable for Jews. There are international laws in place to curb and condemn it. But not for Jews.

Australia and Europe have endorsed the essentially racist narrative that Jews living lawfully on property purchased lawfully in parts of Judea and Samaria and even Jerusalem are squatters living unlawfully on other peoples' land. In doing so they have rewarded the violently racist policies of  Fatah, Hamas, IJ and the others. They could not have shamed us more if this was 1950's Australia and they were Australian politicians, and there were a few, endorsing segregation and legal oppression of American Blacks in the South.   

To put Australian policy at its best intentioned  the Jews are to be herded from their homes and onto reserves for their own protection as a matter of law as if they were Native Americans or Australians in the road of European settlement as indeed they are in the way of Islamic imperialism.  There is nothing enlightened about this policy.  

Given the unique role that brave Australians played in the liberation of Jerusalem and the land that was declared to be the place of a Jewish homeland as a matter of international law, Australia's position is especially egregious. The last of the old diggers from the First World War who once marched in the streets of every town and city in their thousands has now passed. It is only their memory and sacrifice for the hope of a better world that have been cynically cast aside.  

Says The Elder:

Beyond the legalities, though, is the reality that the poster above means to show: the world is targeting Jews, and only Jews.  See this great post by Yaacov Lozowick on Beit Safafa for examples of Arab Israelis who moved to the other side of the Green Line and are never considered "settlers".


Indeed.
Rome 19th Century


A sign, in both German and Latvian, warning that people attempting to cross the fence or to contact inhabitants of the Riga ghetto will be shot. Riga, Latvia, 1941-1943.
Riga Latvia 1941


cross posted Geoffff's Joint

1 comment:

  1. It never ceases to amaze me how it's still considered acceptable by so many to be openly bigoted against Jews, even up to the point of publicly advocating ethnic cleansing!

    So many pay lip service to being 'opposed' to antisemitism, while accepting as a given the fact that Jews living on one side of the street but not another is somehow some sort of crime against humanity or some sort of impediment to peace.

    Sounds rather familiar, doesn't it?

    Yeah, it does...

    ReplyDelete