This blog has had issues before with a local Green party aligned electronic "newspaper" with a letter writing readership heavily dependent on the hard left Socialist Alliance antisemitic wing of the NSW branch of the party. Byron Bay in particular is full of these people and certainly when there is a pro-Hamas war rally in town as there was over the weekend.
There are many thing you can accuse the Echo of but one of them is not intellectual courage. They do not like to be challenged and will not publish anything at all that strays too far from the party line. You will see in a moment what they do publish..
The Echo started life some years ago as a tree murdering throwaway with its genesis in the legalise marijuana movement and of course was immediately dependent entirely on the capitalist system for its survival. I wonder how many of those REA franchise holders and other businesses that advertise on that site appreciate that it routinely publishes letters that could attract prosecution under federal race hate laws?
Now that the Australian government has abandoned plans to strengthen free speech provisions under those laws after they were used to prosecute a conservative pro-Israel columnist who made some unfortunate observations about fair skinned aboriginal activists, and to permanently suppress republication of the offending columns, this may well be a course that should be considered, not only to deal with local anti-Zionists who have long ceased to hide their antisemitism, but also to test what these laws are about when it comes to protecting violently targetted minorities such as the Jews.
A week ago the Echo published this little charmer from a well known local crackpot that I reproduce in full in case it is taken down when someone realises that the law does not exempt racist bigotry just because it is "leftist" or Muslim in origin.
Extremist Israelis calling the shots for slaughter
The prolonged media focus on 300 unfortunate airline passengers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time has distracted the world from Israel’s wilful slaughter in Gaza of far greater numbers of equally innocent people.
The Israeli excuse that Hamas fires homemade rockets into Israel is like countering a slingshot with a bazooka.
It’s pretty clear to me too that Israeli warnings to residents to depart buildings they intend to destroy is all about real estate: ‘We don’t want to kill you, just to get you off the land that god promised us.’
Israel has been bulldozing Palestinian houses for decades, always thereby making the point that this is ‘our’ land.
When I was in Israel in the 1970s the so-called ‘ultra-orthodox’ Jews distanced themselves from worldly Zionism in the belief that the return to Zion would come about by an act of god, not by force of arms.
The situation now is that these politicised extremist fundamentalists actually call the shots, while being conveniently exempt from military service.
They routinely kill and steal land from Palestinians and call themselves ‘settlers’. The comparison with the British invasion of Australia is compelling: the existing populations in both cases are regarded as inferior nuisances to be dispatched one way or another into irrelevance.
Barnaby Joyce recently conveyed on ABC’s Q&A the common notion that the problem is intractable, so complex.
Really? All that’s needed is to tell the story from the start. In the beginning the Hebrews departed Egypt and invaded Canaan, slaughtering the inhabitants.
‘This land was promised us by god’, they reassured one another. The old testament reveals that over subsequent centuries god urged them several times to smite their neighbouring enemies from the face of the earth; indeed this is the only document from ancient times that actively promoted genocide.
The psalms are similarly full of chilling images of heaven-assisted vengeance and retribution.
These are the documents which the extremist fundamentalists are made to pore over for many years, a 3,000-year cycle of self-perpetuating brainwashing.
To me the deliberate subjugation of reason to faith is a form of mental illness.
What is the difference between a jihadist who proclaims that randomly killing people is a service to god for which he will be rewarded with 40 houris in heaven, and a devout Jew who in anger seriously believes himself to be ‘chosen’ to cleanse the Holy Land, as a reward for which he will later dally with angels and cherubim?
Both of them are profoundly nuts and should be treated as such.
On a closing note let me ‘thank’ the Israelis; their pathological actions over the past couple of weeks have no doubt generated a thousand jihadists a day around the world, for which the rest of the world will largely pay, not Israel.
Fast Buck$, Coorabell
More recently there was this.
US backing Israel’s genocide in Palestine
The ongoing genocide in Palestine would not be possible without unconditional moral support and military aid from the US in particular and the West in general.
Israel was born out of terrorism by Zionist militia groups like the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Israel has a long and sordid history of using false flag terrorism, like the Lavon affair, to achieve its strategic objectives. The Zionist regime in Tel Aviv is notorious for its disregard of international law and human rights.
Israel’s history does not inspire confidence in its future. I don’t see how it can hope to achieve peace and security by escalating violence and chaos. In this regard, Israel is emblematic of Western imperialism.
The US and its client states regularly impose sanctions against non-aligned and independent members of the United Nations, often based on false accusations and ulterior motives, but any attempt to sanction Israel in the UN Security Council is routinely vetoed by the United States.
This immunity from sanction, this moral support and protection is ultimately responsible for the blatant genocide in Palestine.
The obvious and only viable solution to the problem facing the people who live in that land, is a one state solution, with equal rights for everyone and the right of return for all Palestinians.
Such a solution could be readily implemented by the UN, if it wasn’t for Washington’s unconditional commitment, or perhaps subservience, to the Zionist regime.
John Scrivener, Main Arm
Genocide.
Sure. There are certain hallmarks that define the antisemite and which are a certain indicator of this severe racist infection. One is to draw any kind of parallel between Israel and the Nazis. Another is to accuse the IDF of genocide.
Now search the archives of the Echo for anything to do with the real genocides that threaten the world.
Nothing. Nothing at all about the attacks on religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq, Syria and Africa. Nothing at all about Syria and Iraq at all really since before the latest Hamas attack on the civilian population of Israel.
And yet on Gaza?
Sixteen. Count them. And that doesn't include the antisemitc letters.
It includes this celebratory report on the Hamas war rally in Byron Bay this last weekend. More coming apparently.
North coast locals stand up for Gaza
Scores of Byron shire residents marched through the streets of Byron Bay on Saturday for the second time in a month in solidarity with the people of Gaza who are under siege, bombardment and occupation by Israel.
Marchers chanted ‘Free Palestine’, ‘End the Siege’, and ‘Stop the War Machine’ during the march, part of a global ‘Day of Rage’ to protest the genocide on Palestinians and to demand their freedom from Israeli occupation.
Local Nick Sayers told the rally at Main Beach that ‘the bombing of women and children anywhere is a war crime’. ‘I’m a Christian. I was indoctrinated into supporting Zionist Christian mentalities. I feel ashamed. I am unlearning all the indoctrination of the churches in support of Zionism,’ Mr Sayers said.
‘Jesus would never have put up with this.’
Mr Sayers criticised the Australian government for ‘blindly supporting Israel. Our country has been taken over by tyrants’.
Byron shire residents march against Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
cross posted Geoffff's Joint
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