Isi Leibler on Australia and Israel -- Proud to be Friends

geoffff

Australia's foreign minister, Bob Carr, will be visiting Israel next week. Here is Isi Leibler  in the Jerusalem Post on the long and friendly relationship between the two nations which stretches back to when Australia was a teenager and Israel was  occupied by Britain and yet to shake off the League of Nations  mandate that was unlawfully administered by the British. (Or would have been illegal if there was any serious jurisprudential concept of international  law that then, like now, wasn't an offence to decency and the intelligence).

Australia’s positive relationship with Israel dates back to when Australian troops served in Palestine in the course of the two World Wars. To this day, veteran Israelis recount vignettes of the warm and uninhibited relationships with the Australians – in stark contrast to the cold and frequently hostile British attitudes displayed throughout the mandatory period.

Since 1948, when Labor Party leader Dr. H V Evatt served as UN President, until today – with the solitary exception of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam whose hostility against Israel during the Yom Kippur war is considered an aberration – successive governments on both sides of the political spectrum have consistently displayed friendship to Israel.

Australian governments also supported broader Jewish concerns. In 1962, Australia became the first country at the UN to raise the issue of Soviet state-sponsored anti-Semitism and called for the right of Jews to emigrate, with successive governments making significant global contributions towards ameliorating the plight of Soviet Jews. The Australian Embassy in Moscow was regarded as a haven for refuseniks who they invited to receptions despite the tensions this created with the Soviet authorities.

The Australian government made major contributions to the global campaign to rescind the UN resolution bracketing Zionism with racism and also acted as intermediaries for Jewish leaders who sought to promote diplomatic relations between Israel and Asian countries.

Following the previous Liberal (conservative) government headed by John Howard, who emerged as Israel’s greatest champion amongst world statesmen, concerns that the new Labor government would distance itself from Israel proved to be totally unfounded. In fact, aside from the small Green factions, Israel today enjoys genuine bipartisan support throughout the entire Australian Parliament.

Read it all

Cross posted Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill

Daily Kos Jews Capitulate on Jerusalem

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.}

When thinking about the grassroots / netroots of the Democratic party and the progressive-left I tend to look at their online venues such as Daily Kos and the Huffington Post. Both of these online political blogs also contain any number of Jewish progressives who advocate for Israel in what is an exceedingly harsh environment. Progressives do not, as a rule, much like Israel and a certain percentage of them are more than willing to compare the Jews of the Middle East to Nazis or to suggest that, like apartheid South Africa, Israel must be eliminated as it is currently configured, which is to say, as a Jewish state.

I cannot help but notice, however, that in the recent kerfuffle over whether or not Jerusalem is the capital of Israel that on Daily Kos not a single "progressive Zionist" has written a diary laying out the case for why Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation, which must remain undivided.

Not one.

Who are these people who claim to be "Zionists," yet who are ready to fork over the Old City to the Palestinians? How can one possibly claim to be "pro-Israel" and yet refuse to acknowledge 3,500 years of Jewish history in the city of Jerusalem? And if they do acknowledge 3,500 years of Jewish history in the city of Jerusalem then why will they not defend their own heritage?

There is something very flaccid about the current state of progressive-left Zionism.

They just seem so cowed by their non-Jewish friends, many of whom wouldn't lose a moment's sleep if Israel disappeared tomorrow. I have often wondered aloud as to why "progressive Zionists" are afraid to really, honestly discuss political Islam and have concluded that they have been so socially intimidated that they cannot even bring themselves to think on the subject, much less discuss it in public. What I did not quite realize until now is that this extends even to the question of Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish capital of Jerusalem.

They absolutely refuse to stand up for Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the Jewish state of Israel and this makes them something less than worthless... in my humble opinion, of course.

There was a time when I thought that giving up the Arab sections of the city made sense in whatever final status agreement might be hashed out between the parties. But that was when I still thought that maybe, just maybe, the Palestinians would agree to end hostilities. They have not done so. They want to fight on, yet progressive-left Jews cannot bring themselves to face the truth of the matter.

I just find it sad and vaguely pathetic... and if that sounds harsh to you, I am sorry, but it is long past time to recognize that the Palestinians have no intention whatsoever of allowing the Jews of the Middle East to live in peace. This being the case, Israel must maintain full sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem.

Progressive-left "Zionist" Jews should be ashamed of themselves.

It's Time to Take "No" for an Answer

Mike L.

How long are we going to allow ourselves to be strung along in the hopes that maybe someday in the future the Palestinians and the Arabs, more generally, will finally accept our presence as equals in the land which gave birth to the Jewish people?

Western progressives tell people that the problem is that Israel is oppressing the innocent Palestinians. This is a lie. The problem is that the Arab-Muslim world simply will not accept Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land and they refuse to do so out of religious bigotry.

Everything else flows from that premise. The wars, the suicide bombings and rocket attacks, the check-points and the blockade, all flow from the majoritarian Arab-Muslim persecution of the tiny Jewish minority in the Middle East.

Until you get that, you do not understand the conflict.

{A Tip 'O the Kippa to Shirl in Oz.}

Say "Hello" to MT Weekly

Mike L.

I am very pleased to announce that I will be writing a weekly column for MT Weekly, starting with today's piece, "Oh, How Edgy! She’s Dressing Up as “Anne Frankenstein”

MT Weekly (Media Tapper) is a fresh news and culture magazine edited by Michael van der Galiën that covers everything from technology to politics, from entertainment to the arts, from sports to the Arab-Israel conflict.

I want to thank Michael and Grace O'Malley for bringing me in as part of Media Tappers team of journalists and writers and I very much hope that my readership, here at Israel Thrives, will go over and support MT Weekly, as well.

Hey, What Happened to this Guy?

Mike L.

I voted for him but then he disappeared into the White House, never to be seen again.

'Tis a pity.

Diaspora Jews Without Pride

Mike L.

The status of the city of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish nation and state is becoming one of the central questions that separates Barack Obama from Mitt Romney among Jewish people and among people who care about the state of Israel.

When Barack Obama ran for president he stood up before the Jewish world and lied through his teeth. He said:

Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.

Once he became president, with the help of Jewish voters and financial donations, he quickly changed his mind. The Obama administration is so hostile to Israel that State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, not only would not agree that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, she couldn't even tell us which country Jerusalem is even in, including the western portion of the city.

Question: What is the capital of Israel?

MS. NULAND: Our policy with regard to Jerusalem is that it has to be solved through negotiations. That’s all I have to say on this issue.

By contrast, in Mitt Romney's recent trip to that city he said:

It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.

Our two nations are separated by more than 5,000 miles,” he continued. “But for an American abroad, you can’t get much closer to the ideals and convictions of my own country than you do in Israel. We’re part of the great fellowship of democracies. We speak the same language of freedom and justice, and the right of every person to live in peace. We serve the same cause and provoke the same hatreds in the same enemies of civilization."

In response progressives, including Jewish progressives, claimed that this represents a "gaffe" that is deeply insulting to the perpetually insulted Palestinians. What is perhaps most disappointing is the failure of the Jewish left to stand up for themselves and for the Jewish people. If "progressive Zionists" cannot even be counted on to affirm that Jerusalem is, indeed, the capital of Israel then what in this world do they stand for?

The very first obligation of any leader is to defend his or her people. A leader who cannot be trusted to do that cannot be trusted to do anything whatsoever. If liberal diaspora Jewry is so weak that they will not stand with Israelis on the question of Jerusalem then it very much highlights the split between us.

Israelis, because they live there, are much stronger on security and other issues revolving around the Arab-Israel conflict and they most definitely have the ability to discern who their friends are and who their friends are not. Most Israelis do not much like or trust Barack Obama for the simple reason that Obama has proven himself untrustworthy. He wrecked whatever potential there may have been for a negotiated agreement, blamed Israel for his own policy blunders, and he helped usher the Muslim Brotherhood into power in Egypt.

Israelis understand the gravity of these events, even if fainthearted "progressive" diaspora Jews do not. The truth of the matter is that Israel is on its own. It cannot count on the west, nor can it count on the American president, nor even many diaspora Jews who seem so enamored of dhimmitude that they refuse to stand strongly with the Jewish state of Israel by even agreeing that Jerusalem is the capital of the state which should remain undivided.

Until "progressive" Jews find some back-bone they are almost entirely worthless to the cause of Jewish sovereignty and freedom from persecution in the Middle East.

Writing of Obama's Jerusalem policy in the Jerusalem Post, Daniel Tauber says the following:

This rationale does not make the position any less ridiculous. It makes it insulting. It rejects the threemillennia- old status of Jerusalem as the center of the Jewish people’s national-cultural-religious life and the center of the modern Jewish nationalist movement, which was named after Zion, i.e. Jerusalem, long before a Palestinian people was ever claimed to exist. Insult to national identity aside, it denies Israel’s sovereign right to choose its capital and further subjects that right to the veto of the Palestinian Authority.

Obama's policy toward Jerusalem gives the Palestinians a veto over Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. Diaspora Jews, if they would like to grow a spine, need to stand with Israelis in letting Obama know that this is simply unacceptable.

Jerusalem is, indeed, the capital of the Jewish state of Israel.

The Palestinians have had their opportunity to share the city, but they refused.

Let them have Ramallah, instead.