To continue

Christmas at Pokolbin

You may wish to read the hysterical response in link from Crikey.com to Michael Backman's column

The original column of Backman's was not that good, but the response, both by the Age and by Margaret Simon indicates just how impossible it is make remarks critical of Israel.

For me, the truth of it all is that the policies, laws and wars of Israel are fundamentally racist and unjust.

I still find it extraordinary that anyone can justify or try to justify, making war on a whole population for the sake of two prisoners (the war on Lebanon) or of even several deaths, thereby killing thousands, maiming more and destroying the capacity to stay alive. The war in Lebanon and the war in Gaza are and were fundamentally racist. I would wish that there might be a sufficient groundswell to indict the Israeli government for war crimes.

(And I am reminded of a column I read before Christmas, where a fundamentally nice man, criticised us all - most appropriately - for taking moral positions on things over which we have no control, to feel good about ourselves, while turning a blind eye to our own moral failings... Spot on. But when the disconnect between the discourse and the fundamental facts is so great, it is difficult to believe one lives in the same world.)

(And the picture comes from my peaceful and happy Christmas, and celebrates Don's vegetable patches).

Electronic intifada

Seamist and sunlight. Whale Beach Road.

I have copied this from the electronic intifada.

Joseph Massad, the Electronic Intifada, 20 January 2009.

"The logic goes as follows: Israel has the right to occupy Palestinian land, lay siege to Palestinian populations in Bantustans surrounded by an apartheid wall, starve the population, cut them off from fuel and electricity, uproot their trees and crops, and launch periodic raids and targeted assassinations against them and their elected leadership, and if this population resists these massive Israeli attacks against their lives and the fabric of their society and Israel responds by slaughtering them en masse, Israel would simply be "defending" itself as it must and should."

I can fault nothing in this statement.

Sadly nothing will change with the change of presidents. Neither Australia nor the US will see Israel's acts as war crimes. The world will not become a better nor more just place, while US governments are captive of the Israeli lobby and refuse justice and human rights to the Palestinians. (Obama's inaugural speech indicated business as usual in the middle east: the Palestinians are guilty and innocent and guilty alike deserve at best to be driven from their homes or simply to die. Extra-judicial killing is OK. Clearly, the Palestinians are subhuman: For provocations equivalent to those of the IRA whole regions of the earth must be destroyed. Imagine the same logic applied by the UK government to Northern Ireland. It is quite unthinkable. Why?)

(And these are trees in my beautiful street. And I fear to say this.)