Archive for the ‘Israel & Palestine’ Category
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Abraham Rabinovich; 10/3/10
The Obama administration yesterday discarded far-reaching offers made to the Palestinians by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert as it announced the two parties had agreed to resume peace talks that have been frozen for more than a year. Reports last night said US special envoy for the Middle East, George Mitchell, told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the understandings reached following the 2007 Annapolis Conference were non-binding in the current round of negotiations. Haaretz reported that Mr Mitchell’s deputy David Hale said the negotiations after Annapolis and the understandings reached would not be binding. Mr Olmert had gone further in offering concessions than previous leaders, proposing an Israeli withdrawal from 94 per cent of the West Bank with the remaining 6 per cent swapped for an equivalent swath of Israeli territory.
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Tags: Human Rights, Israel, Terrorism, USA
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Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Stuart Rintoul & John Lyons; 10/3/10
The father of a fourth Australian caught up in the murder of a Hamas leader in Dubai says it was glaringly obvious that the photograph on the passport used by one of the assassins was not his son. Interpol yesterday released the smiling face of the 27th suspect in the January murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, identified as Joshua Aaron Krycer. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said inquiries by the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Passport Office indicated Mr Krycer’s passport was fraudulently duplicated, as were the passports of three other Australians used by the assassins. The real Joshua Krycer is a speech pathologist who left Melbourne three years ago to work in a Jerusalem hospital.
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Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Israel, USA
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Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Jason Koutsoukis; 6/5/10
Israeli historian Shlomo Sand is looking for new friends. Since the publication of his book The Invention of the Jewish People, an unsparing assault on Jewish historiography and Israel’s Zionist edifice, Sand has felt the wrath of friends, colleagues and Jews everywhere. ”I knew it would not be easy for me. But now I have two, maybe three friends left,” says Sand. ”There have been many death letters.” We are chatting in the living room of Sand’s Tel Aviv apartment. Just home from Paris, where he has spent the previous semester teaching, Sand, who turns 64 in September, betrays the weariness of an ageing prizefighter. ”I’m not so fond of Paris, you know. It’s very beautiful, of course, but I don’t find it an easy life there.”… He sits me on one sofa, and himself on another. After making coffee and warming some chocolate pudding, Sand’s wife, Varda, plonks herself on the armrest alongside her husband and slides an arm across his shoulders. Tired he may be, but Sand has also become famous. Having sold 8000 copies in Israel, The Invention of the Jewish People has become an international bestseller and is already being translated into 17 languages.
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Tags: History, Israel
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Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Abraham Rabinovich, 6/3/10
Hamas’s reputation as a tight-knit, ideologically firm and politically coherent group has been shaken since the assassination of a top operative in Dubai raised the spectre that Mossad has penetrated its inner-most workings. To deny that possibility and preserve morale, a senior Hamas official summoned a hasty press conference to say that murder victim Mahmoud al-Mabhouh had violated basic security precautions by booking his flight online and calling his family in Gaza from Damascus to tell them which hotel he was staying in. But Dubai’s police chief, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan, said Mabhouh’s travel plans had apparently been leaked to his killers by a Hamas member. It subsequently emerged that Mabhouh had been under lengthy surveillance by the organisation that killed him. Rather than just being a target of opportunity, he had been stalked by a team of 27 or more agents in a carefully planned operation.
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Tags: Israel, Terrorism, USA
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Friday, March 5th, 2010
5/3/10
As the son of a Palestinian refugee expelled from his native homeland, there are few things I cherish more than my gift of freedom. However, being born and bred in Australia has not shielded me from being tagged with a label that is the unfortunate lot of all first-generation Palestinians. To some, we simply do not exist, and when we do, we are terrorists, animals or sub-human. Such deliberate misrepresentations and stereotypes are constantly propagated, but to read unsubstantiated claims about Palestinians in a serious newspaper (Julie Szego, Comment, 3/3) was highly offensive. Over the years, Palestinians have been accused of terrible things. The Israelis claim that we use our children as human shields. Despite propagating this lie repeatedly, Israel has never provided conclusive proof of it. Nonetheless, the lie has come to be accepted as ”truth”.
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Tags: Human Rights, Israel, Terrorism, USA
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Thursday, March 4th, 2010
John Lyons; 4/3/10; (2 Items)
An Australian man whose forged passport was used in the Dubai assassination of a Hamas commander has told how “very troubled” he has been by the whole affair. Adam Korman, originally from Victoria, also said he had been at his apartment in Tel Aviv on January 19 and 20 this year, the dates when the operation to assassinate Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was carried out. In his first comments to the Australian media since it was revealed that his passport’s details had been stolen, Mr Korman told The Australian at his apartment in Tel Aviv: ” I have been very troubled by what has happened over the last few days.” He is one of three Australians living in Israel with both Australian and Israeli citizenship whose Australian passport details were used for the murder.
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Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Isarel, Terrorism
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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
3/3/10
An Irish town council has removed a page in its guestbook signed by the Israeli ambassador to Ireland in protest at Israel’s diplomatic record.The move, reported by the BBC on Tuesday, follows the alleged use of fake Irish passports in the murder of a Hamas commander, an operation widely thought to have been carried out by Mossad, the Israeli spy agency. Matt Carthy, a local councillor, said: “I think if a government is responsible for a wholesale disregard for international law then local authorities, as well as our own government, have a responsibility to tell them we expect a higher standard.” The decision to get rid of Evrony’s signature comes amid the fallout from the murder in a luxury hotel in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, of the Palestinian Hamas movement, last month.
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Tags: Human Rights, Ireland, Israel
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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
3/3/10 (4 Items)
Jerusalem’s mayor has decided to put off his plans for redeveloping the district of Silwan that would have seen many Palestinian homes demolished in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood. Nir Barkat’s decision came after Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, asked him to allow more time “for efforts to reach an understanding with the residents”. “The prime minister asked me to speak and negotiate with the residents,” Barkat told reporters on Tuesday. “I of course agreed, and I am delaying submitting the programme to the planning committee while we continue to talk to residents,” he said.
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Tags: Human Rights, Israel, Settlers, Terrorism, USA
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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Cameron Stewart; 3/3/10
Dual Israeli nationals will be banned from entering Dubai in a sanction that police say will be enforced by recognising “physical features and the way they speak”. The announcement, by Dubai police chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, is the first reprisal for Israel’s suspected role in the murder of a Hamas leader in Dubai and could affect dual Australian-Israeli citizens using Dubai as a stopover. The sanction will be difficult to police given that Israelis enter the United Arab Emirates on second passports because the UAE does not have diplomatic ties with Israel. The Emirates will “deny entry to anyone suspected of having Israeli citizenship”, General Tamim said, adding that police would “develop skills” to recognise Israelis by “physical features and the way they speak”. The head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Robert Goot, said last night he would not comment on General Tamim’s declaration.
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Tags: Asia, Australia, Israel, Middle East
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Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Jonatahm Pearlman; 2/3/10; (2 Items)
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the forged-passport scandal has ”ways to go” and Israel owes a proper explanation about the use of Australian passports in an apparent assassination in Dubai. ”Australia is not satisfied with the answer that we received from the Israeli government,” Mr Rudd said. But he said the tension had no bearing on Australia’s decision to abstain from a United Nations vote demanding that Israel and the Palestinians investigate war crimes from the Gaza war. ”We have taken our decision based on its merits,” he said.
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Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Israel, Terrorism
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Monday, March 1st, 2010
Amin Saikal; 1/3/10; (4 Items)
Amin Saikal is professor of political science and director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University.
By and large a one-dimensional approach has characterised our approach to understanding the phenomenon of terrorism. However, the recent killing of a Hamas figure, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai should make us cast our net wider to focus also on state terrorism. The Dubai police have claimed with almost undisputed evidence that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, was behind the killing. Israel has, as usual, maintained a policy of ambiguity by neither confirming nor denying Mossad’s actions, although some of its political leaders, specifically the Opposition Leader, Tzipi Livni, have applauded the killing on the grounds that Mabhouh was a terrorist and deserved to be eliminated. If it is proved beyond doubt that Mossad agents, using forged passports in the names of British, French, Irish, German and Australian citizens, perpetrated the act, the killing clearly underlines a disturbing aspect of Israeli behaviour.
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Tags: Human Rights, Israel, Settlers, Terrorism
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Monday, March 1st, 2010
1/3/10;
At least six Palestinians have reportedly been injured after Israeli police forces stormed a holy site in Jerusalem to disperse Muslim worshippers. Palestinian sources said that Israeli forces fired rubber bullets and tear gas at the worshippers holding protests in the al-Aqsa mosque compound on Sunday. Israel said the situation was calm and denied that rubber bullets had been fired. Micky Rosenfeld, the Israeli police spokesman, said that the police force dispersed about 20 masked protesters who were inside the compound.
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Tags: Human Rights, Israel, Religion
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Monday, March 1st, 2010
1/3/10; Letters
Deniers of Israeli and Mossad involvement in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh are delusional. The scale of the operation alone screams state involvement, so the Israeli Foreign Minister’s arrogant denial is risible. Enough, too, of the tirade from supporters of Israel attempting to defend the indefensible! Political assassination, wherever it occurs, whoever is the victim, and whatever ruses are employed, is reprehensible. Malcolm Fraser is right: citing the Holocaust in justification, and the perennial strident claims of anti-Semitism on the part of critics of state-sponsored murder, will no longer wash. Graeme Noonan; Phillip Island, Vic
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Tags: Australia, Israel, Terrorism
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Monday, March 1st, 2010
Mark Dodd & John Lyons; 1/3/10; (3 Items)
Australia has abstained from a key UN vote supporting a war crimes probe of Israel’s military intervention into Gaza last year, three months after voting against the resolution. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said yesterday the decision was unrelated to “recent events”, a reference to Canberra’s anger at Israel’s failure to explain the use of three Australian passports by suspects in the murder in Dubai of a senior Palestinian militant. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the involvement of its spy agency Mossad in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, which Dubai police say involved 26 people travelling on false passports from four nations. However, Israel said last night it would provide whatever assistance was needed by any Australian investigation into the misuse of its passports, saying it was “a friendly country”.
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Tags: Australia, Hebron, Israel, Settlers, UN, USA, War Crimes
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Saturday, February 27th, 2010
27/2/10 The Australian, Letters
- Years ago it was learned that Israel considered each of its citizens to be frontline soldiers in its cause, and now, by the suspected use of Australian passports by Mossad, so, apparently, are we. Knock it off, Israel. David William Hall, Southport, Qld
- The morality of assassination is a difficult one. Who would not have wanted to get rid of Hitler? But the question for Israel is: are the people it assassinates in the same league as Hitler? For many Jews, such people are in the same league and so the ends justifies the means. But even if such people are a threat, do their deaths contribute to security? The answer is no. If anything, assassinations have encouraged a culture of religious political martyrdom. By pinching other people’s passports (including Australians), Israel really alienates its friends, particularly because while on the one hand, claiming to be a country that behaves legally, it cocks a snook at other countries and takes advantage of them when it should be working with them to broker a lasting peace. Larry Stillman, Elwood, Vic
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Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Israel, Terrorism
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Saturday, February 27th, 2010
Jason Koutsoukis; 27/2/10; http://www.smh.com.au/world/australia-set-to-back-away-from-israel-at-un-20100227-p9el.html
Australia was last night preparing to abstain in a United Nations vote on a resolution urging Israel and the Palestinian Authority to investigate allegations of war crimes committed during last year’s war in Gaza. The UN General Assembly was expected to vote this morning. Allegations of war crimes committed by Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas were raised in a report by the South African judge Richard Goldstone. In a strong show of support for Israel, Australia was one of only a few countries to vote against a similar resolution last year. An abstention by Australia would represent a significant shift away from Israel and would be interpreted as a sign of the Rudd government’s anger over revelations this week that fake Australian passports were used in the operation to assassinate the Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mahbouh.
Tags: Australia, Human Rights, Israel, UN
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