The Dirty Half Dozen

geoffff

Tweed Valley based  Green/Left site and best friend forever, the Echo has taken some of the hedge out of Crikey's contract with formerly prominent mouthache, Mike Carlton; a development that I take personally and  as an intrusion into my peaceful valley.

When Carlton wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald there was no risk of ever coming in contact with him unless he suddenly appeared on TV which I understand is remote and  as Carlton knows that's what old Jews invented remotes for anyway. Now he's in a free electronic newspaper that's in my email every few days and that I occasionally scan for the obnoxious especially now that I know he will be there. That's in your face.

I posted seven comments in the comment box under Carlton's inaugural piece. All were one liners or close to it and none were offensive.  They hung in "moderation pending"  zone for a while and then, zip. Oblivion. If you've been tipped into oblivion by the Tweed Echo you really know you're in oblivion.   None were published and this despite my long and warm relationship with the Echo. I just can't understand it.

Incidentally, note how offensive is one of the comments the  Echo did publish.
   
The Echo has a history of some difficulty delineating the political from the racist when it comes to Israel at least when it comes to publishing letters.

The seventh touched on his main  theme which of course is antisemitism. Carlton is just itching to be called an antisemite. He's on his little hill and he has his chin out. It's almost perverted. Masochistic. He know who the Jews are and he just knows it was them. 

There is only one way to deal with a man who so badly needs to be called an antisemite he just makes stuff up. Decline. No thanks. I'm not going to call Mike Carlton an antisemite. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. 

I will however write a post about antisemitism and Mike Carlton and the seventh post will be there

These are the six unpublished slightly  polished posts that address Carlton's banal idea that Gaza is Israel's Vietnam.

August 29, 2014 at 5:41 pm
Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #1

The US had the option to either fight or leave.
Israel has the option to either fight or surrender.

August 29, 2014 at 5:44 pm
Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #2

Vietnam did not refuse to recognise the US and seek its destruction.

August 29, 2014 at 5:47 pm
Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #3

Vietnam war started when foreign forces attacked Vietnam.
Gaza war started when Gaza attacked Israel

August 29, 2014 at 5:54 pm
Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #4

Vietnam insurgents and allies nationalist communists with rational objectives.
Hamas is Sunni Jihadist allied to ISIS with an imperial ideology and no national objectives.

August 29, 2014 at 6:21 pm
Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #5

Vietnamese insurgents were a national liberation movement.
Hamas and allies are a national enslavement movement.

August 29, 2014 at 6:32 pm
Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #6

Vietnam insurgent ideology far left lunacy with priorities on national development and peace. No ideological animus towards women or minorities
Hamas/ISIS(plus allies) ideology irrational extreme right with declared global ambitions and a determined genocidal hatred of Jews. Pathological attitude towards women

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Water (Update)(Further Update)

geoffff

Mike Carlton has turned up in my valley.

Take him back, Sydney Morning Herald. I am warning you. This could get ugly. 

← Articles & Columns |  August 29, 2014 | by The Echo

Mike Carlton: Gaza is Israel’s Vietnam

Mike Carlton, former ABC correspondent and naval historian (through Crikey)

An Israeli military bulldozer pulls a tank out of the Gaza Strip after weeks of pounding the area. EPA/Atef Safadi

So Hamas wins. No matter how Israel and its friends spin it, the raw fact is that this ‘indefinite ceasefire’ leaves Hamas unbeaten in Gaza.

Bloodied and battered, yes, with an echelon of its senior military and political leadership killed by Israeli airstrikes. But it is only down, not out.

It lives to fight another day, which means that Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-Right Likud-coalition government have failed, and disastrously so, in their stated aim of ensuring Israel’s security by a crushing military and economic dominance of the Palestinian people. They rolled the dice. They lost.

This is the nature of asymmetrical warfare. As we saw in Vietnam, one side deploys overwhelming military and technological muscle, and the propaganda to go with it, to crush its weak and primitive opponent.

Entire American infantry and air cavalry divisions, hundreds of thousands of men and machines, were hurled against an enemy that lived in tunnels and moved by stealth and guile. It was B52 bombers and napalm against little guys wearing rubber tyre sandals and driving clapped-out Russian tanks.

For years the United States navy and air force bombed the bejesus out of Hanoi and the Ho Chi Minh supply trail down along the Cambodian border with Vietnam. Henry Kissinger strutted his diplomatic magic in Geneva and Paris.

And it failed. Utterly. Voltaire got it right: God is not always on the side of the big battalions. Having beaten their French overlords, North Vietnam’s political and military leadership ratcheted the theory up a couple of notches.

They recognised that their regular northern army, and their subordinate southern Viet Cong cadres, could never defeat the United States in the field. But they knew they didn’t need to. No matter what their casualties, no matter how many thousands of their young men they committed to certain death, all they had to do was to still be standing when the Americans lost the will to fight and the shooting stopped. And they were.

So is Hamas. As its spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on Tuesday: ‘Hamas is grateful to the people of Gaza who sacrificed their homes, children and money. We announce the victory today after achieving our goals. Netanyahu has failed to force Gaza to surrender. Yes, we defeated them by our standing and our resistance.’

The figures are horrifying. Agence France Press estimated that more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed in seven weeks of war, including 493 children. Some 10,000 people were injured, 3,100 of them children, of whom around 1,000 will suffer some permanent disability. And about 475,000 people have been left homeless.

By contrast, Israel’s ambulance service counted just five civilian deaths and 37 injuries, only one critical, from Hamas rockets and mortars over the 50 days. Technology again, Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence worked brilliantly.

But to what end? American historian Barbara Tuchman nailed what she called the march of folly: the wooden-headed (her words) pursuit by nations of policies catastrophically against their own interests.

Her examples included the Spanish King Philip II’s dispatch of the Armada against Elizabethan England, George III’s attempt to crush the rebellious 13 American colonies and, yes, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in Vietnam.

To which illustrious roll we can now add the name Netanyahu. His reckless folly has ensured that Hamas and Islamic Jihad now have an abundant source of recruits for their next generation of fighters.

They will be those who survived this latest war, those children who saw their parents or their brothers and sisters blown to pieces and their homes, schools, and entire neighbourhoods obliterated. And they will rise again.

The entire history of this benighted land tells us there is nothing more certain. No Israeli now alive will know peace. Hamas can resume the strategy and tactics of terror at any time it chooses.

None of this is even vaguely understood by the powerful and sophisticated Likud lobby in Australia. The faintest criticism of Israel is always met with concerted howls of ‘anti-Semitism!’

It is a facile libel flung about by the comfortable kaffeeklatsch of Sydney and Melbourne, well-upholstered burghers who have never actually experienced a flicker of anti-Semitism in their gilded lives, let alone the Gestapo knock at midnight or even a rocket landing down the street.

In doing so, they demean the memory of those who truly knew what it meant: the dead of Auschwitz.

The final word can be left to 327 Jewish survivors and descendants of victims of the Nazi genocide who signed an open letter to The New York Times this week

and so on

update

As insurance against Echo declining to put up my mild observations.

1. Your comment is awaiting moderation.
   

   August 29, 2014 at 5:35 pm

   There has never been a case of anyone seriously suggesting that mere criticism of Israel is antisemitism. No one has ever suggested that attacking Israeli policy is of itself antisemitism. No one. And yet these constant denials.

   What is it that drives so many people to incessantly deny an allegation that has never been made?

   http://geofffff.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/open-letter-to-bishop-george-browning.html338

   Reply
2.  geoffff says:

   Your comment is awaiting moderation.
   

   August 29, 2014 at 5:41 pm

   Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #1

   The US had the option to either fight or leave.

   Israel has the option to either fight or surrender.

   Reply
3.  geoffff says:

   Your comment is awaiting moderation.
   

   August 29, 2014 at 5:44 pm

   Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #2

   Vietnam did not refuse to recognise the US and seek its destruction.

   Reply
4.  geoffff says:

   Your comment is awaiting moderation.
   

   August 29, 2014 at 5:47 pm

   Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #3

   Vietnam war started when foreign forces attacked Vietnam.

   Gaza war started when Gaza attacked Israel

   Reply
5.  geoffff says:

   Your comment is awaiting moderation.
   

   August 29, 2014 at 5:54 pm

   Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #4

   Vietnam insurgents and allies nationalist communists with rational objectives.

   Hamas is Sunni Jihadist allied to ISIS with an imperial ideology and no national objectives.

   Reply

1. Reply
2.  geoffff says:

   Your comment is awaiting moderation.
   

   August 29, 2014 at 6:21 pm

   Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #5

   Vietnamese insurgents were a national liberation movement.

   Hamas and allies are a national enslavement movement.

   Reply
3.  geoffff says:

   Your comment is awaiting moderation.
   

   August 29, 2014 at 6:32 pm

   Difference between Vietnam and Gaza #6

   Vietnam insurgent ideology far left lunacy with priorities on national development and peace. No ideological animus towards women or minorities

   Hamas/ISIS(plus allies) ideology irrational extreme right with declared global ambitions and a determined genocidal hatred of Jews. Pathological attitude towards women

   Reply

1. update

1. None of these were published by The Echo. 
2. None. 

Enough. I  hereby announce  the Carlton Light Award

For the first person who comes up with a genuine example of someone serious, seriously saying that criticism of Israel is of itself antisemitism. 

More coming soon

Looking Back On The Gaza War 2

geoffff

*4 August 2014  A day that shall live in infamy. Except that they do it every time.  War is declared in the usual way by the liberal/left as soon as Hamas has declared in the usual way and the dreaded dead baby days have began.. This is the Australian left's contribution  to the Hamas/ISIS war drive as delivered. See a pattern here?

Below that is the first shot back from this blog. Stinging. It was fired on the Educational Boycott Front .We  think..Anyway we knew it wouldn't be the last. There was a war on and the Left behaves very differently when there is war. The hysteria. The goose-stepping in line. The looking around for where the orthodox stand. It is always the same.

But when there are Jews involved? At least that makes it so much easier

The Case Mounts For An Educational Boycott of Israel

By Jeff Sparrow

Keywords: 

jeff sparrow

israel

gaza

The bombing of United Nations-run schools in Gaza strengthens the case for an education boycott of Israel, writes Jeff Sparrow.

Another day, another deadly attack on a UN-run school in Gaza.

The latest strike killed 10 people, bringing the toll from the Israeli assault to 1,841 Palestinians killed, with 9,370 people injured and 10,080 houses destroyed.

Claims about Hamas using ‘human shields’ entirely miss the point. Even if the IDF allegations were true (and the UN says they’re not), you don’t respond to someone using civilians as hostages by simply killing the lot of them.

The deaths in the UN facilities epitomize the barbarity of Operation Protective Edge, not only because so many of the slain were children but also because they were killed after having fled their homes, precisely as they had been instructed by the Israelis

geoffff
Posted Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - 08:49

There will never be a "Palestine" until the "Palestinians" decide they want their own state. 

It is very very clear they do not. 

In the meantime the Left has finally jumped a shark this time with the sheer dishonesty and bigotry of its attacks on Israel. The truth is that the "Left" wants a state of "Palestine" even less than the "Palestinians" do.

The vicious hateful spit in your face lying that characterises these broad spectrum attacks. Holocaust deniers cheek by jowl with raving one state fanatics beside themselves with outrage at the sight of a brilliantly successful little country in a sea of bloody murder.  Welcome to the modern Australian left.

For both the "Palestinians" and the left, this is not at all about injustice to the "Palestinians". There is isn't any injustice and never has been, at least not from Israel and the West.. 

For the anti-Israel Islamists and Leftists this is not about restoring justice to Muslims or Arabs. Not in the slightest.

 It is about robbing the Jews of their land, property, civil and national rights and if at all possible their lives. It has always been about that. 

Looking Back On The Gaza War 1

geoffff

Your blog was not absent from duty during the Gaza war. It  got as close to the front as it could from here. Taking on the enemy on their own ground at New Matilda, , organ of choice of the Aussie Anti-Israel Left. And very often the anti-Israel right. Or both together.This  field is as drenched at the end of the day as any dripping gore since the dawn of warfare.  Or it would be if any of  the bastards came near me.

So in the tradition of All Quiet On The Western Front and that 1948 war correspondence diary by  that dude who turned out to be a little out there west of Pluto not much later in life, I bring you.

Blood on the Wattle
(the war posts)

All posts are genuine and exactly  as they appeared in the field on the day. In fact on the minute of the day.There has been no post war editing to spare the squeamish. Every wart is shown. Sometimes comment between war posts has been inserted to explain context. Where this has happened such comment in shown with an asterisk and in italics to distinguish it from the war posts themselves.

*The diary begins on perhaps the darkest day for the blog. It was on the 300 Holocaust survivors heap of crap thread that the hard left threw up to counter the Elie Wiesel letter asking Hamas to at least make some rudimentary first step along the evolutionary path out of primordial barbarism.

Seriously have you ever seen such vile nonsense? As if this sort of thing was a quantity business. It doesn't matter who they are so long as we can ram them into the net. Is there no where they will not stoop to pick?

Then suddenly the blog stumbles. Not in regard to the that matter naturally.  It feels obliged to express regret about something it said about someone in an earlier thread.  Then a recovery. Of sorts.  Will this horror never end?

geoffff
Posted Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - 23:50

Can I say I regret a comment I made about a doctor working in Gaza for MsF  who put in a piece in one these threads on theHAMAS/ISIS  WAR ON ISRAEL AND THE JEWS series brought to you by the Australian left on behalf HAMAS/ISIS of course.  

I should not said what I did but I should say why she in particular made me angry.  

She is  working there. She must know that Gaza's main hospital was built by the Israelis. She must know that Hamas implanted itself there. The Israelis knew that Hamas was working its command post from well conditioned facilities in a basement  because they  built it. They were meant to be operating theatres

I can't believe that she does not know that Gazan medical supplies, with food, power, and basics for the Gazan people  flow from Israel even in times of war like right now

True.

She would also know that Hamas Rules

Hamas controls its rivals by putting them up against a wall in the street and shooting them.

By dragging them through the streets behind motor cycles  

You would have to say with certainty that this is the first war in all of history where one side is feeding the other side rather than doing its best to blockade it.  Except for one fact . Israel did exactly the same thing last time.

True

Right now brave Israelis are risking their lives keeping the flow into Gaza knowing that they are feeding the enemy as well as the people.

And it goes even further. You would have to say with certainty this is the first war where one side uses its civilians including their own kids as shields because it knows its opponent will not strike them if it can except this is getting boring.

And you call the Jews the Nazis. On the contrary you are witnessing that strangest of all forms of human conflict. A combatant that is driven to feed her enemy. What else could you call this bizarre phenomenon that flies in the face of everything.we know about warfare

The Pacifist Wars 

Think it through, research it and then suck it up..

Think "wall poster"

Background  

Year 2054

Through a window is a scene of the celebration of annual  No More War day. The day the world celibates the signing of the Global Pacifist War Convection

The day the world agreed all military forces other than pacist military forces were to be abolished. You can have whatever military forces you wanted so long as they were pacifist military forces.

The definition of a pacifist military force has only one crition. The absolute requirement to feed the enemy with what they wanted as first modeled by the IDF in the early Hamas/IISIS wars against the Muslims and humanity

This requirement then made all need for war both unnecessary and impossible.

The highlight  is always the same. The march past and fly by of all  the world's pacifist militaries.in alphabetical order

The front is the image of a little boy holding a woman's hand watching the parade. All around are proud people , standing upright looking bright. , She by contract  is looking pensive beyond endurance. . Her eyes are wrinkled and downcast,  almost weepy, a grey scarf pulled deep across her face.  

Like a climate scientist photograph 

Suddenly the little boy looks up earnestly 

The caption reads.

What did you do in the early great pacifist war period against the Hamas/ISIS assault on Muslims and humanity ,grandmother?

geoffff
Posted Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - 00:21

"Civilian casualties are deplored by Israel and the IDF goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid them. "

Absolutely correct. The IDF destroyed a Hamas operations base functioning in a large residential block the other day by destroying the whole block. It did this without causing a single civilian casualty. .

Killings civilians is regarded as a military failure by Israel. For Hamas/ISIS child murder is  policy. 

Great Law. Let's Spread It

geoffff

It didn't take long to learn in the rooms and yards of the Surfers Paradise State School circa 1965 that there were three great Abrahamic religions although nobody asked the Jews about that and the guys who came later got to dump on those who went before in rough proportion to how much time they got to write their books. 

As you would expect.

While this might say something about human nature it was hardly something to champion as a beacon of intellectual courage. So when challenged out of the blue as sometimes happened I was well prepared.

"Our minister says that all you Jews are going to hell"' snigger

Well, yeah

He would say that, wouldn't he? I see dead people.

The Jews are no different. The Hebrew Bible has much to say about those who ended up both past and indigenous that in the cold light of the morning could be seen to be shrill and garish from a certain angle. Even disrespectful and there is no question that if the Bible was being written now there are whole slabs that would have a much more appropriate tone to other native cultures and peoples of the region. 

None of whom are any longer with us.

This is bad luck for the Jews I thought because there is no one left to hate. It also explains that despite the fiery tone of their religious books the Jews are among the most peaceful people on earth and have been for centuries. 

Jews are not fighters. We all know that.  . 

This is a political blog. 

Religion and religious matters are entirely outside its fields of operations and will be referred to another department.  Therefore anyone wanting a conversation about 

deuteronomy 2:33-2:35

or any other detail that can be picked from the mass of  material  humankind has generated across all the religions and belief systems as they came and went and flashed about evidently since Genesis will be amazed how brief will be the chat.

It astonishes even this blog that it has to frame a piece about Political Islam in this way. 

But this is a dangerous subject and the venom it generates especially from those who have no apparent stake can be shocking. Here's an example. If you Google my name you will quickly come across the names of two gentlemen who have had some most unkind if not entirely coherent things to say about me.

One of them is a minor academic who was once attached to a South Australian university and he need detain us no longer. The other is Jacob A Stam

I do not believe I have ever said an unkind word about Stam. Well not that unkind. The guy is a dickhead so I've probably said that but Stam hates me as you can see. I mean he really hates me. The source of all this?  

A political point. The truth that an ideology that seeks to impose if necessary by force a system of religious law is something that Political Islam in all its guises has on its own. End of story.

Stam could just not accept this. 


Worse than that. It threw him into fits of rage and when Stam was mad, he really flew. All it was , was a political concept and it would blow him. I pass this on as the most perfect case of cognitive dissonance I have ever encountered.    

Stam was a great Deuteronomy man. That and the King David Hotel

Now we have to look at the detail of a religion  because it is political. For no other reason. Those driven to jihad actually believe this is the literal truth. 

Take a look at this.

This is a description of sharia in Saudi Arabia as it applies to women and girls. From that you can get some idea of the status of captured and non -Muslim women in those regions of Syria and Iraq that have fallen to ISIS.

Even The Useful Idiots Are Getting Nervous

geoffff

From the Foreign Press Association 





The FPA protests in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month. 

The international media are not advocacy organisations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.

In several cases, foreign reporters working in Gaza have been harassed, threatened or questioned over stories or information they have reported through their news media or by means of social media. 

We are also aware that Hamas is trying to put in place a "vetting" procedure that would, in effect, allow for the blacklisting of specific journalists. Such a procedure is vehemently opposed by the FPA.

Hamas War Against Women and Children Finds Racist Echo In The Tweed Valley.

geoffff

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

What an ignorant loud mouthed creep. 

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 Israel Thrives

Just When You Thought Islamists Could Not Get More Depraved ...

geoffff

... or could not get more threatening. 

This is an image that Australians woke up to this morning on the front page of the Australian, the Courier Mail and I guess other News Corp newspapers in other states. 

While the world is focussed on the "genocide" in Gaza.

  The child is an Australian. He is  believed to be the seven year old son of an Australian born jihadist, Khaled Sharrouf, who is one of at least sixty Australians engaged in genocide in Syria and Iraq. The boy was raised in the suburbs of Sydney — He is seen struggling with both arms to hold up the decapitated head of a Syrian.

The  image was posted on Twitter by the proud father with the words “That’s my boy”. 

In the picture it appears that there is a queue of other kids waiting to take their turn to have their pictures taken.  Sharrof has posted other pictures of himself to his friends in Sydney with heads impaled on steel spikes. Some of his friends have sent messages of support and expressed a wish to join him in the fight. 

Australian security have been confiscating their passports. Sharrof had his confiscated but it has hardly grounded him. He got to Syria through Turkey on his brother's passport.  

cross posted Israel Thrives