Former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, speaking on Australia’s national current affairs program, 7.30, about the reason for the government of Israel refusing to declare a truce to free the hostages and for continuing the war (“if someone would have said we would still be stuck in Gaza after a year no-one would have believed it” @ 28:40) and even expanding it into the West Bank and Lebanon. The specific question Barak was responding to was whether “right wing elements within [Netanyahu’s] cabinet” ride their “successes” in the current war to continue to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank….
Oh sure. For sure they will do it. They do it even without this. They want a settlement… And if we wait for too long they might raise some idea that we had some promise from some corner of the Bible to get some part of Lebanon. They are Messianic Jewish supremacists, racists, of the worst kind. I compare them to the Proud Boys of America, those who were behind the 6 January event. So, think of the American President, who would nominate one of these leaders from the program to be secretary of treasury with certain formal roles and the other one to be in charge of national security, of homeland security. That’s crazy but that’s exactly what Netanyahu did because he needs tight control for the survival of the government. If there is even a ceasefire, in order to exchange the hostages and a ceasefire for four months, immediately it will become a day of reckoning because people will demand to establish a national investigation, a committee led by a Supreme Court judge, to find who is responsible for the worst day in our history. (@ 26 mins 55 secs)
(Of course, Barak is introduced as “having come very close to securing peace with the Palestinians” when he was Prime Minister. We are rarely reminded that the “best deal” the Palestinians were ever offered was a “state” divided into four island-regions, each surrounded by Israeli settlements or territory. The above quotation is not meant to imply agreement with every other view Barak expressed in the 7.30 interview. — No thought, of course, that there might be “a day of reckoning” to investigate responsibility for expulsions and killings of Palestinians since 1948.)
Neil Godfrey
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I have so much pent up anger over this. I read about Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott pushing this ultra Zionist line to the Australian public. I see the right wing press defending Israels actions as if it were their patriotic duty.
Then we have these Labor leaders trying to condemn Palestinians for hijacking this day. Even the Guardian published an opinion piece that tried to gas-light us into thinking that this was all a medieval blood libel against Jewish people. I cannot imagine what The Guardian journalists who have written about Palestine must have thought to see their work being denigrated?
The continual criminalisation of Palestinian sympathy continues. A concert pianist given his marching orders by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra adds to the list of people losing their jobs and artistic expression for speaking up for Palestine. Universities being made to apologise for not breaking up protests that made some Jewish students feel uncomfortable?
Our federal government tries to walk a middle path, but at times it seems that such a path is not viable. The ‘right to defend themselves’ no longer makes any sense in this context, when it now means to right to commit genocide. What about the Palestinian right to defend themselves – it is called terrorism?
Peter Dutton has made it clear that he considers support of Palestine as a criminal offence. I wonder how far he will go in this? Are the federal police already collecting evidence against us?
Yes, I am paranoid, I am getting scared for what Zion-fascism is doing to us. It is distorting our morality into some sort of perverse ideology that is blind to evil.
In all this, I would give credit to the Jewish Council of Australia who have spoken up on behalf decent Jewish Australians even if it has led to them being called ‘self-haters’ and ‘anti-semitic’. I would also give credit to the few Christian groups who spoken up against the Zionist superstition, and of course the Muslim Australians who have never stopped calling for justice for Palestine. Then there is us “Agnostic Heretics”, we must stand in solidarity with our religious brothers and sisters who seek peace!
I feel funny and nervously awkward saying this, but I wonder if there is some hope for change not too far ahead. Towards the end of that interview, Ehud Barak referred to his sensing some vibe for change in American attitude towards the state of Israel. I was reminded of the “tipping point” in public opinion as I read it in George Monbiot’s and Peter Hutchison’s new book The Invisible Doctrine where they say the “power of persuasion” is vastly over-rated and that societies change their views collectively when only around 25% of the population changes their minds:
(Excerpt From Invisible Doctrine – Kindle version)
Back in the 1990s Barak said openly that had he been born a Palestinian he would have become a terrorist. Probably the most honest take I have ever heard.