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Article14/2 by Colin R in The Oz - merely somewhat better..

February 13, 2014, 2:45 pm
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Article by Colin R - merely somewhat better than his earlier letter of 31/1 discussed in prev post.
See major  errors in yellow.
GS

Report on minors treats Israel unfairly

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THE ABC Four Corners program on Monday alleging the Israeli mistreatment of Palestinian children, created with The Australian’s Middle East correspondent John Lyons, was laced with sensationalism, inadequate scepticism and fact-checking.
It recycled uncorroborated allegations by arrested Palestinian minors and then wove a conspiracy theory based on them.
The story claimed that Unicef “found” the allegations to be true. Actually, the UN agency merely “found” that these concerning allegations exist.
If these stories are true, they involve clear breaches of Israeli law and those responsible deserve punishment.
But, in the heat of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, horror stories of the sort alleged here - electric shocks, being strapped to a giant cross, threats of rape - are often untrue or grossly exaggerated, and require corroborating evidence.
Indefensibly, the story was repeatedly promoted as providing evidence that Israel has a “new policy” of “targeting Palestinian children”. No evidence was provided for this apart from an unsubstantiated claim by radical Israeli activist and lawyer Gaby Lasky.
In fact, data on the website of Gerard Horton - a critic featured in the story - show that Israel’s arrest rate against juvenile Palestinians has been steady or declining and is comparatively low.
Israel reportedly arrests 700 juvenile Palestinians annually from a population of 2.5 million. Victoria, with a population of 5.4 million, had 29,198 juveniles arrested over 2012-2013 for violent crimes - a rate roughly 19 times higher per capita.
Furthermore, Israel has recently taken meaningful steps to improve conditions for arrested Palestinian juveniles, something that Four Corners almost completely avoided mentioning. Unicef, a major source used for the story, noted in its October 2013 progress report that Israel was co-operating closely with it and had implemented a number of its key recommendations.
The report concentrated only on young “children” accused of “stone throwing”, giving the impression these cases are typical of Palestinian juveniles arrested by Israel. Actually, Israel does not imprison or try children under 12, and the vast majority of juveniles arrested are 16 or 17. Last year, Israel detained no more than 12 Palestinians under 14.
Many of the juveniles arrested are involved in genuine terrorism, including shootings, bomb plots and murder, but stone-throwing at cars is actually a serious offence. In NSW, it carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. Palestinian stone-throwing has killed at least 12 Israelis over recent decades and injured dozens if not hundreds.
A core complaint in the story was that Israeli and Palestinian minors are not treated the same, but it was never explained that this is because of Israeli compliance with the international law of occupation. Were Israel to apply Israeli law to the West Bank, rather than the law in place there in 1967, this would be legally tantamount to annexing it.
Further, the story obscured the fact that Israel has to confront a wicked problem of trying to respect human rights and protect the lives of its citizens against numerous networks operating among a civilian population full of Palestinian minors bombarded with messages inciting them to violence.
As has been widely reported, including in this newspaper, Palestinian children are constantly exposed to messages in the media and at school lionising terrorists, and urging violent “resistance” against Israel. Four Corners ignored this reality.
Thus the late night arrests of some juveniles is designed to save lives, not intimidate Palestinians. When Israeli forces make daylight arrests in Palestinian towns, they are attacked by local gangs and terror groups, leading to bloodshed. In December, two people were killed and eight injured from such arrest efforts.
Likewise, Israeli attempts to gain intelligence from those arrested was presented as part of a conspiracy, when this is exactly what law-enforcement authorities anywhere would do after arresting a minor involved in violence associated with a larger group or organisation.
Finally, the story featured quotes irrelevant to Israeli treatment of Palestinian juveniles from an extremist settler, Daniella Weiss.
It was never mentioned that there have been three offers of Palestinian statehood made by successive Israeli governments. Hopefully, a Palestinian leadership willing and able to agree to a lasting peace will soon accept these offers.
Israel may not be getting its response right in some respects, but it is improving its treatment of arrested minors, as Unicef attests.
This issue deserved a more temperate, professional and balanced treatment.
Colin Rubenstein is executive director of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council.
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LYONS 20/2/14: Israel to end night arrest of kids

February 19, 2014, 1:55 pm
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'WE NEED TO TRAIN SOLDIERS TO BEHAVE LIKE POLICEMEN'

Israel to end night arrest of kids

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JOHN LYONS' FOUR CORNERS REPORT3:48

http://content5.video.news.com.au/NDM_-_The_Australian/276/141/2435985497_promo216340152_648x365_2435986260-hero.jpg
A clip from John Lyons' Four Corners story investigating the Israeli army's treatment of detained Palestinian children. Courtesy: ABC1 Four Corners
    AUTOPLAY
    Islam Dar Ayyoub and his brother Karim, who have both been arrested by Israeli troops — I
    Islam Dar Ayyoub and his brother Karim, who have both been arrested by Israeli troops — Islam when he was 14 and Karim when he was nine — in their village of Nabi Saleh on the West Bank. Source: News Limited
    <>
    Islam Dar Ayyoub and his brother Karim, who have both been arrested by Israeli troops - Islam when he was 14 and Karim when he was nine - in their village of Nabi Saleh Saleh on the West Bank
    THESE WORDS IMMEDIATELY ABOVE  WERE UNDER A DIFFERENT PHOTO OF THE 2 BROTHERS AS PUBLISHED IN THE OZ ON PAGE 7 20/2/14 [gs]

    THE Israeli army has announced a comprehensive review of its policy of dealing with Palestinian children, including an immediate pilot program to end night-time arrests. The review is to be detailed shortly to a committee of the Israeli parliament.
    It comes shortly after a joint investigation by The Australian and the ABC’s Four Corners program into Israel’s military justice system.
    That investigation showed that Israel enforces two legal systems in the occupied West Bank — one for Jews and one for Palestinians.
    Israel’s chief military prosecutor for the West Bank, Lieutenant Colonel Maurice Hirsch, told The Jerusalem Post that the army had decided to make “a general re-evaluation” of the situation.
    He said the pilot program was “one of many decisions in a general re-evaluation of the situation, not only improving treatment of the rights of Palestinian minors, but also taking into account the potential operational benefits.”
    The Jerusalem Post said that since a UNICEF report on Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children and following the Four Corners program there had been indications of upcoming change, but that Colonel Hirsch’s revelation was the first official confirmation.
    Last year, UNICEF found that the ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appeared to be “widespread, systematic and institutionalised.”
    It found: “Children have been threatened with death, physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault, against themselves or a family member.”
    After that Israel committed to begin a pilot program under which children would be issued with summonses rather than subjected to night-time arrests, but has not proceeded with that pilot program.
    Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor told The Australian that the abuses alleged by UNICEF were “intolerable”.
    Mr Palmor said one problem was that soldiers, rather than policemen, were making arrests.
    “So we need to train soldiers to behave as policemen and that is something that’s not so easy,” he said.
    The Post said the re-evaluation was being made in the context of a growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Europe.
    “But the more serious and probably more dangerous threat from an Israeli perspective — one that has been only slightly out of the news for some time — is the International Criminal Court,” it said. It added the terminology that some of Israel’s accusers had used was directly from the Rome Statute, which related to “crimes against humanity.”
    Colonel Hirsch said that “much of the criticism of torture and abuse against Israel” — which Israel disputed — was alleged to have occurred during night-time arrests.
    The hope was that the pilot program could “neutralise those complaints.” He said if the program worked there would be “tremendous gains in saving people from operational dangers and minimising future claims of abuse” and if it failed “we will have shown conclusively that summonses do not work” and there was no alternative to night arrests.
    He added: “We have no intention of reducing the intensity of the fight against Palestinian terrorism, stone throwing and offences committed by minors.”
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    LYONS: NOTE THE TOP OF FRONT PAGE OF THE AUSTRALIAN TODAY!!!

    February 19, 2014, 2:00 pm
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    NOTE THE TOP OFFRONT PAGE OF THE AUSTRALIAN TODAY - 20/2/14, AS MAJOR HEADLINE OF NEWS DE JOUR:

    ISRAEL ENDS NIGHT ARREST OF KIDS AFTER JOHN LYONS INVESTIGATION
    [WORLD 7]

    Shame upon shame - The Oz is a disgrace!
    Geoff Seidner
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    Pamela Geller / Mark Steyn: Yes, We Can (Say That

    February 20, 2014, 2:39 pm
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    Pamela Geller is one of the best bloggers.

    Mark Steyn  needs no imtroduction.
    gs
    ##################################################################################################################################################################

    16/2/14

    Here are the Atlas Shrugs email updates for g87@optusnet.com.au



    Mark Steyn: Yes, We Can (Say That)

    “….the Left is increasingly showing all the critical-thinking skills of your average dimestore mullah.”
    Read Mark Steyn’s latest column  on his battle for free speech — an increasingly difficult and uphill battle. His court case, as well as my many free speech court cases, is an epic battle in Screen Shot 2014-02-14 at 8.54.16 PMthe defense and preservation of our most basic freedoms. These cases hold as much importance as the Scopes trial, without the attending media swarm, because this time the media is planted firmly on the side of the fascists and totalitarians.
    If America had a clue as to what was at stake, they would be as laser focused on that courtroom as they were on OJ.
    Free speech absolutism. Inshallah!
    Defend Free Speech!
    Yes, We Can (Say That) Mark Steyn , February 7, 2015
    I’ve always been in favor of freedom of expression, but lately I’ve become a free-speech absolutist. It takes all sorts to make a world and I’ve met a lot of them over the years, and I can stand pretty much anything anyone says about anything — until someone says to me, “You can’t say that.” At which point my inclination is to punch his lights out. I do this not just because I’m a violent psychopath with a hair-trigger temper, but to make the important point that in societies where you’re not free to speak your mind — to argue and debate — the only way to express disagreement is through violence.
    But the Shut-up-he-explained Party is making great strides in the free world, too. The Latina actress Maria Conchita Alonso was recently fired from a San Francisco production of The Vagina Monologues because she made the mistake of appearing in a commercial for a Tea Party political candidate. “We really can’t have her in the show,” the producer Eliana Lopez told KPIX-TV. Which would be an Oscar-winning line if she were appearing in a George Clooney movie about blacklisted screenwriters in the 1950s. But in the 2010s is just business. Jonathan Kay, my former editor at Canada’s National Post (I seem to be having a lot of disagreements with my editors these days), felt that Daniel Korobkin should not have been in the party that accompanied Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Israel. Rabbi Korobkin’s sin was to have “praised” Pamela Geller, the “controversial” New York blogger and anti-jihad crusader. Actually, he didn’t praise her. A year or so back, he gave a masterly demonstration of “moral turpitude and pharisaical narcissism” (as David Solway put it) all about how spiffingly marvelous Islam is and what splendid chaps his two Muslim teachers at UCLA had been — and, after 15 minutes of oleaginous multiculti boosterism, said, “And now here’s Pamela Geller.” But Korobkin committed the crime of being in the same room as Pamela Geller, and, therefore, the prime minister of Canada should not be permitted to be in the same room as him.
    I don’t care for all this beyond-the-pale stuff, because the pale is already way too shrunk. And, aside from anything else, once you get into the habit of banning and proscribing, your critical thinking goes all to hell. Many of us have seen one or two of those ill-advised shows on al-Arabiya or al-Jazeera in which some fire-breathing imam invites on a despised, Westernized, apostate woman in order to crush her like a bug, only to have her run rings round him. The Syrian émigré Wafa Sultan famously did it to Faisal al-Qassem and Ibrahim al-Khouli. It’s hardly surprising that a culture that puts so much of life beyond discussion renders its inmates literally speechless — to the point where, faced with, say, a school teddy bear innocently named Mohammed, the default opening gambit at the local debating society is to shriek “Allahu Akbar!” and start killing.
    We’re not at that point yet. But, raised in the cocoon of conformity that is American academe, the Left is increasingly showing all the critical-thinking skills of your average dimestore mullah. The other day, in between its ongoing complaints about Michael Douglas’s “homophobic” awards acceptance speeches, Salon ran a story by one of its many pajama boys headlined “Ted Nugent Writes Insanely Racist Op-Ed.” Apparently, Ted had written a “vile rant” at “the batshit insane right-wing fever swamp of a site known as WorldNetDaily.” “Even for Ted Nugent,” cautioned Elias Isquith in his opening sentence, “this is bad.” Alas, poor old Ted couldn’t quite live up to his batshit-insane billing: There followed a few unexceptional observations about black crime and broken families maybe a smidgeonette more heated than one might hear from, say, Bill Cosby or Juan Williams. More to the point, the hapless pajama boy didn’t even attempt to explain what was so objectionable about Nugent’s “rant.” As the Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle put it, “Salon calls out Ted Nugent’s ‘racist’ MLK Day column — without refuting his points. Must be Friday.” All Mr. Isquith can do is reprise Ted Nugent’s words and then shriek “Batshit insane!” and “Insanely batshit!” over and over, like Lady Bracknell with Tourette’s.
    Which brings us to Michael Mann, the fake Nobel laureate currently suing NATIONAL REVIEW for mocking his global-warming “hockey stick.” Of the recent congressional hearings, Dr. Mann tweeted that it was “#Science” — i.e., the guy who agrees with him — vs. “#AntiScience” — i.e., Dr. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. That’s to say, she is by profession a scientist, but because she has the impertinence to dissent from Dr. Mann’s view she is “#AntiScience.” Mann is the climatological equivalent of those bozo imams on al-Arabiya raging about infidel whores: He can’t refute Dr. Curry, he can only label her.
    He explains his aversion to appearing with anyone other than fawning groupies thus: “Getting on a debate stage signals that, while you might disagree, you respect the position of your opponent. #WhyWeDontDebateScienceDeniers.” But the reality is that he’s too insecure and dull-witted to argue. That’s why he’s suing me over a pun (“tree-ring circus”), why he threatened legal action in Minnesota over a song parody, and why he’s in court in Vancouver objecting to a bit of wordplay. “You can’t say that!” is the refrain of those who can’t hold their own. Michael Mann is seeking massive damages from me and this magazine. Nuts to that. But I would be willing to buy him a course in debating technique — because in free societies that’s how you win. I’d also like to buy the wee thin-skinned chap a sense of humor, but I don’t think there’s a course for that.
    ~You can help Mark defend himself against Dr Mann’s lawsuit by supporting the SteynOnline bookstore and by purchasing our new Steyn gift certificates.
    The post Mark Steyn: Yes, We Can (Say That) appeared first on Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs.

         

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    THIS IS PUTIN!@%$#@*&^

    February 20, 2014, 2:50 pm
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    THIS IS PUTIN AND RUSSIA TODAY!@%$#@*&^
    gs



    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/pussy-rioters-whipped-by-cossacks-in-sochi/story-fnay3ubk-1226833119251#


    Pussy Rioters whipped by Cossacks in Sochi

    • THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
    • FEBRUARY 21, 2014 12:00AM

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    Members of the Pussy Riot protest group are horsewhipped by a Cossack militiaman during a
    Members of the Pussy Riot protest group are horsewhipped by a Cossack militiaman during an impromptu performance on the streets of Sochi. Source: AP
    COSSACK militia attacked Russia’s Pussy Riot punk group with horsewhips yesterday as they tried to perform under a sign advertising the Sochi Olympics.
    Six group members — five women and one man — donned their signature ski masks in central Sochi and were pulling out a guitar and microphone when at least 10 Cossacks and other security officials moved in.
    One Cossack appeared to use pepper spray. Another whipped several group members while other Cossacks ripped off their masks and threw the guitar in a rubbish bin.
    “A few seconds into the song they began to beat us with batons and pepper spray us. We didn’t even get through the first verse of the song,” band member Maria Alekhina said.
    The Cossacks violently pulled masks from the women’s heads, beating group member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova with a whip as she lay on the ground.
    The incident lasted less than three minutes and one Pussy Riot member, a man wearing a bright yellow tank top, was left with blood on his face, saying he had been pushed to the ground.
    “They hit me all across my body, look at my bruises,” Tolokonnikova said.
    Krasnodar region governor Alexander Tkachev, who has been advancing Cossacks’ interests for years, promised to conduct a “thorough probe” into the incident and prosecute the attackers.
    Pussy Riot, a performance-art collective involving a loose membership of feminists who edit their actions into music videos, has become an international flashpoint for those who contend President Vladimir Putin’s government has exceeded its authority, particularly restricting human and gay rights.
    The group, which called for a boycott of the Sochi Olympics, gained international attention in 2012 after barging into Moscow’s main cathedral and performing a “punk prayer” in which they entreated the Virgin Mary to save Russia from Mr Putin, who was on the verge of returning to the Russian presidency for a third term. Two members of the group, Tolokonnikova and Alekhina, were sentenced to two years in prison but were released in December.

    1. News: Pussy Rioters whipped by Cossacks


        The Australian ‎- 9 hours ago
        COSSACK militia attacked Russia's Pussy Riot punk group with horsewhips yesterday as they ...Pussy Rioters whipped by Cossacks in Sochi.
        Sydney Morning Herald‎ - 18 hours ago

    2. Pussy Riot members beaten and whipped in Sochi - ABC

      www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02.../pussy-riot...whipped...sochi/5271378‎

      1 day ago - Members of Russian protest band Pussy Riot were attacked in Sochi byCossack militia armed with horsewhips.

    3. Pussy Riot whipped by Cossacks in Sochi performance fail ... - RT.com

      rt.com/news/pussy-riot-sochi-cossacks-748/‎

      1 day ago - Members of the controversial Pussy Riot band have been attacked byCossacks with batons, pepper spray and whips, as the young women ...

    4. Cossacks wielding whips and pepper spray attack Pussy Riot ...

      www.smh.com.au/.../cossacks-wielding-whips-and-p...‎

      23 hours ago
      The Pussy Riot punk group has reportedly been attacked in Sochiby ... Tolokonnikova (blue balaclava) are ...

    5. Cossacks attack Pussy Riot in Sochi with whips and pepper spray

      www.smh.com.au/.../cossacks-attack-pussy-riot-in-s...‎

      18 hours ago
      The Pussy Riot punk group has been attacked in Sochi byCossacks ... said “group of Cossacks just ...
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    21/2- brilliant Israel ambassador: Palestinians guilty of turning kids into killers

    February 20, 2014, 2:57 pm
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    Palestinians guilty of turning kids into killers
    WORLD COMMENTARY

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    Israelis are up against a system of violence and hatred

    STONES are hurled on to the highway, causing a major car accident. A woman and her three young children are injured, one of them critically.
    Sitting by her daughter’s bed at Rabin Medical Centre in Israel, Adva Biton laments that three-year-old Adele, who is now confined to a wheelchair since the attack, “doesn’t laugh, doesn’t eat, doesn’t do anything on her own”.
    Several minutes before the crash, rocks were also hurled at another Israeli vehicle, shattering the windshield. The driver, a resident of Eli, and his one-year-old son were lightly wounded.
    On a daily basis incidents of rock throwing by minors take place. These projectiles are launched with alarming regularity.
    These events contribute a part of the grim everyday reality of life in the West Bank.
    Over recent days, Australian media reports have painted an extremely misleading view of the situation on the West Bank regarding the treatment of Palestinian children and Israel’s co-operation with UNICEF.
    Israel’s security establishment has been, according to a UNICEF paper from October 1, 2013, “engaging closely with UNICEF and has been reviewing the recommendations of the UNICEF paper”.
    The paper goes on to note that “this engagement is facilitating a deeper analysis and understanding of the process of military arrest, detention and prosecution in the West Bank”.
    We, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis and fair-minded people everywhere, feel great pain and a sense of sorrow when we see children tragically involved in acts of politically motivated violence. While the issue of incarceration and treatment of minors is being dealt with, we are not seeing a similar level of thought or effort put into investigations concerning the origin of such behaviours. Children are not inherently violent or hateful. This is a learned behaviour.
    To comprehensively investigate the health and wellbeing of the children involved in such violent acts, we must acknowledge that these children were, at some point, indoctrinated into this vicious mentality by terrorists and their affiliates.
    We must recognise the role of adults in teaching their children to throw rocks as the core reason for these acts. Including, of course, strategic targets and timing in training. Misused by adults and terror organisations in a way contravening international law, utilising children for incitement purposes is criminal. This is the reality and it must stop.
    When a minor is coerced into participating in deadly violence, it primarily indicates a lack of discipline, education and a breakdown of the primary support system, his or her family. Unfortunately, the Palestinian society and Authority have embraced and institutionalised a system of hate and violence directed at Israelis.
    This system encourages individual acts of violence, whether rock throwing, fire-bomb hurling, drive-by shooting or, in extreme cases, the utilisation of explosives and suicide attacks. This environment is met by, and insulated by, an educational system that does its utmost to erase Israel from the history books.
    Despite the news reports, it is important to note that Israel is actively working towards a better solution for the future. Unlike other countries, Israel has been working with UNICEF and other international organisations in order to improve the situation while uncovering the truth without any fear. These incidents have only come to light through the transparency and self-reporting that has characterised UNICEF-Israel investigators.
    UNICEF’s latest paper clearly highlights the vast improvements made by Israel through various government ministries and the IDF. Israel’s support for UNICEF’s investigation and reforms it has made to procedures surrounding minors are illustrative of the genuine effort Israel makes to safeguard the judicial process and make substantive and effective changes where the need arises.
    As stated in the UNICEF paper: “These efforts will build on the work of Palestinian, Israeli and International civil society groups who have been working with the Palestinian population for a number of years to raise awareness with children, families and communities to ensure they are informed of their specific rights when they are detained by the Israeli military.”
    Israel stands at a crossroads, a place where no other country has stood before. We represent a patch in the complex tapestry of Middle-Eastern geography.
    To simplify and sensationalise our situation, and that of the Middle East, is unhelpful and undermines peace efforts in both a regional and global context.
    It is such a shame that we cannot see a more three-dimensional view of the Middle East, instead of the same story regurgitated over many days. Shmuel Ben-Shmuel is Israel’s ambassador to Australia.
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    21/2 - Outrageous The Oz editorial: Israel trials a new approach

    February 20, 2014, 3:22 pm
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    Israel trials a new approach

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    ISRAEL, the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, has acted wisely in its decision to replace night-time arrests of Palestinian children suspected of stone throwing and other crimes on the West Bank with a system of summonses. The practice of night-time arrests was highlighted in a recent investigation by The Australian’s Middle East correspondent John Lyons and the ABC’s Four Corners program.
    The reporting drew an angry response from some Israeli supporters in Australia. But discussion in Israel shows the nation’s leaders, army and commentators understand the benefits of the change.
    Israel’s chief military prosecutor for the West Bank, Lieutenant Colonel Maurice Hirsch, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday the new program, if successful, would provide “tremendous gains in saving people from operational dangers and minimising future claims of abuse”. Every arrest was dangerous, at best. And avoiding the arrest of Palestinian minors at night would negate “misleading claims of widespread, systematic and institutionalised mistreatment”. The change could also help Israeli officials avoid being brought before the International Criminal Court as a result of a deliberate campaign of misunderstanding.
    To the army’s credit, it wants to make the changes work. And it is keeping “an open mind” about whether Palestinian suspects will turn up for questioning when summonsed. If they fail to do so it will underline the need for sterner measures to be resumed.
    Night-time arrests of minors have been conducted only among Palestinian suspects on the occupied West Bank, not among Israel’s 1.7 million Arab and Palestinian citizens, who share the same rights as Jewish citizens. Night arrests were preferred because of the likelihood of violent demonstrations during the day.
    Justifiably, Israel has no intention of compromising on security when stone-throwing and other offences by minors are a significant problem on the West Bank. As Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council wrote last week, many of the 700 Palestinian minors arrested annually in Israel are involved in shootings, bomb plots and murder, as well as stone-throwing, that has killed at least 12 Israelis over recent decades and injured many more.
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    EX GATESTONE: Palestinian Authority Human Rights Violations Ignored by Media, West

    February 20, 2014, 3:31 pm
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    Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 9:12 PM
    Subject: Palestinian Authority Human Rights Violations Ignored by Media, West
     

    Gatestone Institute
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    Palestinian Authority Human Rights Violations Ignored by Media, West

    by Khaled Abu Toameh
    February 11, 2014 at 5:00 am
    Be the first of your friends to like this.
    Evidently, most Western governments, journalists and human rights organizations have chosen to endorse the Palestinian Authority's stance that the only evil-doers are the Israelis. And that is precisely why the ICHR report on the anarchy, lawlessness and human rights violations by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas will be completely ignored in the West.
    A report issued by the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) this week criticized the Palestinian Authority [PA] and Hamas for assaults on human rights and freedoms in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
    The report, which has been ignored by mainstream media and human rights organizations in the West, reveals that 10 Palestinians died in January 2014 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a result of anarchy, lawlessness and misuse of weapons.
    The report also lists cases of torture and mistreatment in PA and Hamas prisons. ICHR pointed to an increase in the number of torture cases in prisons belonging to the PA's much-feared Preventive Security Service in the West Bank.
    During January, ICHR wrote that it received 56 complaints about torture and mistreatment in Palestinian prisons: 36 in the Gaza Strip and 19 in the West Bank. In addition, the human rights organization received innumerable complaints about arbitrary and unlawful arrests of Palestinians by the PA and Hamas.
    A Palestinian Authority policeman attacks protestors. (Image source: "Palestinians for Dignity" Facebook Page)
    ICHR wrote that it also received complaints from Palestinians who accused the Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank of unlawfully seizing their money.
    The organization also received complaints about assaults on freedom of expression and the media, as well as on peaceful protests and academic freedoms.
    Of the 10 Palestinians who died during January, the report found that half of them died as a result of violent disputes between clans. One Palestinian was killed while working in a smuggling tunnel along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Three Palestinians died in what the organization describes as cases of "security anarchy and misuse of weapons." In the Gaza Strip, the report said, a 13-year-old girl named Wisam Ashour committed suicide by hanging herself in her family home.
    With regards to torture, the organization stated that it received complaints from Palestinians who said they had been tortured while in detention in Palestinian Authority and Hamas prisons.
    ICHR related that it received 85 complaints during January concerning unlawful and arbitrary arrests by the two Palestinian governments. Many detainees said they were taken into custody for "politically-motivated" offenses.
    As for assaults on freedom of expression and peaceful protests, the human rights organization pointed out that on January 12, 2014, PA policemen used force to break up a protest by Palestinian youths north of Ramallah. Between 60-70 protesters, the report continued, were wounded in the head and legs after policemen attacked them with clubs and stun grenades.
    On January 28, 2014, Palestinian Authority policemen used live ammunition to disperse stone-throwers in the center of Ramallah, according to the report. It also stated that there was no reason for the use of live ammunition during the incident. Four protesters were wounded, the report documented, when policemen attacked them with clubs.
    During the last week of January, the report noted, Hamas security forces raided two university campuses in the Gaza Strip and used excessive force to disperse student protests against high tuition.
    In the West Bank, the Preventive Security Service summoned for interrogation a number of students suspected of involvement in political activities, and, the report revealed, a University in Jericho expelled a student on suspicion that his brother and cousin belonged to Hamas.
    Referring to anarchy and lawlessness in the West Bank, the human rights organization pointed to an incident that took place near Hebron on January 18. On that day, more than 100 men attacked the building of the Yatta Municipality, using a bulldozer to force their way inside.
    Mayor Musa Makhamarah said the assailants were relatives and friends of a municipal council who had been dismissed from his job. The mayor complained that although he had warned the Palestinian Authority police in advance about the possibility of such an attack, no police reinforcements were dispatched to the scene.
    The report found that the Palestinian Authority was continuing to ignore court rulings. The Preventive Security Service and the General Intelligence Force regularly ignore orders issued by various courts to release Palestinian detainees, it pointed out, listing seven cases that occurred last month.
    Earlier last week, representatives of ICHR met with PA Interior Minister Said Abu Ali and discussed with him cases of torture and human rights violations in the West Bank. They also discussed the continued security crackdown on Palestinian students at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. Many students have complained that they were being targeted for "political reasons" by various branches of the Palestinian security establishment.
    The report's findings once again show that neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas respect human rights and freedom of expression in the territories under their control.
    That Hamas is responsible for human rights violations and assaults on freedom of expression should not come as a surprise to anyone.
    But what is surprising is that the Palestinian Authority leadership, which often boasts that Palestinians living under its jurisdiction enjoy freedom of expression and democracy, is continuing to lie not only to its constituents, but also to the Western media and international donors about its human rights record.
    The PA has been successful in diverting attention from these problems by putting all the blame on Israel. As far as the PA is concerned, Israel alone is responsible for human rights violations and assaults on freedom of expression and the media.
    Evidently, most Western journalists, governments and human rights groups have chosen to endorse the Palestinian Authority's stance that the only evil-doers are the Israelis. And that is precisely why the ICHR report about the anarchy, lawlessness and human rights violations by the PA and Hamas will be completely ignored in the West.
    ‭‮
    Related Topics:  Khaled Abu Toameh
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    OH ALBO!!...Joe’s all talk, no action

    February 20, 2014, 5:14 pm
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    OH Anthony Albanese: do you really think I must reconcile your claims in the article / link below with my  'google' items? You have the chutzpah to disseminate a claim against Joe Hockey? I do not have to read your article to know that this act of yours is simply silly. Courageous / AKA YES MINISTER

    GS

    https://www.google.com.au/#q=geoff+seidner+albanese+judith+sloan+worst&spell=1

    Judith Sloan 22/12: Gold-medal clunkers on the road to nowhere

    2. cognatesocialistdystopia.blogspot.com/.../judith-sloan-2212-gold-medal-...‎

      Judith Sloan 22/12: Gold-medal clunkers on the road to nowhere ... DURING an election campaign, I like to run a book on the worst policy proposals put forward by any of the parties. .... the Transport Minister, Anthony Albanese, has been on a promise to the Transport Workers Union to ... Posted by Geoff Seidner at 5:08 pm.

    Socialist Dystopia: THIS IS ALBANESE!! MINOR ERROR PREV ...


    1. socialistdystopia.blogspot.com/.../a-albeneseuniform-transport-laws-bring.h...
      Mar 15, 2013 - My other main blog: mediaspinners.blogspot.com.au Geoff Seidner ...THAT ALBANESE REFUSED TO COMMENT ON HIS TITLE AS GILLARD'S WORSTNINISTER! ... Judith Sloan 22/12: Gold-medal clunkers on the roa.

    Socialist Dystopia: MERCIFULLY, HISTORY CAN NEVER REPEAT ...


    1. socialistdystopia.blogspot.com/.../mercifully-history-can-never-repeat.ht...‎

      Mar 15, 2013 - My other main blog: mediaspinners.blogspot.com.au Geoff Seidner ...opinion pieces from Labor parliamentarians - Emerson and Albanese. ... refused to respond to being designated Labor's worst minister by Judith Sloan.

    Socialist Dystopia: August 2013


    1. socialistdystopia.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html‎

      Aug 2, 2013 - Posted by Geoff Seidner at 2:07 pm No comments: .... Kroger, Chris Kenny and Judith Sloan called it either a non - clear winnner or a draw.

    Joe’s all talk, no action

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    THERE’S something very hollow about Joe Hockey’s attempt to provide leadership to the G20 finance ministers on the need to encourage more private investment in infrastructure.
    The Treasurer’s aim is laudable - it makes sense for the G20 to discuss ways of making it easier to unlock billions of dollars in superannuation funds to bankroll the construction of roads, railways, ports and other infrastructure.
    But there’s a glaring flaw in Hockey’s argument: while he champions private-sector infrastructure investment, his own government is making decisions right now that will alienate investors by ending the transparency in our infrastructure market.
    Infrastructure Minister Warren Truss is amending the laws that govern Infrastructure Australia to gut the existing transparent process for assessing the nation’s needs.
    The new regime will replace the current evidence-based decision-making process with one based on party politics.
    Truss’s changes will repel private-sector investors - the opposite of what Hockey says he wants.
    When Labor created Infrastructure Australia in 2008, it was designed as an arms-length government adviser that would work with the states to assess and rank the nation’s competing infrastructure proposals on the basis of which had the most potential to lift national productivity.
    IA was to provide the evidence base for government decision-making - just the facts, with no political seasoning.
    Governments would, of course, make the investment decisions, but IA’s information was to be published so everyone - governments, citizens and investors, could assess the facts.
    For investors, this would provide greater certainty about the national infrastructure agenda and the place within it for their potential investments.
    However, Truss’s amendments to IA’s operations process, which passed through the House of Representatives late last year and are now before the Senate, would end this transparency by empowering the government to order IA not to publish the findings of its own research.
    They would also allow Truss to order IA not to investigate the investment-worthiness of certain classes of infrastructure projects, such as public transport.
    This appears to be an attempt by the Coalition government to prevent IA from providing it with advice that does not suit its political objectives.
    So while Hockey lectures the G20 ministers about the need to harness private investment for national infrastructure, his colleague Truss is removing the transparency provisions in Australian legislation that provide comfort for investors here.
    The government’s actions simply do not align with Hockey’s rhetoric.
    Perhaps this is why groups including the Business Council of Australia and the Urban Development Institute, as well as IA chief Michael Deegan, have made submissions to the Senate inquiry, rejecting Truss’s legislative assault on transparency and evidence-based decision-making.
    Put yourself in the position of an investor. Investors need to assess risk. They want more information, not less.
    There’s another difficulty with Hockey’s attempt to present himself as a credible global authority on infrastructure needs - his own actions.
    Right now, the Treasurer is ripping billions of dollars out of the existing federal budget for Australian infrastructure projects.
    Hockey and Tony Abbott have made it clear they will not honour existing budget allocations for congestion-busting urban passenger rail projects such as the Melbourne Metro and Brisbane’s Cross River Rail Project.
    These very projects were identified by Infrastructure Australia as providing significant productivity benefits and as being appropriate vehicles for private-sector investment.
    What’s more, their public-private-partnership funding models would have benefited from the 2013 budget measures to encourage superannuation funds to invest in infrastructure.
    The Infrastructure Tax Incentive, which came into effect last year, is designed to support new private-sector investment of up to $25 billion.
    The measures include raising the value of carry-forward losses by the 10-year government bond rate and removing other impediments to private-sector investment in infrastructure.
    Even as Hockey highlights the centrality of infrastructure investment in maintaining global economic growth, he is withdrawing public investment and seems to be unaware of Truss’s crippling IA amendments.
    The Treasurer should be championing Labor’s 2013 reforms to attract private investment, as well as the fact that Australia is now ranked first in the OECD for infrastructure investment, compared with 20 out of 25 OECD countries in 2007.
    The confusion over the government’s policy intent is another symptom of the fact that the Coalition wasted its time in opposition with a campaign of negativity when it should have been developing a cogent national policy program.
    Abbott and Hockey had a plan to win government - but no plan to actually govern.
    That’s why Hockey and Truss can’t stay on the same policy page.
    Truss should now dump the Infrastructure Australia Amendment Act (2013) in the national interest.
    If we truly want to attract private investment in our infrastructure, the last thing we need is a return to the pork-barrelling heritage of Truss and his Nationals colleagues.
    As for Hockey, he should remember a universal truth: actions speak louder than words.
    Anthony Albanese is opposition spokesman on infrastructure, transport and tourism.
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    SHAUL!!...Israel’s greatest danger is its role as occupier

    February 23, 2014, 4:24 pm
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    Israel’s greatest danger is its role as occupier

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    I HAVE been following the discussion in Australia regarding the recent program aired on ABC’s Four Corners, for which I was interviewed. I served as a combat soldier in the Occupied Territories from 2001 to 2004, and after finishing my service, my comrades and I founded Breaking the Silence. Our mission has been to provide current and former combat soldiers a platform by which to share the reality they witnessed in the Occupied Territories.
    I believe that most of the people involved in this Australian discussion sincerely seek what is best for Israel. However, the only way to actually do what is best for Israel is first of all to learn the facts, however unpleasant they may be.
    For close to five decades now, Israel has been engaged in the systematic military control of millions of Palestinians. Try to imagine this: 46 years of living under the continuous occupation of a foreign nation’s army. What does this situation do to us, the Israelis? And to Palestinians?
    When The Australian’s reporter John Lyons turned to me - as a former soldier who served in the territories - and asked me to describe the treatment of children there, I found myself at a loss for words. When my mission as a soldier was to control a civilian population in an ever-restrictive fashion, I lost the ability to differentiate between an innocent civilian and an enemy. Likewise, I saw no difference between children and adults.
    For a soldier, every Palestinian child who throws a stone (even if not a real threat) is a potential terrorist. Every Palestinian civilian is considered as dangerous as the combatants of Hezbollah and Hamas. Recognising this fact is the only way to understand Israel’s conduct towards Palestinian children as accurately portrayed in Four Corners.
    But one can find countless examples other than violations of childrens’ rights among the hundreds of soldier testimonies published on Breaking the Silence’s website.
    Settlements are another component that enable Israeli control over Palestinians. Israel can continue her talk of dismantling the current settlements and not building new ones, but the reality on the ground tells a different story. It’s enough to glance at a map of the West Bank, entirely riddled with settlements and outposts, to understand the devastating consequences of settlement policy.
    I am no lawyer, so I choose to stay out of debates about whether settlements are legal or not under international law. Rather, I am an Israeli and a former combat soldier. As such, I am familiar with the reality in the territories and the consequences of the occupation. Everyone who supports Israel should ask themselves where this policy - of occupation, of military control, and of settlement - is leading us?
    As a soldier, I know that Israel is not engaged in easing the lives of Palestinians, but rather in strengthening our control over them. This is the security imperative that defines the Israel Defence Forces. The tightening of the day-to-day control over Palestinian lives and the incessant growth of the settlements leads to solely one outcome. Israel is deepening her long-term grip over the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
    This is the real issue supporters of Israel should debate: what does the future of the Israel look like if it maintains the settlements and the occupation?
    It is up to the Jewish community in Australia, like other supporters of Israel the world over, to realise that the real danger to Israel’s existence today is not anti-Semitism (which exists throughout the world, including in Australia) but its control over millions of Palestinians deprived of their rights and freedom. I understand the suspicion that every critique of Israel is in fact anti-Semitism in disguise. But it is first and foremost the occupation - not Israel’s existence as a Jewish state - that delegitimises Israel in the eyes of the world. Instead of busying ourselves with rationalising policies of settlement and control, the way to stand by Israel today is to actively lobby for an end to the occupation.
    Israel will never be able to be the country we wish it to be so long as generations of soldiers, like me, are sent to protect settlers and intimidate Palestinians. There can be no peace within a reality of occupation and oppression. I call on the Australian community to stand with us, the IDF soldiers, and to support us in transforming Israel into the model state we so dearly want to be proud of.
    Yehuda Shaul served as a combat soldier in the IDF, reaching the rank of commander and platoon sergeant. He is the founder of Breaking the Silence.
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    Great Julie Nathan - ABC website moderators have case to answer

    February 23, 2014, 4:28 pm
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    ABC website moderators have case to answer

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    THE airing of Stone Cold Justice on ABC1’s Four Corners on February 10 elicited, predictably, numerous expressions of raw anti-Jewish hatred, notably on the ABC’s Facebook page.
    The program made many claims, most of them uncorroborated, about Israel’s alleged treatment of Palestinian minors in the West Bank and omitted vital context, including Unicef’s acknowledgment that the Israelis have been working closely with it to deal with real problems that have been identified.
    The purpose of this article is not to critique the program itself, which has already been done by others, but to highlight the toxic nature of many of the responses to the heart-wrenching scenes portrayed in the program and the accompanying commentary.
    Four Corners created six posts related to the program. These posts elicited more than 470 comments. About 100 of these comments were overtly anti-Jewish in one way or another. Several comments referred to Jews as a cancer and called for Hitler to return.
    Some of the comments were deleted or edited by ABC moderators. However, many anti-Semitic comments have remained online for more than a week, spewing forth the gamut of traditional anti-Semitic themes.
    Old and new religious anti-Semitism found expression in comments such as: “Orthodox Judaism is a cult that represses women and brainwashes children and has no place in the 21 century”; “Judaism is increasingly looking like a very ugly religion hiding behind a false conception of god”; “the Synagogue of Satan”; “(Jesus) was sent 2b crucified by the Jewish officials ... !”; and “God (sent) his Son to Earth to sort out Judaism.”
    Other posts compared Israel with Nazi Germany: “The Israeli (sic) are acting like modern day Nazis”; “are no better than what Hitler’s army did”; “A gas chamber away from Nazis - the persecuted becoming the persecutors!”
    Israel was accused of committing “genocide against the Palestinians” and “a holocaust against the Paelstinians (sic)”; “It is only a matter of time before Israel implements it’s (sic) final solution.”
    By any academic standard, such comparisons are historically ludicrous. These comments do not seek to engage in debate or analysis but only to demonise Jews and Israelis, and to minimise, justify or excuse the suffering and mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust, a standard technique for assuaging or blocking out any sense of guilt.
    A more subtle technique for achieving the same outcome was use of the theme “You Jews of all people should know better”.
    Some examples: “Very disturbing and sad that this can be done to children and their families by people who should know better, people who have survived the holocaust and know what it feels like to have pain and suffering inflicted on them!”; “I thought they of all people would not do this”; “You’d think the Jews would have more empathy.”
    As observed by non-Jewish writer Chas Newkey-Burden: “Let us strip the ‘they of all people’ argument down to its very basics: gentiles telling Jews that we killed six million of your people and that as a result it is you, not us, who have lessons to learn; that it is you, not us, who need to clean up your act. It is an argument of atrocious, spiteful insanity. Do not accept it; turn it back on those who offer it. For it is us, not you, who should know better.”
    A fourth theme was the age-old calumny about a “world Jewish conspiracy”.
    Examples included: “With all the Jewish politicians in the American congress & all the banks own by Zionist interests ... the media is owned by the wealthy jew/americans”; “The world is owned by these fascists and that is why they have a blank cheque!!”; “Support for Israel in the West has been managed via media control, blackmail and bribery”; “A story of oppression that has been going on for 65+ years, which the Jewry has been able to keep under wraps through various means of media control.”
    These comments reprise the falsehoods contained in the proven forgery and fabrication known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
    Online comments of this nature, usually by people sheltering within the coward’s castle of anonymity, are depressingly familiar.
    Less easy to explain is the decision of ABC moderators to permit such racist comments to remain on its Facebook page.
    Is there a line to be drawn between the factually selective and emotive content of Stone Cold Justice and the laxity of the ABC’s moderators on Facebook in tolerating racism from those responding to the program? The ABC has a case to answer.
    Julie Nathan is research officer at the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
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    BIASED POLL : [GS] Poll: Most Israelis, Palestinians support 2-state solution

    March 1, 2014, 2:17 pm
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    Poll: Most Israelis, Palestinians support 2-state solution

    Hebrew University study shows many on both sides eager to achieve peace, but wary of opposing party’s true aim

    BY ADIV STERMAN December 31, 2013, 7:23 pm 15

    US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, sits across from justice minister and Israeli chief negotiator Tzipi Livni, third right, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, second right, Yitzhak Molcho, an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fourth right, and Mohammed Shtayyeh, aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, right, at an Iftar dinner, which celebrates Ramadan, at the State Department in Washington, marking the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Monday, July 29, 2013 (photo credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
    US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, sits across from justice minister and Israeli chief negotiator Tzipi Livni, third right, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, second right, Yitzhak Molcho, an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fourth right, and Mohammed Shtayyeh, aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, right, at an Iftar dinner, which celebrates Ramadan, at the State Department in Washington, marking the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Monday, July 29, 2013 (photo credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)



    A majority of both Israelis and Palestinians support a peace agreement based on the two-state solution formula, a Hebrew University poll found, though many respondents reported that they were skeptical as to the sustainability of such an agreement in the long term.
    Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email
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    The study, conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, found that 63 percent of Israelis and 53% of Palestinians support the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the university said in a statement Tuesday.
    When it came to territorial compromise and settlement evacuation, 44% of Israelis said they supported an Israeli withdrawal from the entire West Bank, with the exception of some settlement blocs in less than 3% of the area which would be swapped for an equal amount of territory inside the Green Line. Forty-eight percent said they opposed such a move.
    Fifty-six percent of polled Palestinians supported a similar withdrawal plan, while 48% said they were opposed.
    Meanwhile, 83% of Palestinian respondents and 55% of Israelis reported that they were wary of their negotiation partners’ true intentions.
    According to the poll, Israelis and Palestinians perceive their interlocutors in the talks as posing an existential threat. Sixty percent of Palestinians said they believed Israel aims to extend its territory over all of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and to expel its Arab citizens. Twenty-four percent professed to believing that Israel aimed to annex the West Bank while denying political rights to the Palestinians.
    Thirty-four percent of Israelis agreed that the Palestinians aspire in the long run to occupy the State of Israel and eliminate the country’s Jewish population.
    The Palestinian poll was conducted among 1,270 adults interviewed face-to-face in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in 127 randomly selected locations between December 13 and 16, 2013. The margin of error was 3%.
    On the Israeli side, 601 adult Israelis were interviewed by phone in Hebrew, Arabic or Russian between December 12 and 21, and the margin of error was 4.5%.
    The full poll is available here.
    On Monday, sources in the Likud party asserted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was prepared to continue peace talks for another year based on US Secretary of State John Kerry’s “framework” agreement, which provides for negotiations for Palestinian statehood on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, Channel 10 news reported.
    Palestinian sources told the Saudi daily Al-Watan on Sunday that the Kerry plan offers Israeli and Palestinian negotiators a political trade-off: Israeli recognition of the 1967 lines as a basis for the future Palestinian state, in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people.


    Read more: Poll: Most Israelis, Palestinians support 2-state solution | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-most-israelis-palestinians-support-2-state-solution/#ixzz2ukhTevva
    Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook
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    Showing results for hebrew university leftist

    March 1, 2014, 4:00 pm
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    https://www.google.com.au/search?output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=hebrew+univesity+leftist&oq=hebrew+univesity+leftist&gs_l=hp.12...281.969125.1.970967.38.27.8.3.3.0.260.5339.0j13j13.26.0....0...1c.1.36.hp..6.32.4335.wV8ok0Pn0tY&pbx=1&biw=1366&bih=667&dpr=1&cad=cbv&sei=nXMSU8KSNeLZigeD8IDoBA

    Showing results for hebrew university leftist
    Search instead for hebrew univesity leftist
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    http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/18531

    March 1, 2014, 4:07 pm
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    http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/18531


    Joint Israeli-Palestinian poll: support for two-state solution, less willingness to yield to US pressure

    The majority of Israelis (63%) and of Palestinians (53%) support the two states solution; however, mutual threat perceptions are very high and 83% of Palestinians and 55% of Israelis feel threatened by the intentions of other side
    31/12/2013
    These are the results of the most recent poll conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. This joint survey was conducted with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Ramallah and Jerusalem.

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    M Sexton: We all have a right to free speech and it should be no crime to offend

    March 2, 2014, 2:20 pm
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    We all have a right to free speech and it should be no crime to offend

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    LATE last year in these columns, I complained that it was very difficult in Australia to have a debate about freedom of speech because those who wanted to restrict that freedom would hardly ever break cover and make their views public.
    Not for the first time, you need to be careful what you wish for. The federal government’s campaign promise to amend section 18C of the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act has unleashed some strong opposition from ethnic groups, including the Hellenic Council, the Chinese Australian Forum, the Arab Council and the Council of Australian Jewry.
    It is worth recalling just what section 18C actually makes unlawful. It refers to conduct that “is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people” because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or some or all of the people in the group.
    It is true that an exemption is provided for expressions of opinion on matters of public interest - but this is completely undermined by the requirement that these statements must be made “reasonably”.
    There is room for argument as to whether the prohibition on intimidation should be retained, although this could normally be dealt with by the ordinary provisions of the criminal law.
    The notions of offence, insult and humiliation, however, involve hurt to feelings. This is always unattractive for the subject of the verbal attack but these shock tactics have always been legitimate tools of debate on questions of politics and public interest.
    Sometimes these attacks are totally unreasonable. But there should be no place in a federal or state statute for a prohibition on their use in public discussion of social and economic issues.
    One of the arguments put by the defenders of section 18C is that it was used to bring proceedings in the Federal Court over a period of 10 years against Frederick Toben, who denies there is evidence that the Holocaust took place in the late 1930s and early 40s.
    Toben’s claim is, of course, absurd and naturally offensive to Jewish members of the community. But that is no reason for stopping him expressing this view. The right response to speech that one finds offensive is one’s own speech, not suppression.
    There are many examples of distortions of history. Should Turkish diplomats around the world, including those in Australia, be the subject of proceedings under section 18C because they vehemently deny that up to a million Armenians were killed in Turkey in 1916, when all the available evidence indicates that this is what happened?
    Some of the defenders of section 18C describe it as a bulwark against “hate speech”. One problem about this term is that it is now frequently used with reference to publications that are merely offensive.
    Hatred is a very powerful emotion and one, it might be thought, relatively rarely encountered. The Commonwealth Criminal Code already makes unlawful statements urging the use of force or violence against a person or group distinguished by their race, religion, nationality, national or ethnic origin or political opinion. This is an offence punishable by imprisonment for up to seven years if the use of force or violence would threaten the peace, order and good government of the commonwealth, and otherwise by imprisonment for up to five years.
    If it be thought necessary to outlaw incitements to “hatred” that somehow fall short of the urging of force or violence, historically a rare form of publication in our society, it would be possible to include the kind of provision present, for example, in the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act that makes the incitement of hatred on the grounds of race an offence. This provision refers to threatening physical harm and inciting others to threaten harm, but it is not limited to these forms of conduct. There is always a danger, however, that, in the absence of incitements to violence, these kinds of provisions will be used to stifle publications that are merely offensive.
    It is hardly surprising that this is an area of particular sensitivity in some sections of the Jewish community. In the aftermath of the Holocaust the state of Israel was established as the only democracy in the Middle East. Despite this history, hostility to Israel is an article of faith in large sections of the media and universities in Europe and in Australia. The BDS boycott movement is just one manifestation of this underlying view.
    It would, however, be a pity if representatives of the Jewish community in Australia allowed themselves to be used as part of a campaign to stop the repeal of section 18C. In the long run they have the same interest in freedom of speech as everyone else. As the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes said more than a century ago: “We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expressions of opinions we loathe.”
    Michael Sexton SC is the author of several books on Australian history and politics.
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    LYONS!!! Mar 8: Distant ‘experts’ choose to ignore Israeli realities

    March 8, 2014, 2:30 am
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    Distant ‘experts’ choose to ignore Israeli realities

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    SO a priest at a church Greg Sheridan attended in Melbourne said something possibly anti-Semitic, and somehow ABC1’s Four Corners and I are responsible?
    It’s not even certain the priest watched the Four Corners program on Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children. But it sounds as if he didn’t need anyone to stoke his anti-Semitism - Sheridan said he spoke as someone “with 2000 years of Christian anti-Semitism behind him”.
    Sadly, this is the level to which discussion about Israel has sunk.
    Last Saturday, Sheridan said a program I reported for Four Corners was “a crude piece of anti-Israel propaganda that revived some of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes”.
    Why can journalists put the Australian Army or federal police or US Army through the ringer, but if we investigate the most powerful army in the Middle East it’s anti-Semitism?
    As a correspondent in Jerusalem my job is to report through Australian eyes. What the Israeli army does to Palestinian children systematically - such as taking a 12-year-old from his home at 2am and denying access to a lawyer or parent - would be illegal in Australia .
    Four Corners showed how Israel enforces two legal systems in the West Bank, one for Jews and one for Palestinians.
    For “exhaustive rebuttals”, Sheridan recommended the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council run by Colin Rubenstein, also based in Melbourne.
    AIJAC is not an elected body representing the Jewish community but a privately funded lobby group with extremely hardline positions on Israel. I find it breathtaking that a journalist would recommend a private lobby group for a rebuttal of journalism.
    Bob Carr recently revealed that when he was foreign minister, AIJAC “directed a furious effort at trying to block even routine criticism of settlements, as if this were more vital than advocating a two-state solution or opposing boycotts of Israel”.
    After reading Carr’s comments, prominent Israeli Alon Liel wrote: “Who are you ‘Israeli lovers’ of the Australia-Israel Council? Who authorised you to put pressure on the Australian government ‘on my behalf’? Especially regarding a matter that affects my family’s future? Why are you trying to ruin my country, pretending you are ‘pro-Israeli?’ “
    Liel, a former Israeli Foreign Ministry chief, wrote: “What would you do, dear Jew, if the risk of such isolation was hovering over the head of Australia, France or Canada, countries whose passports you hold?”
    He echoed Breaking the Silence, 950 current and former Israeli soldiers who reported on Palestinian children, including one soldier saying a colleague put children against a wall and made them sing Israel’s national anthem - if they didn’t sing in time, he’d hit them.
    Another said his commander beat a child “to a pulp” and put a gun in his mouth, saying: “Don’t annoy me.”
    When Melbourne Jewish leader Danny Lamm alleged “crude propaganda”, 15 former officers condemned “Lamm’s armchair Zionism, pontificating from afar while true Israelis put their lives on the line”.
    Sheridan repeated AIJAC’s claim about settlements not growing - year after year AIJAC says this while construction booms, even outside existing settlements.
    US President Barack Obama this week referred to “aggressive settlement construction”.
    Israeli statistics show settler housing more than doubled last year, and in the first half of 2011 grew 660 per cent. Outposts are also surging - these are illegal under Israeli law, yet Israel tolerates them.
    Having visited the West Bank hundreds of times, I am astonished that Melbourne-based people such as Sheridan and Rubenstein portray themselves as experts yet ignore reality.
    Last week Amnesty International said Israeli forces had displayed a “callous disregard” by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, over three years with “near total impunity”.
    Last year, Unicef said ill-treatment of Palestinian children appeared to be “widespread, systematic and institutionalised”, and “children have been threatened with death, physical violence, solitary confinement and sexual assault”.
    In 2012, a delegation of British lawyers led by former attorney-general Patricia Scotland, found Israel had breached six articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Geneva Conventions.
    There are also now big issues for Australia relating to the Geneva Conventions, under which Israel’s settlements are widely considered illegal. Yet Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has cast doubt on whether Australia accepts the Geneva Conventions in that regard. Her new policy may have serious implications for Australian soldiers overseas - the conventions govern not only how civilians under occupation should be treated but captured soldiers.
    It was after two world wars with their collective death toll of about 80 million that postwar leaders signed up to the Fourth Geneva Convention.
    The danger of Bishop cherry-picking the Geneva Conventions could expose Australian soldiers who currently have protection.
    Sheridan ignores the fact Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor told Four Corners soldiers were not appropriately trained to detain children. AIJAC criticises me for interviewing “extremist” settler Daniella Weiss - if she is an extremist then so are key members of Israel’s cabinet who share her views. Weiss planned settlements with Ariel Sharon to forestall a Palestinian state.
    Leaders of Australia’s Jewish community visiting Israel often approach me for a coffee. One opposed the occupation, saying it was against Jewish teachings to rule over others. Another, from Sydney, wanted the occupation to end. When I asked why he never said that publicly, he replied: “Are you serious? And have the Melbourne guys declare a fatwa against me?” This denial - or fear - does not help Israel.
    The film The Gatekeepers, which interviewed six former chiefs of intelligence service Shin Bet, warned about Israel’s future. One, Avraham Shalom, said of the Israeli army: “We have become cruel.”
    But one Melbourne Jewish leader told me the Shin Bet chiefs were “all left wing”.
    An insight into the attacks on journalists covering Israel comes from Clyde Haberman, an Orthodox-raised American Jew who has just retired after 37 years with The New York Times. For decades, he says, the paper has had correspondents who, no matter how different or good, were branded anti-Semitic or self-hating Jews.
    He says correspondents in Israel could expect “to have your integrity hurled back in your face every single day”.
    But he thought of a solution: “If I didn’t want to be accused of hating Israel, I should start every story with: ‘Fifty years after six million Jews died in the Holocaust, Israel yesterday’ did one thing or the other.”
    Obama told Israelis their occupation was unfair.
    It is possible that Obama, Unicef, Amnesty International, 950 soldiers, Shin Bet chiefs and others are wrong and that Sheridan and Rubenstein are right.
    But I don’t think so.
    John Lyons is The Australian’s Middle East correspondent
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    Great letters - Mar 8 Free speech has some boundaries

    March 8, 2014, 2:46 am
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    1. GREAT PAIR OF LETTERS: THE 

    2. TOP ONE HAS A SIMILAR THEME

    3.  TO MINE!! SEE: 


    6. Free speech has some boundaries

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      YOUR FRIENDS' ACTIVITY

      WORDS do matter and so there is a fine balance needed with former federal attorney-general Neil Brown’s plan for section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (”Race act’s 18C brings law into disrepute”. 7/3).
      On one hand, the history of war, slavery and public order demonstrates that at certain times it is apt to make a pointed but necessary statement about the attitude or behaviour of a particular group of people, where race is the unifying factor.
      On the other hand, free speech has self-evident logical boundaries and should not equate with any comment, anytime, such as yelling out polarising opinions at a funeral while a eulogy is being given.
      A sense of maturity is needed when humans use the marvellous gift of speech and so the wisdom of Solomon is still pertinent: “Reckless words pierce like a sword and one who spares words is knowledgeable”.
      Peter Waterhouse, Craigieburn, Vic
      YOUR editorial correctly states that “a free and robust exchange of ideas is essential to democracy” and laudably chastises University of Sydney academic Jake Lynch for attempting to stifle any such exchange via his discriminatory boycotts of Israeli academics (”Free speech is a principle to be upheld consistently”, 6/3). However, your call for the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council to also abandon our support for section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act was a non sequitur.
      Section 18C poses no threat to the exchange of ideas. It makes no ideas unlawful. It is concerned only with conduct done because of someone’s race which would cause them harm. It offers robust defences in section 18D exempting all academic, artistic and scientific work, and any statement, publication or discussion done for any genuine purpose in the public interest.
      Your assertion that, “causing offence should not be a crime” involves a misunderstanding of how this legislation works. It creates no criminal offences - its purpose is to give civil recourse to people when bigots diminish the quality of their lives through deliberate racial harassment.
      Colin Rubenstein, Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, Melbourne, Vic


    9. News for Letters Free speech has boundaries

      The Guardian
      1. The Australian ‎- 21 hours ago
        WORDS do matter and so there is a fine balance needed with former... On the other hand, free speech has self-evident logicalboundaries and ...
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    Great Greg Sheridan - 1 March Evil and deeply untrue

    March 8, 2014, 3:14 pm
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    Evil and deeply untrue

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    Former Israeli army commander Yehuda Shaul, founder of the group Breaking the Silence, on
    Former Israeli army commander Yehuda Shaul, founder of the group Breaking the Silence, on the ABC’s Four Corners report. Picture: Sylvie Le Clezio Source: News Limited
    WE are living in a time of infamous lies against the state of Israel and the Jewish people. We are witnessing, even in Australia, a recrudescence of some of the oldest types of anti-Semitism. One of the worst recent examples of anti-Israel propaganda that led directly to anti-Semitic outbursts was the Four Corners episode Stone Cold Justice, purporting to be about treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank.
    The program featured as a guest reporter John Lyons, of this newspaper. I have the greatest respect for John. He has produced some outstanding journalism in his time. In the article he wrote for this newspaper on February 8, he made some of the same allegations that were made on Four Corners. I found the allegations at best unproved and generally unconvincing.
    However, the Four Corners program was a disgrace, a crude piece of anti-Israel propaganda that revived some of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes. In the year 2014, are we really going to allege again, on the basis of the flimsiest non-evidence you could imagine, that Jewish soldiers systematically physically crucify innocent children? Is there a school of anti-Semitism 101 operating out there? Do you not think that before you would air an allegation like that, if you had any real sense of editorial responsibility, you would be 100 per cent sure that it was true; you would track down the people alleged to have done it and get their testimony? The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council has produced exhaustive rebuttals of virtually all the allegations in this program and I recommend readers visit the AIJAC website. The whole program was full of uncorroborated and intensely unlikely allegations.
    You could make the same kind of film about Australia if you didn’t find it necessary to prove any of your facts. In the Four Corners program, the only Jewish settler interviewed was a religious extremist who said Palestinians must never have a state of their own and that God gave all the land to the Jews and that was it.
    Yet the overwhelming majority of the Israeli population favours a two state solution. If you had even one ounce of responsibility in the way you treated these issues, and given their explosive, emotive nature, don’t you think some of that context might have been relevant? Isn’t there an obligation to convey the reality of the diversity of Jewish settlers in the West Bank?
    A week or two after the Four Corners program went to air, I attended a Catholic mass in a suburban church. The priest was preaching about forgiveness. Most examples he chose were taken from the news. One, he took from the Middle East. It concerned a heroic Palestinian whose family had been killed by Israel, but who still had the moral grandeur to forgive the Israelis. The priest said nothing else about the Middle East. So of all the malevolence and genuine evil in the Middle East, the only example the priest thought worth mentioning was a generic Israeli crime.
    With 2000 years of Christian anti-Semitism behind him, the priest had no hesitation in presenting Israel as the killer of innocent families and the only question in the Middle East being one of the moral greatness of the Palestinians in forgiving the Israelis.
    So this is what we’ve come to in 2014. The national broadcaster tells us that Jewish soldiers crucify innocent children and Christian clerics routinely portray Israel as the murderous oppressor of the Middle East. But these stereotypes are both evil, and deeply untrue. Over many trips to Israel, and many visits to neighbouring Middle East countries, I have come to the conclusion Israel has the best human rights and democratic institutions and civil society of any nation in the greater Middle East. More than that, I have tried hard to make my own investigations into two questions. Does the Israeli army routinely behave unreasonably? And what is the truth about the settlements?
    Israel is not perfect. Like every nation it makes mistakes, including moral mistakes. Undoubtedly, some of its soldiers have engaged in abuses. But over the years I have interviewed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Israeli soldiers and former soldiers, many active on the Left of Israeli politics and harshly critical of their government. I have also interviewed many Palestinians. My net judgment is Israel’s army behaves with as much consideration for human rights and due process as any modern Western army - US, Australian or European - would do in similar circumstances.
    Then there is the question of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israel took control of the West Bank because it was attacked by Jordan in a war Israel fought for its very existence. Almost no one internationally had recognised Jordanian sovereignty over the West Bank and the land there is to be negotiated. The overwhelming consensus in Israel is that the vast majority of the West Bank, perhaps 95 per cent, will go to a Palestinian state with compensating land swaps from Israel proper. A few clusters of Jewish settlements will be retained by Israel.
    Bob Carr, who I think was a very good foreign minister, recently argued all the settlements are illegal. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop disagrees. On this, Bishop is right and Carr wrong. The problem with discussion of the settlements is that it is so unsophisticated and typically lumps so many different communities together. If all settlements are illegal, that means the Jewish presence at the Wailing Wall in the old city of Jerusalem, access to which was denied to Jews when it was under Arab control, is illegal. It means that the historic Jewish quarter of the old city is also illegal. It means that every Jewish household anywhere in East Jerusalem is illegal.
    It is worth noting, by the way, that Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem qualify for Israeli identity cards that allow them to live anywhere in Israel. Increasing numbers are buying apartments in West Jerusalem. But if all settlements are illegal then it is apparently illegal for Israelis, be they Jewish, Muslim or Christian, to buy in East Jerusalem.
    I have spent many days visiting the settlements to try to find out what the people who live there are like. As foreign minister, Kevin Rudd told me the settlements occupied about 3 per cent of the West Bank. Since 2004, settlements have not been allowed to expand beyond existing borders. Very, very few settlers are like the sole woman interviewed on Four Corners. There are a lot of very orthodox Jews who live in settlements, but the ultra-orthodox do not serve in the Israeli army and are often not very nationalist at all. They live in settlements because it is cheap and they want to have their own neighbourhoods with very orthodox schools, cooking facilities, etc.
    But most of the people I met in big, mainstream settlements like Gush Etzion and Maale Audumin, which are very close to Israel proper, were moderate, national religious types. The Jewish connection to the land historically certainly meant something to them, but they tended to vote for mainstream centre-right parties and live peaceably enough with their Palestinian neighbours. (Indeed, some 25,000 Palestinians work on settlements.) These settlers don’t make for very exciting TV interviews because they are so reasonable and unremarkable.
    An Israeli friend put it to me that perhaps 50 per cent of settlers are basically non-ideological, and lived in settlements because they can get a house much more cheaply than in Israel proper. Maybe 30 per cent to 40 per cent are moderate orthodox or national religious, mainstream, attached to the land, patriotic, pretty pragmatic. Perhaps 10 per cent (of settlers, not of Israelis overall) are intensely ideological and believe all the land should stay with the Jews. And perhaps 1 per cent or less are genuinely extremist and some of them genuinely violent. That certainly accords with what I have observed over years of visits.
    There are also outposts or settlements in the West Bank that are illegal under Israeli law. All serious Israeli negotiations involve the principle of repatriating a significant number of settlers back to Israel proper or to settlements Israel is definitely going to keep. Typically, the number of such postulated returns varies from 50,000 to 90,000.
    Aspects of Israel’s settlement policy have been very ill-advised. But I know that settlements are not the main obstacle to peace. The main obstacle to peace is that most of the Arab world will not accept the idea that Israel as a Jewish state has a right to exist and live in peace and security. The Four Corners program did nothing to enlighten the debate and led to a shocking outburst of rank anti-Semitism on ABC websites.
    I really thought we were beyond that.
    CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this article contained two errors. The word ‘apiarist’ appeared instead of ‘a priest’, and the word ‘aerolite’ appeared instead of ‘article’. The errors were introduced during the production process.
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    OUTRAGEOUS LETTERS Mar 10! Israel faces scrutiny because it is a democracy

    March 9, 2014, 7:56 pm
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    Israel faces scrutiny because it is a democracy

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    AS Middle East correspondent John Lyons notes, the forces of the Western world are behind his condemnation of Israel, including Amnesty and the UN (”Distant ‘experts’ choose to ignore Israeli realities”, 8-9/3).
    But the criticism makes no sense in isolation. Democratic nations face scrutiny and condemnation for their breaches of human rights precisely because they are successful democracies. The criticism is inherent in democratic societies, and works to strengthen them.
    On the other hand, turning a blind eye to human rights breaches in and by non-democratic nations reinforces the status quo, encourages a sense of victimhood and undermines the potential for democracy.
    Brigitte Dwyer, Norwood, SA
    MY progressive friends often shake their heads when they see me reading The Australian. But reading John Lyons’s response to fellow columnist Greg Sheridan’s critique of a Four Corners report on Palestinian children (”Evil and deeply untrue”, 1-2/3) reminded me why I still do. It is good to see some of Sheridan’s views being challenged from within.
    James Sharp, Roleystone, WA
    I READ with interest the article by John Lyons regarding the commentary by Greg Sheridan about the Four Corners report on Palestinian children. Lyons should know that non-government organisations and UN agencies have often given unreliable information on Israel. The earlier commentary by Sheridan, partly based on information from one small, remote group, is also questionable.
    What has been missing is getting information on this troubling matter from the Israeli authorities who have been struggling with it for a long time.
    In the past, Israeli authorities used to arrest youths suspected of throwing stones in daylight hours that often led to street battles, so there is a reason to make arrests at night.
    Bart Benschop, Claremont, WA
    JOHN Lyons’s response to Greg Sheridan’s critique of the Four Corners report on the abuse of Palestinian children deserves commendation. Lyons’s response demonstrates journalism at its best.
    Sheridan’s earlier charge of anti-Semitism for criticism of Israel was counter-productive and unbecoming for a journalist of his stature.
    It is a common ploy used to stifle legitimate reporting and criticism of Israel’s policies and actions that continue to flout UN resolutions.
    Lyons correctly points out that his duty as a correspondent in Jerusalem (or anywhere else in the world) is to report through Australian eyes. That is what The Australian’s readers expect and require.
    It is an irony that some Israel supporters with extremist views do more harm to Israel’s causes than its critics.
    Bill Mathew, Parkville, Vic
    AS usual, Israel is to blame. Nowhere in John Lyons’s article is there any mention of Israel as a nation surrounded by people who wish for the death of every Israeli, who celebrate the murder of Israeli children and delight in inciting hatred.
    Israel cannot be always given a blank slate, but there is a world of difference between a country that holds an investigation into child abuse and people who celebrate by handing out sweets when a child is murdered.
    Andrew Porter, Melbourne, Vic
    ONCE I was old enough to read and comprehend the slaughter of millions of Jews under the Nazis, my height-ened sense of justice as a teenager made me a lifelong supporter of the state of Israel, right or wrong.
    This support was dented by the massacres by Lebanese Christian militia in Lebanon under Ariel Sharon, and now by reports of harsh treatment meted out to Palestinian youth.
    The Zionist Stern Gang took territory from Palestine by force and Israel will have to use force to keep it.
    David Hall, Labrador, Qld
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    ANALYSIS OF THE OUTRAGEOUS THE OZ LETTERS - TO BE CONTINUED!!

    March 9, 2014, 8:12 pm
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    Israel faces scrutiny because it is a democracy

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    AS Middle East correspondent John Lyons notes, the forces of the Western world are behind his condemnation of Israel, THE WRITER AND LYONS SEEK SUPPORT FROM PROFESSIONAL ISRAEL BASHERS!! THUS THE PATHETIC HEADLINE FOR THE PATHETIC GROUP OF LETTERS  [SAVE ONE LAME SUPPORTER!] including Amnesty and the UN (”Distant ‘experts’ choose to ignore Israeli realities”, 8-9/3).
    But the criticism makes no sense in isolation. Democratic nations face scrutiny and condemnation for their breaches of human rights precisely because they are successful democracies. The criticism is inherent in democratic societies, and works to strengthen them. THANK YOU! NOT ONLY IS THE ABOVE REINFORCED BUT APPARENTLY WHAT DOES NOT KILL THE JEW STRENGTHENS HIM! THIS IS A NEW DETRITUS IN ANTISEMITISM!!
    WORSE - THERE IS ALWAYS THE BUTT WORD!! THIS TIME USED WITH HUMBUG AND HAS MANY ELEMENTS! WHAT AN OUTRAGEOUS LETTER THAT THE EDITOR HAS CHOSEN SO IN THE MOST SIMPLISTIC WAY HE COULD TRY TO CLAIM CREDIT [?] FOR THE 'HUMBUGGED' WORDS -  ... THE WRITER EXPECTS GRATUITUOUSLY HIGHER STANDARDS FROM JEWS! A CLASSICAL ANTI - SEMITIC TROPE!!
    On the other hand, turning a blind eye to human rights breaches in and by non-democratic nations reinforces the status quo, encourages a sense of victimhood and undermines the potential for democracy.
    HERE IS A NEW 'BUT' - IN THE FORM OF GRATUITY. {ON THE OTHER HAND']

    Brigitte Dwyer, Norwood, SA
    MY progressive friends often shake their heads when they see me reading The Australian. UNBELIEVABLE HUMBUG!!SO THE OZ PUBLISHES A LETTER SUPPORTING THE 'PROGRESSIVES'!! A NEW ONE FOR CUT AND PASTE!!! 
    ALL THIS SO SHERIDAN COULD BE ATTACKED - AND LYONS SUPPORTED!! But reading John Lyons’s response to fellow columnist Greg Sheridan’s critique of a Four Corners report on Palestinian children (”Evil and deeply untrue”, 1-2/3) reminded me why I still do. It is good to see some of Sheridan’s views being challenged from within. THIS IS PATHETIC! IT IS LYONS WHO IS BEING CHALLENGED FROM WITHIN!!
    PATHETIC!!!! SO LYONS IS THE GOOD GUY AND SHERIDAN PAINTED AS THE REASON THIS TWIRP'S FRIENDS DO NOT READ THE OZ. THE HUMBUG IS ASTONISHING!! THE GOOD GUY IS LYONS WHO IS LIONISED!!
    James Sharp, Roleystone, WA
    I READ with interest the article by John Lyons regarding the commentary by Greg Sheridan about the Four Corners report on Palestinian children. Lyons should know that non-government organisations and UN agencies have often given unreliable information on Israel. The earlier commentary by Sheridan, partly based on information from one small, remote group, is also questionable.
    What has been missing is getting information on this troubling matter from the Israeli authorities who have been struggling with it for a long time.YOU SEE? THE OUTRAGE IS ALMOST HIDDEN! LOOK AT THE MEALY MOUTHED WORDS - ENLARGED! THE HUMBUG AND HYPOCRASY CONTINUES UNDER THE GUISE OF SEEMING TO SUPPORT JEWS!
    In the past, Israeli authorities used to arrest youths suspected of throwing stones in daylight hours that often led to street battles, so there is a reason to make arrests at night. THIS SEEMS OK - BUT THE ABOVE MAKES IT FLUMMERY!
    Bart Benschop, Claremont, WA
    JOHN Lyons’s response to Greg Sheridan’s critique of the Four Corners report on the abuse of Palestinian children deserves commendation. REALLY! LYONS STANDS CONDEMNED IN INTERNATIONAL FACTS - BASED JOURNALS  Lyons’s response demonstrates journalism at its best. REALLY? HOW ABOUT THE BELOW LINKS THAT ARE HIGHLIGHTED?? LYONS IS CONDEMNED!!!!
    I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO DO THIS 100% ACCURATELY - BUT THE OZ, LYONS AND HIS PLAY+THIND THE ABC 4 CORNERS - ARE CONDEMNED!!
    JUST LIKE THEY WERE WITH JENIN ET AL!
    IT IS ALREADY NOT DEBATABLE - EXCEPT IN THE WORLD OF PROFESSIONAL SPIN!! SHAME ON THE OZ FOR GETTING INTO BED WITH THE ABC - SIMULTANEOUSLY LACERATING THEM DAILY FOR YEARS!
    SO LONG AS JUSTIFICATION FOR DEMONISING ISRAEL CAN BE FOUND _ ANY VEHICLE WILL DO!! EVEN FRAUD AND HUMBUG - THAT WORD AGAIN
    Sheridan’s earlier charge of anti-Semitism for criticism of Israel was counter-productive and unbecoming for a journalist of his stature. SHAME ON THE OZ FOR THIS CLAPRAP!!
    It is a common ploy used to stifle legitimate reporting and criticism of Israel’s policies and actions that continue to flout UN resolutions.
    NOW THIS IS SIMPLY A VARIANT ON THE CLASSICAL LINE OF EVIL: ''YOU CANNOT CRITICISE ISRAEL WITHOUT BEING ACCUSED OF ANTI SEMITISM.

    IS PLAINLY ALSO ANOTHER ATTACK ON MY PERSON - NOTE SIMPLY EARLIER POST:

    • Lyons correctly points out that his duty as a correspondent in Jerusalem (or anywhere else in the world) is to report through Australian eyes. That is what The Australian’s readers expect and require. THIS IS ANOTHER AS TROPE SEE ABOVE
    9/3/14- ODE TO R MURDOCH.. great grandchildren? re.
    • To using derivated patriotism [''I report through Australian eyes''] he is plainly ignorant of the classic quote: [link] Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel: Samuel Johnson  Furthermore, how dare L, via his mellifluous claim purport to speak on behalf of the average decent Aussie? The Johnson quote has great gravitas.

      It is an irony that some Israel supporters with extremist views do more harm to Israel’s causes than its critics. OUTRAGEOUS!
      Bill Mathew, Parkville, Vic
      AS usual, Israel is to blame. Nowhere in John Lyons’s article is there any mention of Israel as a nation surrounded by people who wish for the death of every Israeli, who celebrate the murder of Israeli children and delight in inciting hatred.
      Israel cannot be always given a blank slate, but there is a world of difference between a country that holds an investigation into child abuse and people who celebrate by handing out sweets when a child is murdered.
      THIS IS A GOOD LETTER. BADLY OUTNUMBERED AND HERE ONLY FOR THE SAKE OF FORM!
      Andrew Porter, Melbourne, Vic
      ONCE I was old enough to read and comprehend the slaughter of millions of Jews under the Nazis, my height-ened sense of justice as a teenager made me a lifelong supporter of the state of Israel, right or wrong.
      HOW COULD RUPERT MURDOCH ALLOW THE NAZI CORROLARY AGAINST ISRAEL!
      This support was dented by the massacres by Lebanese Christian militia in Lebanon under Ariel Sharon, and now by reports of harsh treatment meted out to Palestinian youth.I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!
      The Zionist Stern Gang took territory from Palestine by force and Israel will have to use force to keep it.HOW SICK AND DISTORTING!
      David Hall, Labrador, Qld


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