Palestine 'Road Map'
Kate Popovic disputes my claim in 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly #537 that the US-backed "Road Map" aims at a return to the "status-quo" which existed prior to the September 2000 Intifada and argues that it instead is premised on the establishment of a "viable, free and sovereign Palestinian state".
Unfortunately, Popovic's optimistic interpretation of the road map is not based on an accurate reading of history or current reality. The text of the road map follows the same formulations which Israeli governments - both Labor and Likud - have been pushing in numerous plans for the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1967. For more of the historical detail, see the Middle East Research and Information Project article at There is no doubt that a Palestinian state will eventually emerge in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but it will be a state in name only. In reality, as virtually all Palestinian factions agree (including elements of Fatah), this state will be a series of Palestinian bantustans ruled by a dependent Palestinian "autonomy".
The road map is a plan strongly pushed by US and EU imperialism, historically continuous with earlier colonisation plans of the Zionist movement and occurring while Israel is constructing a massive concrete wall encircling Palestinian towns and villages, which the road map does not even mention.
Surely logic - and a basic understanding of the interests of imperialism - would lead us to question whether this plan will lead to a "viable, free and sovereign Palestinian state"?
Moreover, Popovic states that I line up with "right-wing neo-Nazis", implying that to support a one-state solution is anti-Semitic. This ludicrously ignorant statement reveals a shallow understanding of what anti-Zionism actually means.
I am opposed to the Zionist character of the Israeli state precisely because it is based upon the kind of chauvinistic thinking that asserts it is okay for a state to be based on one ethnic or religious group. I strongly believe the only solution is one state, in which all of its citizens - regardless of religion, ethnicity or nationality - are treated equally.
In my opinion, this will only come about with a socialist state over all the land of historic Palestine. Repeating the old myth that anti-Zionism equates to anti-Semitism only serves to strengthen the fascist argument that Jews cannot co-exist with other groups.
Ahmad Nimer I couldn't agree more strongly with the views presented by Mary Merkenich in "Teachers and freedom of speech in the classroom" (GLW #537). In year 11 and 12 of high school, I was lucky enough to have two inspiring teachers, one for English and one for geography and economics, who were not only willing to discuss politics but considered it integral to teaching their subjects.
One of these teachers encouraged his students to create an Amnesty International group and, in one of our economics lessons, was the person who pointed out to me the inequalities of the Australian taxation system. Those with the lowest income paid the highest rate of tax, while Kerry Packer paid 1% and still complained to his lawyers.
These two teachers were instrumental in encouraging me to think critically about society and to have my own opinions. This was particularly important to me considering the otherwise repressive attitude of my school. One incident that I still remember is the Year 12 coordinator telling me that my vegetarianism was anti-social because I had refused to eat meat at a compulsory barbecue.
Bronwyn Lacken People carrying Hezbollah flags have been among the disruptive elements in pro-Palestinian and other demonstrations I have attended in Melbourne, and saw on TV in Sydney. I do not have a particular sympathy to their political views, on the contrary I loath their views but I see no reason to approve of lies being told to endanger their civil liberties and intimidate a much larger Arab/Muslim population in Australia.
Federal Attorney General Daryl Williams wants to proscribe the Lebanese organisation Hezbollah (Party of God). The rubric of "terrorist organisation" has been attached not only by the Australian government, but by the Labor opposition and seemingly every single media organisation in the country.
The situation is far from clear. Hezbollah has not been engaged in attacks on civilians in Israel (it has in the past, however, engaged in tit-for-tat shelling of villages and towns with Israel's armed forces). It has been alleged to have been involved in attacks on the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community Centre in Argentina, but that view was not endorsed by the Argentine authorities. The Israelis have also reported that they captured a senior Hezbollah operative whom they say was on his way to train terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
But certain Australian political parties and the media do not seem to be disturbed by lack of evidence (a la weapons of mass destruction?)
Consider the following:
All references are available from Sol Salbe I want to set the record straight on the alleged quote from Martin Luther King equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism (Craig Milner, Write On #536). As a Palestine solidarity activist in the US, I have heard this quote excerpted many times before. And I say, let the truth ring forth: This quote is 100% fraudulent!
Tim Wise of Z Magazine published a piece earlier this year thoroughly debunking this alleged King statement, which has been quoted in bad faith by countless defenders of Israeli apartheid in their attempt to smear critics of Zionism. The full text of Wise's article can be read at Excerpts are quoted below:
"The treatise, it is claimed, was published on page 76 of the August, 1967 edition of Saturday Review, and supposedly can also be read in the collection of King's work entitled, This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That the claimants never mention the publisher of this collection should have been a clear tip-off that it might not be genuine, and indeed it isn't. The book doesn't exist. As for Saturday Review, there were four issues in August of 1967. Two of the four editions contained a page 76. One of the pages 76 contains classified ads and the other contained a review of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album. No King letter anywhere.
"Yet its lack of authenticity hasn't prevented it from having a long shelf-life...
"In truth, King appears never to have made any public comment about Zionism per se; and the only known statement he ever made on the topic, made privately to a handful of people, is a far cry from what he is purported to have said in the so-called 'Letter to an Anti-Zionist friend'. In 1968, according to Seymour Martin Lipset, ... a young man apparently made a fairly harsh remark attacking Zionists as people, to which King responded: 'Don't talk like that. When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking Anti-Semitism.' Assuming this quote to be genuine, it is still far from the ideological endorsement of Zionism as theory or practice that was evidenced in the phony letter."
Zionism is inherently racist, and ever will be so.
Ted McTaggart With budget taxes and disbursements affecting us all, surely we should expect our politicians to dish it up a bit more honestly.
For starters, they skite about their "tax cuts" as if it were "their" money they're giving away, when it's really only returning minuscule amounts from too-much tax already paid, within their overall high-tax regime.
Then there's their absurd claim that "every Australian will benefit" - but how can students, the unemployed, welfare recipients, non-waged housewives or drought-stricken farmers possibly benefit?
And there's their nauseating self-praise about doing this, rather than directing these funds to where they're really needed, to drought-stricken farmers (relief already cut), dentists, doctors, nurses and finance-starved hospitals, teachers and under-resourced schools.
And there wasn't a single word on the massive Goods and Services Tax, proclaimed in the last budget as the elixir of all future life. What is going on - how much is it raising, and how's it being spent?
Similarly, not a word about a million of our people unemployed, producing nothing and paying no tax, but necessarily sustained from overall taxation revenue. (Nothing from Simon Crean either.)
Similar distortions of our real needs occurred when John Howard alone took us into the disastrous Iraq war, as if this little nation was our greatest enemy, and when he assured that troop despatches there were only for acclimatisation.
So perhaps if that mighty king of truthful expression, Shakespeare, were with us today, might he not, paraphrasing from Hamlet, be saying "There's something rotten in the state of this wide brown land today"?
Ken O'Hara In his post-budget speech, Treasury secretary Ken Henry called for higher employment. Involuntary unemployment is certainly a problem but is involuntary employment necessarily desirable?
Australia has, and will continue to have, enough people employed to raise sufficient tax to meet the needs of those unable to work and finance public services.
People who are not underprivileged and can make a significant contribution via a job without significant distress may have a duty to seek work. But the prime target of Dr Henry, and the federal government, seems to be underprivileged Centrelink clients with limited skills and atypical obstacles to congenial employment - not comfortably off early retirees or people supported by an employed spouse.
Why do the already disadvantaged have an obligation to make sacrifices via involuntary employment?
Economists should concentrate on improving productivity (the key to economic growth) in ways which do not reduce quality of life or fairness rather than aspiring to boost employment by coercing the less-well-off and providing inequitable tax cuts.
Brent Howard As a student in my final year of VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education), I am naturally interested in the changes of the education system by the federal budget. As an anti-war activist, I am also naturally interested in changes to the "defence" department in the federal budget. The budget presented on May 13 severely disappointed me. No, "disappointment" is an understatement. Something along the lines of "outraged" would be closer to the truth.
Treasurer Peter Costello has deregulated the education industry further, giving universities more power to charge more fees to their students, and increase their intake of more full-fee paying students. He has also increased the "defence" budget, giving our forces an injection of better equipment to carry out wars such as the illegal Gulf War 2.
The government has committed only $1.5 billion extra funding over the next four years, as it continues to shift the cost of higher education from the community to students and an increasingly corporatised university sector.
The changes in education as outlined by the budget:
These changes are despicable. Students, some of whom already experience harsh living conditions while in university, will have an extra burden set upon them for years afterwards while paying off their HECS. Not only does this put a huge burden on the poor, the government has insulted the "less fortunate" further by allowing the increase of richer, fee paying students, who can afford to pay for university without the HECS scheme. This increase will lead Australia down the road towards America, where parents start saving up for a "college education" from the time their child is born - if this is an actual possibility, which is rarely the case.
The government's gradual deregulation of education policy shows us the long-term intentions of the capitalist class are clearly to make "higher education" a monopoly for the rich and their lackies.
This cut in education is no doubt to allow for the increase of our "defence". Altogether an extra $2.5 billion is to be spent over the next five years with total "defence" spending to rise to $15 billion in 2003-04. The bill for the illegal Iraq campaign is to be paid from this amount and has been calculated at $645 million.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) receive more than $42 million over the next four years for surveillance and intelligence gathering.
It is up to the people to voice their strong opposition to this recent budget. Free education has become a thing of the past, and we are fast becoming a police state with the extra military spending that is cutting into taxpayer's money. Extra burden is being put on the average "battler", while ensuring the funding for further unjustified wars premeditated by George Bush and followed, with doggy fidelity, by Prime Minister John Howard.
Dimitrov Kyriakov How unsurprising that a jumbled "defence" of the outgoing Governor-General by a trio of white-shoe stumblebums from state Liberal and National parties has utterly backfired.
Given the signal to smear by the Prime Minister, a failed Queensland National Party leader, a tragi-comic New South Wales National Party figure and a NSW Liberal with form for dubious parliamentary "revelations" wobbled into action. Their behaviour had been pre-empted by a pair of pre-deployed right-wing newspaper commentators of the self-parodying variety, but the PM's hit-squad brought new depths of Heffernanesque abuse of parliamentary privilege.
All that was missing was the tabling of forged Commonwealth documents. The fearless trio failed and their bodgie campaigns have only brought further ignominy on those who so avidly chose Bishop Hollingworth as Head of State precisely because, like them, he would brush aside issues of child abuse.
The response of the NSW and Queensland premiers was reminiscent of circus ringmasters interrupted mid-show by three heavily grease-painted clowns staggering through the sawdust straight into the lions' cage.
Peter Woodforde From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 4, 2003.
Ramallah Palestine
Teachers and free speech
Newcastle NSW
Hezbollah
Middle East Information Services
Melbourne
[Abridged.]
MLK and Zionism
Detroit Michigan, USA
[Abridged.]
Something's rotten
Gerringong NSW
Treasury and employment
Rydalmere NSW
Outraged
Melbourne
Hollingworth's supporters
Melba ACT
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