Zionist myths
Rachel Freeman's diatribe (Write On, GLW #609) against Doug Lorimer's obituary for Yasser Arafat (GLW #607) repeats many Zionist myths created to demonise Arafat and the Palestinian people.
If Freeman had done even an ounce of research, as she exhorts Lorimer to do, she would have found it was impossible for Arafat to reject "the many [Israeli] offers of [Palestinian] statehood", because there were none — a fact former Israeli PM Ehud Barak freely admits.
Writing in August 2003 for Israel's leading daily, Yedioth Aharonot, about the much touted Camp David negotiations where supposedly 90% of what Arafat asked for was offered, Barak stated that "I did not give away a thing".
According to Barak, no offer of statehood was made, only that Israel would start to think about concessions that might lead to the creation of a Palestinian state — if the Palestinian right of return was forfeited, if Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem and the illegal settlements in the West Bank continued, if Israel's security needs (i.e., the right to make military incursion into any future state in the name of security) were recognised.
Arafat didn't "invent modern-day terrorism", as Freedom claims. A number of future Israeli prime ministers were leading terrorist activities while Arafat was still only a schoolboy. Menachem Begin ordered the 1948 terrorist attack on the King David Hotel, killing 91 people, 17 of them Jews. Yitzak Shamir was a member of the terrorist Stern gang. Yitzak Rabin was in the terror groups Irgun and Palmach, as was Ariel Sharon.
And mighn't the reason that Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not "watching Sesame Street" but are engaged in training to become resistance fighters have something to with living under an illegal, brutal foreign military occupation? In the past four years, 1500 Palestinian civilians have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces, 600 of them children — at school, in their homes and while playing on their streets.
Kim Bullimore
Haris, Occupied Palestine [Abridged]
Disappointed
Given that GLW is a paper that supports the Socialist Alliance, I am disappointed to read inaccurate reports about alliance activity in the northern suburbs of Melbourne two weeks running.
In GLW #608, you reported on a public forum about the need for greater swimming pool safety in the Moreland Council area without saying that the forum was organised by the Socialist Alliance as part of its council election campaign. Neither did you report that the main speaker, pool worker Daryl Croke, was an alliance member.
The local Murdoch paper managed to report both these facts in a prominent article on page 3.
Then in GLW #608, in reporting the alliance's 11% and 9% results in Moreland, you focused entirely on the economic and social questions raised by the alliance campaign. All those matters were raised and were important. Yet you ignored our main slogan, "Money for services not war", and that we welcomed refugees and suggested Moreland twin with an Iraqi and a Palestinian town as a symbol of opposition to war.
Our campaign deliberately linked the local and the global and was very well received. Our vote doubled. Sadly the GLW report robbed the campaign of its political flavour.
David Glanz, Melbourne
Religious right
When fundamentalist religion comes into politics they know, as did the DLP, that they could never win government, but they also know with preference deals they can influence the government. Reports in the Bulletin have shown only 4% of Australians oppose abortions outright. You can bet a large part of that 4% would be Family First members or supporters.
We don't need the "lunatic right", as conservative National Party senator-elect Barnaby Joyce described them, telling us what we should and shouldn't think about abortion, or for that matter anything else — talk about minorities pulling the strings!
Politics is a numbers game, and when you can deliver numbers, as Family First can through its affiliation with the Assemblies of God, you have the potential for 4% of the community. In other words, "the tail wags the dog" to influence the daily lives of the community, a somewhat anti-democratic scenario.
Shaun Newman
Thuringowa, Qld
Injustice
A small pilot program where individuals with disabilities were offered employment assistance has placed some people in work. Good. However, this provides no justification for the federal government shifting disability pensioners onto the unemployment benefit — thereby stripping them of $40 cash a week plus pensioner concessions, and imposing full job-search obligations.
The unemployment system is unfair to perfectly healthy people. No matter how hard a person tries to find work, how few suitable vacancies there may be, or how dispiriting receiving dozens of knock-backs from employers is, a single person only receives a miserly basic allowance of $197 a week. To subject people with significant long-term health problems, and worse employment prospects, to the same regime would be an even greater unfairness.
The fundamental injustice in relation to money being received without labour relates to many billions per annum being distributed — mostly to better-off people — via inheritances, gifts and property-based income. However, the Coalition has reduced capital gains tax and will never introduce an inheritance tax.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere, NSW
@letter =
Aboriginal health
As a born and bred Bomber supporter with a jumper signed by Michael Long on my wall I have the utmost respect for this champion of indigenous rights. It is important for non aboriginal Australia to acknowledge the evidence of history in relation to Aboriginal health policy.
The persisting low level of investment in primary health care, the confused responsibilities between state and federal governments, the demonstrated absence of political penalties for neglect, and the past failures to maximise social dividends by engaging Aboriginal people and organisations in service delivery.
What is needed is a true and firm commitment to the health of Aboriginal peoples in all levels and all sectors of government by building real and sustainable partnerships.
Among the key issues that will impact on Aboriginal health are educational achievement, access to adequate housing, transportation as it effects access to services and the cost of food in regional and remote areas, employment opportunities and social issues such as child abuse, family violence, drug abuse and crime.
Better integration by government agencies for the provision of basic infrastructure, social, economic, and health strategies can improve performance in each area. This requires government departments to devote a substantial amount of their capacity to work with community sector agencies in a community development and capacity building manner.
Colin Hughes
Glen Forrest, WA
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, December 15, 2004.
Visit the