UPDATES

Media Week – Newton’s gravity-free zone; Village idiots; Exceptionally bad

Sep 5, 2012 | Allon Lee

Media Week - Newton’s gravity-free zone; Village idiots; Exceptionally bad
news_item/spin640_________________.jpg

Newton’s gravity-free zone

Australian Palestine Advocacy Network vice-president Robert Newton offered up a series of red herrings in the Canberra Times (21/8) to justify why “Unless Israel stops the illegal construction of settlements in the West Bank there will be no resumption of negotiations which have been stalled since December 2010”.

Newton also claimed “it defies reality to think it reasonable that the Palestinians should agree to a resumption of talks while the other side continues to steal Palestinian land and embed itself even further in the territory where a future Palestinian state would be situated”.

Between 1993 and 2009 the Palestinian Authority (PA) did not insist on a settlements building freeze as a precondition to peace talks.

Furthermore, what really “defies reality” is why the PA spurned Israel’s unprecedented 10 months building freeze in 2009 and only agreed in the ninth month to attend negotiations – and then refused to discuss anything other than demanding the freeze be extended.

Leaving aside the fact that no new settlements have been built in more than a decade and all settlements take up less than two per cent of the West Bank, one would think that if the settlements truly were overwhelming the West Bank it might be in the PA’s interest to negotiate sooner rather than later.

Newton disingenuously asked – “one is left wondering what exactly a two-state solution would look like”.

Wonder no more, because former PM Ehud Olmert’s 2008 offer of most of east Jerusalem, and the equivalent of 100 per cent of the West Bank, is no secret.

Village idiots

The one-state solution is already a fact according to SBS TV travel show “Global Village” (26/8) which is narrated by Silvio Rivier.

A segment touting the charms of the northern Israeli port town of Acre/Akko claimed that “Acre is a port in Palestine, in Israel…a town shaped by the cross and the crescent”.

Whilst correctly noting that “the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Ptolemys, the Romans all came this far” and explaining the Hebrew origins of the word “Akko”, there was no mention that the port was a part of the Israelite kingdom, nor that it became Muslim and Arab after falling under the Muslim Caliph Umar’s control following his conquest of Jerusalem in the seventh century.

The piece ended with the flourish that as “one of the oldest cities on the world, Acre resembles a battleship of stone, perched on the coast of Palestine, of Galilee, of the Levant. A land now known as Israel”.

Exceptionally bad

The ramifications of the Australian High Court’s rejection of the Hungarian government’s extradition request for Charles Zentai continued to be explored with the Canberra Times (20/8) editorial condemning Australia’s efforts on war crimes. It noted that “Australia is alone among western nations, in having failed to convict, denaturalise, deport, expel or extradite a single Nazi war criminal, and our record with Nazi collaborators from subject nations is hardly better… so savage and beyond human power to forgive were Nazi atrocities that the door will be closed only by death or impossibility”.

Allon Lee

Tags:

RELATED ARTICLES


455daec3 C2a8 8752 C215 B7bd062c6bbc

After the Israel-Hamas ceasefire for hostages deal

Nov 29, 2023 | Update
Screenshot of Hamas bodycam footage as terrorists approach an Israeli vehicle during the terror organisation's October 7, 2023 attack in southern Israel, released by the IDF and GPO (Screenshot)

Horror on Video / International Law and the Hamas War

Oct 31, 2023 | Update
Sderot, Israel. 7th Oct, 2023. Bodies of dead Israelis lie on the ground following the attacks of Hamas (Image: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa/Alamy Live News)

Israel’s Sept. 11, only worse

Oct 11, 2023 | Update
Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu (r) gets his long-awaited face-to-face meeting with US President Joe Biden in New York (Photo: Avi Ohayon, Israeli Government Press Office)

Netanyahu meets Biden, other world leaders, in New York

Sep 27, 2023 | Update
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who gave an address on Aug. 28 threatening the US and laying out the Iranian-led axis's new "unity of the arenas" doctrine. (Photo: Shutterstock, mohammad kassir)

US-Iran prisoner swap deal set to go through

Sep 12, 2023 | Update
A rally of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party last year: Yet outside these faithful, Abbas is not only largely unpopular, but his rule over the PA has seen the Palestinian parliament dissolved, judiciary sidelined, and his party hollowed out (Photo: Shutterstock, Anas-Mohammed)

The Crisis in the PA

Aug 28, 2023 | Update

SIGN UP FOR AIJAC EMAILS

RECENT POSTS

(image: Antoni Mantorski/Shutterstock)

Anti-Zionism is an Abhorrent Ideology Regardless of Antisemitism

Image: Shutterstock

Rise of anti-Semitism echoes older, more dangerous eras

Screenshot 2024 03 15 At 6.19.20 pm

Four Corners “Forever War” episode reflected the endless crusade of its creator, John Lyons

Image: Shutterstock

AIJAC “gravely disappointed” by Australian Government’s decision to resume UNRWA funding

Fighters from Hamas' Qassam Brigades (Image: Shutterstock)

This is no time to throw Hamas a lifeline

(image: Antoni Mantorski/Shutterstock)

Anti-Zionism is an Abhorrent Ideology Regardless of Antisemitism

Image: Shutterstock

Rise of anti-Semitism echoes older, more dangerous eras

Screenshot 2024 03 15 At 6.19.20 pm

Four Corners “Forever War” episode reflected the endless crusade of its creator, John Lyons

Image: Shutterstock

AIJAC “gravely disappointed” by Australian Government’s decision to resume UNRWA funding

Fighters from Hamas' Qassam Brigades (Image: Shutterstock)

This is no time to throw Hamas a lifeline

SORT BY TOPICS