Letter: Foggy thinking on Israel’s “occupation”
June 24, 2014 | Colin Rubenstein
Laura Tingle makes the unsubstantiated, ill-informed claim that the Australian Government’s articulation of its position on east Jerusalem was a result of the “Israel lobby” switching its “funding allegiance” to the Coalition (“The fog of war rolls from Jerusalem to Canberra”, 20 June). This is not simply a fiction, but deeply offensive.
Australia right to stay out of Middle East’s semantic games
June 24, 2014 | Mark Leibler
In response to the recent controversy over the Australian government’s clarification to continue to avoid referring to east Jerusalem as ‘occupied’, The Age editorialised ‘the goal of a two-state solution … is not helped by pretending Israel is not in control of lands claimed by the Palestinians’ (June 20).
No one would disagree that Israel has indeed been ‘controlling lands claimed by the Palestinians’ – but the word for land controlled by one party but claimed by another is ‘disputed’ not ‘occupied’.
Why terminology matters in pursuit of a peace deal
June 24, 2014 | Or Avi Guy
There has been much discussion about the federal government’s clarification of the terminology it intends to use in regards to east Jerusalem – and the strong reaction to it from local Arab diplomats and Palestinian representatives, threatening trade boycotts or other sanctions.
East Jerusalem and semantic rabbit holes
June 18, 2014 | Glen Falkenstein
In Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty told Alice “when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Alice retorted: “The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
More than 140 years after Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece was published, the meaning and correct use of words continue to be disputed – with the ongoing dispute over east Jerusalem taking a semantic and very public turn earlier this month in the Australian Senate.
A response to Bob Carr and Gareth Evans in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald
June 13, 2014 | Colin Rubenstein
Commonwealth Attorney-General Senator George Brandis has been attacked from various quarters – including by former ALP Foreign Ministers Bob Carr and Gareth Evans (“Australia hinders progress in Middle East peace process”, June 10) – for announcing that the Australian government will no longer refer to east Jerusalem as “occupied”.
Pejorative words will not give peace a chance
June 10, 2014 | Colin Rubenstein
Federal Attorney-General Senator George Brandis has been attacked from various quarters – including by Joseph Wakim in these pages (”An occupied land suffers from preoccupied minds”, Times2, June 9, p5) – for announcing that the Australian government will not refer to east Jerusalem as “occupied”.
Yet what has been portrayed by detractors as a “radical” step, and as taking sides in the conflict is actually the opposite.
Distortions of “lobby” role
May 16, 2014 | Or Avi Guy
A response to Jordy Silverstein’s article “Broadening the context of Australia’s ‘Zionist lobby'”, published at “The Conversation”
So much has been written about Bob Carr’s memoir “Diary of a Foreign Minister”, and his claim that the “extreme right-wing” Melbourne-based “Israel lobby” has too much, or ‘unhealthy’, influence over Australian foreign policy. It is quite astonishing that in the debate, key critical questions have not been raised in the mainstream media. Most curiously, one of these basic questions was – what actually are the “unhealthy” positions of these Jewish organizations? Absurdly, while some commentators where quick to agree with Carr’s premise, rarely they have shown even a minimal understanding or knowledge of this “lobby” whose “influence” they were pooh-poohing…
Letter in response to Haaretz article
May 15, 2014 | Colin Rubenstein
Contrary to the imputation in Dan Goldberg’s April 22 article “At the heart of Australian Jewish community’s schism: the ‘Israel lobby’ debate”, in deciding the best way to respond to then NSW Premier Bob Carr’s unfortunate decision to present the Sydney Peace Prize to Hanan Ashrawi in 2003, there was no daylight between AIJAC and the other communal representative bodies in either Sydney or Melbourne.
Peace eludes Israel amid unrealistic expectations
April 22, 2014 | Colin Rubenstein
Tony Walker is certain Israel’s West Bank settlements are illegal. (Out on a limb over settlements, AFR 12-13 April). International law is far less certain. Many eminent experts have argued strongly that the claim they are illegal is based on an incorrect reading of Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention. These include Professor Julius Stone, who was professor of international law at Sydney University for 30 years, and former International Court of Justice president Stephen Schwebel.
Bob Carr – a not so slick operator
April 16, 2014 | Ahron Shapiro
In his recently released diary and memoir, former foreign minister Bob Carr described his effort to change Australia’s vote pattern on the UN General Assembly resolution “Lebanese Oil Slick” in late November 2012, and how he met resistance from then-prime minister Julia Gillard. Controversially, Carr even released private text messages between himself and Gillard on the subject.
