The Zionist lobby has been making its presence felt within the walls of Parliament both here and in the UK, as well as disrupting social cohesion. Bilal Cleland reports.
2024 WAS AN active time for the Zionist lobby in Australia.
The dangerous Senator
Labor had a dummy spit on WA Senator Fatima Payman, who dared to cross the floor in Parliament to support Labor Party – but not caucus – policy on recognition of the Palestinian state.
Liberal Leader Peter Dutton, famous for his stance on African gangs, amusing rising sea levels, Lebanese immigrants, voting No, distressed White South African farmers, au pair girls and unrestrained Israeli assault on Gaza, predictably warned against the rise of Muslim party sectarianism.
Apparently, the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) interfering in politics and various fringe Christian parties is okay, but this Senator having a conscience vote was beyond the pale.
Less predictable was the announcement by the PM, the founder of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, warning of the danger of sectarian politics over the emergence of the lobby group The Muslim Vote.
That independent anti-genocide politicians in the hide-bound, first-past-the-post British electoral system got up in some Labour seats, reduced British PM Keir Starmer’s margin by 17 per cent and ushered in more Liberal Democrats and Greens than usual must be playing on his mind.
An anti-genocide vote like the Teal climate change vote could really hit Labor majorities in up to 20 seats.
Shocks for the anti-genocide activists in Australia
The defenders of the rights of Palestinians recently got a couple of shocks.
One was the revelation that the arsonists of the burnt Burgertory business of a Palestinian activist were paid $20,000. Just who paid that amount was not revealed.
Suspicions about our system of justice came out of The Guardian headline, ‘Homemade bomb planted on car at Sydney home flying Palestinian flag’.
As Sydney Criminal Lawyers noted on its website:
‘And in this strange new world, not only do the local authorities appear to be dragging their feet on arresting a local Zionist suspect known to them, but after the avoidance game no longer cuts it, they decide to then undercharge him on arrest, in direct contradiction to regular policing practice.’
Surprisingly, this was met by ‘two counts of stalking, one of using a carriage service to menace and another charge of trespass’.
The site continued:
‘The charges that have been laid so far, relate to stalking and contain none reflecting the weapon or the political nature of his actions.’
No terrorism charge and a very nasty possibility were noted:
‘And I’m very concerned that it creates tacit permission to many other people that have been making threats and attacks towards Palestinians and their supporters.’
A mild sentence of 12 months gaol with a non-parole period of three months was the wages of sin.
Pro-Palestinian Australians have reason to be concerned about social cohesion in this country, given the Payman hysteria, the no-terrorism charge for terrorism, arson without adequate response, administrative punishments for university students demonstrating against genocide and now demonstrating against attempts to silence them.
Anti-Semitism envoy
Then, on top of this, a Zionist activist in the Israeli cause is appointed, to the horror of the Jewish Council, to be our first permanent anti-Semitism envoy to combat the rise in targeting of Jewish people.
The assumption appears to be that criticism of the genocide in Gaza, which involves many Jewish voices, is anti-Semitism. That there is genuine anti-Semitism in our Australian community is obvious, as there is anti-Indigenous racism and Islamophobia, but this appointment could increase its incidence.
“There is no hierarchy of racism,” is now becoming a slogan of the human rights advocates.
Attorney General Mark Dreyfus at the National Press Club on 9 July stated that criticism of Israel can be but is not always anti-Semitic.
“But when people are singling out Israel and applying a standard to Israel that they do not apply to other countries, then potentially there’s anti-Semitism going on.”
Opposing genocide is a universal value across all countries and religions so if that is defined as anti-Semitic, Israel is in deep trouble. The claim will be that describing the slaughter of the people of Gaza as genocide is itself an attack on all Jews.
The extent of the genocide
The Lancet, the journal of British doctors, has published ‘Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential’.
In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths.
...it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.
That is 7-9 per cent of the total population.
And it is the Zionists who rate a special envoy from the Labor Government.
Blair and the Zionist lobby
Ilan Pappé's ‘Lobbying for Zionism on both sides of the Atlantic’ is essential reading for anyone interested in the analysis of the rise of the Zionist lobby from its Christian fundamentalist roots.
In his description of the work of the lobby in Britain, he gives a case study of former British PM Tony Blair and New Labour.
Lord Michael Levy, the wealthy British Zionist and a former pop promoter, in his book A Question of Honour, describes how Tony Blair, at a dinner in March 1994, impressed him as a future leader of the nation.
Ilan Pappé also writes that this dinner succeeded in ‘converting Tony Blair (then a mere shadow home secretary under John Smith) into a fervent devotee of Israel and its policies’.
Levy was a fund-raiser for many Israeli and Jewish causes and, as Pappé points out, after John Smith’s death in May 1994, donated £7 million (AU$13.3 million) to the campaign of the new Labour leader.
Such benevolence allowed Blair to have the biggest opposition leader’s staff in British history.
Pappé writes:
‘Blair’s financial independence from the trade unions, Labour's traditional core funders, gave him the freedom he needed to transform Labour in his image.’
Levy collected donations for a blind trust, the Labour Leader’s Office Fund, raising nearly £2 million (AU$3.8 million), ‘a sum previously unimaginable for a Labour leader’.
Pappé continues:
‘Blair maintained that he was unaware of the sources of these donations despite being in almost constant contact with Levy and even meeting some of the donors.’
While he was independent of the unions, Levy became dependent on large donors, ‘some of whom had very strong views on Israel’.
Concealed donations occurred. David Abrahams, a property developer, under an arrangement between a solicitor acting for him and two Labour Party officials, ‘donated 650,000 pounds to the party by covenanting the money to his closest associates and thereby concealing his identity’.
In the summer of 1997, Blair nominated Levy as Baron Levy of Mill Hill. Three years later, Levy became the Prime Minister’s personal envoy to the Middle East.
Pappé writes:
‘Ultimately, Levy was estimated to have raised over 15 million pounds for Blair before the “cash for peerages: scandal brought Levy’s fundraising to an end in the summer of 2006”.’
Blair later admitted in a 2017 interview that he may have gone too far in his support for Israel.
When Hamas took over governance of Gaza in 2007, Britain took part in the blockade.
The siege which is still going on was punitive action against the people of Gaza for choosing Hamas. In his 2017 interview, Blair said a better alternative would have been to pull Hamas into a dialogue but Israel refused this point blank.
Blair’s identification with American policy and his buying into the “clash of civilisations” fable of Samuel Huntington – ‘between a supposedly enlightened West and a backward Islamic world’ – made him the best ally Israel could possibly hope for.
The Australian position
We are facing in this country a Labor government and a Liberal Party opposition vying for the support of the Zionist lobby. The bypassing of existing anti-racist and human rights organisations to appear supportive of Israeli interests has begun.
This is despite a surging public opinion incensed at our support for the mass murder of women and children.
As Pappé analysed:
‘...from very early on, because of its self doubt, the Zionist movement dispensed with moral arguments... and invested all its efforts in elites, an enterprise that required money, connections and efficient advocacy. When perfected and deployed by the state of Israel, these lobbying forces enjoyed unparalleled success compared to other lobbies in Britain and the United States.’
Also in Australia.
Vilification, threats, bombs on cars, arson and a compliant media add up to a decline in social cohesiveness.
Bilal Cleland is a retired secondary teacher and was Secretary of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Chairman of the Muslim Welfare Board Victoria and Secretary of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. You can follow Bilal on Twitter @BilalCleland.
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