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UK government refuses to release information about Assange judge who has 96% extradition record
By Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis• 31 July 2020
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves Westminster Magistrates Court in
London, 13 January 2020. (Photo: EPA-EFE/ Facundo Arrizabalaga) Less
The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice is blocking the release of
basic information about the judge who is to rule on Julian Assange’s
extradition to the US in what appears to be an irregular application of
the Freedom of Information Act, it can be revealed.
Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis
Declassified
has also discovered that the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, has ordered
extradition in 96% of the cases she has presided over for which
information is publicly available.
Baraitser was appointed
a district judge in October 2011 based at the Chief Magistrate’s Office
in London, after being admitted as a solicitor in 1994. Next to no
other information is available about her in the public domain.
Baraitser has been criticised for a
number of her judgments so far concerning Assange, who has been
incarcerated in a maximum security prison, HMP Belmarsh in London, since
April 2019. These decisions include refusing Assange’s request for emergency bail during the Covid-19 pandemic and making him sit behind a glass screen during the hearing, rather than with his lawyers.
Declassified recently revealed that Assange is one of just two of the 797 inmates in Belmarsh being held for violating bail conditions. Over 20% of inmates are held for murder.
Declassified
has also seen evidence that the UK Home Office is blocking the release
of information about home secretary Priti Patel’s role in the Assange
extradition case.
The
only known photograph of district judge Vanessa Baraitser — who will
rule on Julian Assange’s extradition to the US — in the public domain. Anonymisation by Declassified. (Photo: Instagram)Request denied A request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was sent by Declassified to
the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) on 28 February 2020 requesting a list of
all the cases on which Baraitser has ruled since she was appointed in
2011. The MOJ noted in response that it was obliged to send a reply
within 20 working days.
Two months later, on 29 April 2020,
an information officer at the HM Courts and Tribunals Service responded
that it could “confirm” that it held “some of the information that you
have requested”. But the request was rejected since
the officer claimed it was not consistent with the Constitutional Reform
Act. “The judiciary is not a public body for the purposes of FOIA… and
requests asking to disclose all the cases a named judge ruled on are
therefore outside the scope of the FOIA,” the officer stated.
The officer added that the
“information requested would in any event be exempt from disclosure…
because it contains personal data about the cases ruled on by an
individual judge”, and that “personal data can only be released if to do
so would not contravene any of the data protection principles” in the
Data Protection Act.
A British barrister, who wished to remain anonymous, but who is not involved with the Assange case, told Declassified:
“The resistance to disclosure here is curious. A court is a public
authority for the purposes of the Human Rights Act and a judge is an
officer of the court. It is therefore more than surprising that the
first refusal argued that, for the purposes of the FOIA, there is no
public body here subject to disclosure.”
The barrister added: “The alternative
argument on data doesn’t stack up. A court acts in public. There is no
default anonymity of the names of cases, unless children are involved or
other certain limited circumstances, nor the judges who rule on them.
Justice has to be seen to be done.”
Despite the HM Courts and Tribunals Service invoking a data protection clause, Declassified was able to view a host of cases with full names and details in Westlaw, a paid-for legal database. The press has also reported on a number of extradition cases involving Baraitser.
An internal review into the rejection of Declassified’s freedom of information (FOI) request upheld the rejection.
Identical request
On 10 April 2020 Declassified sent an identical information request to the MOJ asking for a case list for a different district judge, Justin Barron, who was appointed on the same day as Baraitser in October 2011.
This request was answered by the MOJ
swiftly, within 17 days, compared to two months with Baraitser. The
information officer also noted that it “holds all the information you
have requested” rather than “some” in the case of Baraitser. It is
unclear why the HM Courts and Tribunals Service would hold only partial
information on Baraitser, but not on Barron.
On this occasion, the request was not
blocked. Instead, the information officer asked for further
clarification about the information being sought, suggesting issues such
as final hearing dates, the defendants’ names and what the defendants
were charged with.
Declassified clarified that it wanted the list to include “the date, the defendant, the charge and the judge’s decision”.
The officer eventually declined the
request, stating that it “would exceed the cost limit set out in the
FOIA”, but adding: “Although we cannot answer your request at the
moment, we may be able to answer a refined request within the cost
limit.”
With Baraitser’s identical records,
the possibility of refining the search was never offered – two
“absolute” exemptions being applied to the request from the start.
Baraitser’s record
Despite the rejection by the MOJ, Declassified
has found 24 extradition cases that Baraitser ruled on from November
2015 to May 2019, discovered using the media archive Factiva and
Westlaw. Of these 24 cases, Baraitser ordered the extradition of 23 of
the defendants, a 96% extradition record from publicly available
evidence.
Baraitser has ordered the extradition
of defendants to at least 11 countries in this period, including one
person to the US. Six of the extraditions, or 26% of the rulings, were
successfully appealed. In one case, Baraitser’s decision to
extradite was overturned because the appeal judge “attached considerable
weight to the likely impact of extradition upon the health and
wellbeing of the defendant’s wife”, who “will be left with very little
support”.
Recently, Baraitser controversially refused to guarantee anonymity to Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, which led her to publicly reveal her relationship with Assange and their two children.
The appointment of Baraitser to
preside over the Assange case remains controversial and the decision
untransparent. It is likely that Chief Magistrate Lady Emma Arbuthnot
was involved in the decision to appoint Baraitser to the case.
A
list of all the extradition cases District Judge Vanessa Baraitser has
ruled on that are publicly available. (Compiled by Declassified)The chief magistrate has a “leadership responsibility”
for the roughly 300 district and deputy judges across England and
Wales. Arbuthnot hears “many of the most sensitive or complex cases in
the magistrates’ courts and in particular extradition and special
jurisdiction cases”.
Arbuthnot’s role also includes
“supporting and guiding” district judges such as Baraitser and
“liaising with the senior judiciary and presiding judges” on the cases
they are ruling on.
But Arbuthnot’s role in the Assange
case is mired in controversy and conflicts of interest due to her
family’s connections to the British military and intelligence
establishment, as Declassified has previouslyrevealed. Arbuthnot has personally received financial benefits from partner organisations of the UK Foreign Office, which in 2018 called Assange a “miserable little worm”.
Arbuthnot directly ruled on the
Assange case in 2018-19 and has never formally recused herself from it.
According to a statement given to Private Eye, she stepped aside because of a “perception of bias”, but it was not elucidated what this related to.
Since Arbuthnot has not formally
recused herself, Assange’s defence team cannot revisit her rulings while
it also could have left open the possibility of her choosing which of
her junior judges was to preside over the Assange case.
In a key judgment
in February 2018, Arbuthnot rejected the findings of the United Nations
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – a body composed of international
legal experts – that Assange was being “arbitrarily detained”,
characterised Assange’s stay in the embassy as “voluntary” and
concluded Assange’s health and mental state was of minor importance.
In a second ruling a week later, Arbuthnot dismissed
Assange’s fears of US extradition. “I accept that Mr Assange had
expressed fears of being returned to the United States from a very early
stage in the Swedish extradition proceedings but… I do not find that Mr
Assange’s fears were reasonable,” she said.
In May 2019, soon after Assange was
seized from his asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy by British police, the
US government requested his extradition on charges that could see him
imprisoned for 175 years.
Lady
Arbuthnot attends the Queen’s garden party at Buckingham Palace in May
2017 with her husband Lord Arbuthnot, a former Conservative defence
minister with links to the British military and intelligence
establishment. Anonymisation by Declassified. (Photo: Instagram)More silence
Declassified
also made a request under the Freedom of Information Act for a list of
all the cases heard at Woolwich Crown Court, near Belmarsh, for 2019.
Baraitser had controversially moved Assange’s hearing to Woolwich —
which is often used
for terrorism cases — before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. It has now been
moved back to the Old Bailey, the central criminal court of England and
Wales.
This request, sent on 31 March 2020,
was again rejected. The MOJ officer stated: “I can confirm that the MOJ
holds the information that you have requested. All of the information is
exempt from disclosure under section 32 of the FOIA because it is held
in a court record.”
It added that: “Section 32 is an absolute exemption and there is no duty to consider the public interest in disclosure.”
Despite daily lists of the cases heard at Woolwich being freely available online, including names of defendants, an internal review conducted at Declassified’s request reached the same conclusion. On 15 May 2020, Declassified sent
a further FOI request, this time to the Home Office, asking for
information on any phone calls or emails made or received by the current
Home Secretary Priti Patel concerning the Assange case.
The Home Office replied: “We neither
confirm nor deny whether we hold any information, within the scope of
your request.” It added that the reason was “to protect personal data”.
But, in January 2020, Declassified
had requested the same information for the period when Sajid Javid was
home secretary, April 2018 – July 2019. In this case, the Home Office
responded: “We have carried out a thorough search and we have
established that the Home Office does not hold the information that you
have requested.”
The responses from the Home Office
appear to indicate that Patel has had communications regarding Assange
during her tenure as home secretary, but that the government is
reluctant to disclose this information. The Assange case continues to
set a legal precedent in being mired in opacity and conflicts of
interest.
Patel — who is alsolinked to Arbuthnot’s husband, Lord Arbuthnot — will sign off Assange’s extradition to the US if it is ordered by Baraitser. DM
Matt Kennard is head of
investigations, and Mark Curtis is editor, at Declassified UK.. Sign up to receive Declassified’s monthly newsletter here.
About Declassified UK
Declassified
UK is the leading website for in-depth analysis and exclusive news on
British foreign policy, investigating the UK military, intelligence
agencies and its most powerful corporations.
The UK’s traditional media is increasingly acting as part of the
establishment and failing to report independently and critically on
Britain’s real role in the world.
By contrast, Declassified UK is independent and produces
public-service journalism that informs people about what is being done
in their name, without fear or favour.
As well as focusing on current policies, we also uncover historical
secrets, by investigating the declassified files in the National
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foreign policy is often influential.
The task of uncovering Britain’s role in the world is vital given the UK’s global power:
An arms industry that is one of the world’s largest exporters of weapons
One of the world’s largest networks of overseas military bases, with barracks from Belize to Brunei
A booming cyber warfare industry and hub for private military firms
Permanent member of the UN security council and one of the world’s leading soft powers
Among the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world in the form of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ
Special forces currently operating in at least seven covert wars
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Numerous powerful corporations in arms, extractives, mining, and finance
The
“mainstream” UK media is not uncovering the reality of Britain’s role
in the world and the public is being largely kept in the dark. This
means that governments are not being held to account for their policies.
The problem is not just with the UK’s right-wing, billionaire-owned
media but also with its more “liberal” outlets and the BBC, the most
popular source of news for the British public.
The British media are less and less mainstream – and are if anything
becoming even more embedded in the establishment, regularly amplifying
extremist policies that support war, human rights abusers and
corporations contributing to catastrophic climate change.
The government publishes key information on its policies virtually
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However, much remains hidden. Britain’s culture of secrecy is deeply
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Declassified’s staff have written articles for most of Britain’s
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PALESTINIAN FREEDOM IS POSSIBLE - Article by Ramzy Baroud - in CounterPunch 21 July 2020
In a recent TV discussion, a respected pro-Palestine journalist
declared that if any positive change or transformation ever occurs in
the tragic Palestinian saga, it would not happen now, but that it would
take a whole new generation to bring about such a paradigm shift.
As innocuous as the declaration may have seemed, it troubled me greatly.
I have heard this line over and over again, often reiterated by
well-intentioned intellectuals, whose experiences in researching and
writing on the so-called ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’ may have driven
some of them to pessimism, if not despair.
The ‘hopelessness discourse’ is, perhaps, understandable if one is to
examine the off-putting, tangible reality on the ground: the
ever-entrenched Israeli occupation, the planned annexation of occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, the shameful Arab normalization with Israel, the deafening silence of the international community and the futility of the quisling Palestinian leadership.
Subscribing to this logic is not only self-defeating, but ahistorical
as well. Throughout history, every great achievement that brought about
freedom and a measure of justice to any nation was realized despite
seemingly insurmountable odds.
Indeed, who would have thought that the Algerian people were capable of defeating
French colonialism when their tools of liberation were so rudimentary
as compared with the awesome powers of the French military and its
allies?
The same notion applies to many other modern historic experiences, from Vietnam to South Africa and from India to Cuba.
Palestine is not the exception.
However, the ‘hopelessness discourse’ is not as innocent as it may
seem. It is propelled by the persisting failure to appreciate the
centrality of the Palestinian people – or any other people, for that
matter – in their own history. Additionally, it assumes that the
Palestinian people are, frankly, ineffectual.
Interestingly, when many nations were still grappling with the
concept of national identity, the Palestinian people had already
developed a refined sense of modern collective identity and national
consciousness. General mass strikes and civil disobedience challenging
British imperialism and Zionist settlements in Palestine began nearly a
century ago, culminating in the six-month-long general strike of 1936.
Since then, popular resistance, which is linked to a defined sense of
national identity, has been a staple in Palestinian history. It was a
prominent feature of the First Intifada, the popular uprising of 1987.
The fact that the Palestinian homeland was lost, despite the
heightened consciousness of the Palestinian masses at the time, is
hardly indicative of the Palestinian people’s ability to affect
political outcomes.
Time and again, Palestinians have rebelled and, with each rebellion,
they forced all parties, including Israel and the United States, to
reconsider and overhaul their strategies altogether.
A case in point was the First Intifada.
When, on December 8, 1987, thousands took to the streets of the
Jabaliya Refugee Camp, the Gaza Strip’s most crowded and poorest camp,
the timing and the location of their uprising was most fitting, rational
and necessary. Earlier that day, an Israeli truck had run over a convoy
of cars carrying Palestinian laborers, killing four young men. For
Jabaliya, as with the rest of Palestine, it was the last straw.
Responding to the chants and pleas of the Jabaliya mourners, Gaza
was, within days, the breeding ground for a real revolution that was
self-propelled and unwavering. The chants of Palestinians in the Strip
were answered in the West Bank, and echoed just as loudly in Palestinian
towns, including those located in Israel.
The contagious energy was emblematic of children and young adults
wanting to reclaim the identities of their ancestors, which had been
horribly disfigured and divided among regions, countries and refugee
camps.
The Intifada – literally meaning the “shake off” – sent a powerful
message to Israel that the Palestinian people are alive, and are still
capable of upsetting all of Israel’s colonial endeavors. The Intifada
also confronted the failure of the Palestinian and Arab leaderships, as
they persisted in their factional and self-seeking politics.
In fact, the Madrid Talks in 1991
between Palestinians and Israelis were meant as an Israeli- American
political compromise, aimed at ending the Intifada in exchange for
acknowledging the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a
representative of the Palestinian people.
The Oslo Accords,
signed by Yasser Arafat and Israel in 1993, squandered the gains of the
Intifada and, ultimately, replaced the more democratically
representative PLO with the corrupt Palestinian Authority.
But even then, the Palestinian people kept coming back, reclaiming,
in their own way, their importance and centrality in the struggle.
Gaza’s Great March of Return is but one of many such people-driven initiatives.
Palestine’s biggest challenge in the movement is not the failure of
the people to register as a factor in the liberation of their own land,
but their quisling leadership’s inability to appreciate the immense
potential of harnessing the energies of Palestinians everywhere to stage
a focused and strategic, anti-colonial, liberation campaign.
This lack of vision dates back to the late 1970s, when the
Palestinian leadership labored to engage politically with Washington and
other Western capitals, culminating in the pervading sense that,
without US political validation, Palestinians would always remain
marginal and irrelevant.
The Palestinian leadership’s calculations at the time proved
disastrous. After decades of catering to Washington’s expectations and
diktats, the Palestinian leadership, ultimately, returned empty-handed,
as the current Donald Trump administration’s ‘Deal of the Century’ has finally proven.
I have recently spoken
with two young Palestinian female activists: one is based in besieged
Gaza and the other in the city of Seattle. Their forward-thinking
discourse is, itself, a testament that the pessimism of some
intellectuals does not define the thinking of this young Palestinian
generation, and there would be no need to dismiss the collective efforts
of this budding generation in anticipation of the rise of a ‘better’
one.
Malak Shalabi, a Seattle-based law student, does not convey a message
of despair, but that of action. “It’s really important for every
Palestinian and every human rights activist to champion the Palestinian
cause regardless of where they are, and it is important especially now, ”
she told me.
“There are currently waves of social movements here in the United
States, around civil rights for Black people and other issues that are
(becoming) pressing topics – equality and justice – in the mainstream.
As Palestinians, it’s important that we (take the Palestinian cause) to
the mainstream as well,” she added.
“There is a lot of work happening among Palestinian activists here in
the United States, on the ground, at a social, economic, and political
level, to make sure that the link between Black Lives Matter and
Palestine happens,” she added.
On her part, Wafaa Aludaini in Gaza spoke about her organization’s –
16th October Group – relentless efforts to engage communities all over
the world, to play their part in exposing Israeli war crimes in Gaza and
ending the protracted siege on the impoverished Strip.
“Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists outside are important
because they make our voices heard outside Palestine, as mainstream
media does not report (the truth of) what is taking place here,” she
told me.
For these efforts to succeed, “we all need to be united,” she
asserted, referring to the Palestinian people at home and in the
diaspora, and the entire pro-Palestinian solidarity movement everywhere,
as well.
The words of Malak and Wafaa are validated by the growing solidarity
with Palestine in the BLM movement, as well as with numerous other
justice movements the world over.
On June 28, the UK chapter of the BLM tweeted that it “proudly” stands in solidarity with Palestinians and rejects Israel’s plans to annex large areas of the West Bank.
\
BLM went further, criticizing British politics for being “gagged of
the right to critique Zionism and Israel’s settler-colonial pursuits”.
Repeating the claim that a whole new generation needs to replace the
current one for any change to occur in Palestine is an insult –
although, at times, unintended – to generations of Palestinians, whose
struggle and sacrifices are present in every aspect of Palestinian
lives.
Simply because the odds stacked against Palestinian freedom seem too
great at the moment, does not justify the discounting of an entire
nation, which has lived through many wars, protracted sieges and untold
hardship. Moreover, the next generation is but a mere evolution of the
consciousness of the current one. They cannot be delinked or analyzed
separately.
In his “Prison Notebooks”, anti-fascist intellectual, Antonio Gramsci, coined the term “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”
While logical analysis of a situation may lead the intellect to
despair, the potential for social and political revolutions and
transformations must keep us all motivated to keep the struggle going,
no matter the odds.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons”
(Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research
Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim
University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
With few exceptions, politicians in Australia and across the
western world have recently expressed concern that the two-state
solution is under threat by Netanyahu’s now-postponed annexation plans
(which are perhaps best understood by examining Trump’s ‘conceptual map’).
These positions may reflect the growing popular support for the
Palestinian struggle across the world, one expression of which is the
protest statement signed by hundreds of Australian academics and artists
published last week in Overland.
However, calls by politicians to uphold international law can also be
interpreted as an attempt to maintain the West’s sense of moral
superiority without investing in racial justice for Palestinians, for
they do not disturb the Israeli settler-colonial project. The rhetorical
commitment to the two-state solution works as an ideological weapon
that serves Israel’s criminal impunity while legitimating Zionism as a
settler-colonial, ethno-nationalist project.
Unconditional support for the Israeli state, regardless of its apartheid practices and ongoing colonial project, has been a long-standing bipartisan position in Australia that protects Israel from censure. As Ben Saul reminded us last week
in a piece urging Australia to join global condemnation of Israel’s
annexation plans, Australian and Israeli forces train together.
Australian citizens who are also Israeli citizens serve legally in the
Israeli army and have joined military operations that breach
international and human rights.
It wasn’t long ago, in December of 2018, that Scott Morrison
recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital while holding back on
moving the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv (my colonised home city of
Yaffa) to West Jerusalem. The move made Australia the only western
nation to follow the United States in in supporting the expansion of the
Zionist settler-colonial project across internationally-recognised
Palestinian land. The recognition, alongside Australia’s consistent
opposition to United Nations resolutions condemning Israeli
international law violations, points to a perverse kinship between the
two nations.
In 2009, as an undergraduate with Students for Palestine, I led protests
against the Rudd government’s disgraceful support for Israel’s assault
on Gaza. In refusing to demand an end to the siege, Rudd stated that
‘Australia recognises Israel’s right to self-defence’ as over 500
Palestinians were massacred. This anti-Palestinian discourse was
reproduced under the guise of multilateralism, alongside calls for ‘the
absolute importance of bringing about an effective diplomatic solution.’
Now, Rudd is urging Morrison to condemn annexation, arguing that
‘Australia has consistently taken the lead when this most basic of our
international norms had been breached.’ It is the same violent discourse
that equalises relations, distorting the relationship from being one of
coloniser and colonised, victimiser and victimised: ‘Both sides have
legitimate concerns that need to be addressed in order for both states
to exist side-by-side with equal rights and peace and security for their
citizens.’
In 1993, the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said astutely warned the Olso Accords would institute ‘an instrument of Palestinian surrender.’
This event was a turning point in the history of Palestinian struggle.
After decades of guerrilla struggle, the leading Palestinian
organisation, the PLO, made peace with our colonisers. The process
formally presented Palestinians and Israelis as equal negotiators on the
world stage, serving to transform Israel – one of the most violent
nations on Earth – into brokers of peace and, in Said’s words,
‘temporarily obscure the truly astonishing proportions of the
Palestinian capitulation.’
Since the Accords, the Israeli settler population in occupied East
Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank has boomed thanks to
the intervention of the Israeli army and international inaction, and now stands at 620,000.
These settlements are a product of a long-held consensus in Israel:
that Jerusalem, large parts of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley
rightfully belong to the Israeli state. Netanyahu’s annexation extending
sovereignty over the Jordan Valley would merely formalise a de-facto
reality on the ground.
As a Palestinian, I consider it an insult that Western politicians
summon the two-state solution in our support as though it were anything
but a position of forced surrender. Palestinians in the homeland and in
their diasporas have a long history of demonstrating against Israeli
oppression that has been left unchallenged by the so-called peace
agreements. Meanwhile, those same politicians condemn or criminalise
Palestinian resistance, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement.
This lip-service to two-state solution is the premise for opposing
the annexation across political parties in Australia. This includes the
Greens, in spite of their more sympathetic record to Palestinian rights.
In a recent media release,
Adam Bandt states that the annexation ‘thwarts Palestinians’ right to
self-determination, destabilises the entire region and further
jeopardises the prospects of a two-state solution.’ This is the same
position taken by foreign minister Marise Payne last week, when she stated that
‘the Australian Government is a longstanding supporter of a two-state
solution, in which Israel and a future Palestinian state coexist, in
peace and security, within internationally recognised borders.’ Like all
other mainstream political parties in Australia, the Greens express
their qualified sympathy while formally opposing the BDS movement.
This rhetoric has aided Israel’s image as a cooperative and moral
international player while continuing its illegal settlements and land
grabs, as well as the siege of Gaza, which began as collective
punishment on the Palestinian population for democratically electing the
wrong party, Hamas. It is another iteration of the colonial logic that
speaks over and for Palestinians without any respect for widespread
Palestinian dissent against this ‘solution’.
Mark Muhannad Ayyash has put forward a similar critique earlier this week:
These words do not carry any consequence that can give
them meaning, depth, and force. They are part of the diplomatic routine,
which gives the feeling that something is being done, that the world is
watching closely and that the world is concerned for Palestine.
This chimera of an act ends up sustaining the status quo and ensures
that nothing consequential is ever undertaken. The very emptiness of
these words thus becomes another weapon that enables annexation.
Many ordinary Palestinians have understood this situation for some
time: the cavalry is not coming – not from the Arab world, not from the
UN and not from international law. And in their absence, those
international institutions and states show themselves as part of the
problem, not the solution.
While Netanyahu has explained that Palestinians in the potential annexed areas would not be granted Israeli citizenship, as reported in The Times of Israel in May,
some anti-annexation liberals in the West and centrist Israeli
activists have been responding to this goal-post shifting by the far
right to enter into a discussion of what should happen to the
Palestinians after annexation. While this discussion will become
necessary if the annexation goes ahead, when the conversation is not
held on Palestinian terms it can stifle our ability to centre resistance
and articulate just alternatives to occupation and expanded Israeli
settler-colonisation. It has not been liberal positions but Palestinian
disillusionment with ‘what’s on the table’ that has generated waves of
struggle throughout Palestinian history.
If the current Bla(c)k Lives Matter moment against anti-Black police
brutality reiterates anything for us Palestinians, it is the limits of
liberal government reformist visions. Liberal multiculturalism and the
pretence of colour-blindness have been the dominant ideologies of the
past few decades in ‘post-racial’ societies such as the United States
and Australia, and it is they, along with the police, that are being put
on trial. Demands for abolishing, defunding and demilitarising the
police push against right-wing and liberal efforts to maintain the
status quo of systemic racism: that is, a way of organising and
distributing mobility, wealth, opportunity and safety through an economy
of advantage and disadvantage. As Palestinians, we learn from this
history as we now bear witness to the ways in which the New Jim Crow
policies – as described by Michelle Alexander – have enabled police impunity and mass incarceration.
The Palestinian struggle is connected to the global BLM movement
through an interlinked vision to dismantle racist settler-colonial
structures and systems. Within our shared fight for racial justice, it
is crucial to challenge Israel’s Zionist supremacy at the same time as
we are seeing white supremacy fiercely challenged in protests across
this country against Aboriginal deaths in police custody. In drawing
these links, we also build support towards our efforts at challenging
Israeli white-washing initiatives that seek to blackout colonisation and
paint Israel as a progressive model of democracy.
As Palestinians, we have suffered the consequences of the
legitimisation of Zionism as a settler-colonial, ethno-nationalist
project. The current moment crucially offers opportunities to strengthen
global solidarity against racist state apparatus wherever they operate,
which would boost support for the demands of BDS, given these demands
are premised upon ending the same kind of state impunity targeted by the
uprisings in the United States. Yannick Giovanni Marshall’s reflections
in ‘The racists’ peace’ are relevant here:
To order that our protests must be peaceful is to demand
that when we ask to be injured less, it is in a tone that is respectful
and polite. To praise the peacefulness of a protest is to assert the
right of those resisted to determine the ethics of resistance – their
right to command and to direct it, their right to lay out how resistance
must be conducted.
We should demand that our global protest against annexation be tied
to our imaginaries of a Free Palestine. Committing to anything less is a
racist’s peace and a racist’s justice.
It is not enough to expect pro-Palestinians to accept the utterance
of words of support against annexation from politicians supporting
Orwellian peace agreements. The time for feigned pro-Palestinian support
should be over. Genuine support for the Palestinian struggle demands
opposition to Israeli settler colonisation itself.
Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a
proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices
often excluded from other places.
If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate.
Palestinian
director Elia Suleiman is hardly prolific, having made only three other
features and a few documentaries and shorts in 30 years, but his work
is worth the wait. It Must Be Heaven is the fourth feature, and it explains to some extent the long gaps in getting things made.
It
is an autobiographical comedy in three locations, by turns satirical,
slapstick, and rueful. Suleiman plays a version of himself, leaving
Nazareth for Paris after the deaths of his parents, moving to the US,
then returning ‘‘home’’ – except there is no real home for this
Palestinian. Nazareth in northern Israel is never identified as the
first location: you have to guess. That’s perhaps one of Suleiman’s
over-developed artistic tendencies – he doesn’t want to spoonfeed us, so
he sometimes tells us too little. That is also what some people love
about his films – the open-endedness, the possibility of many readings,
the inscrutability.
It’s
not necessary to share that view to enjoy his humour, humanity and
intelligence. He has been compared to Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, in
that he is the fool in the middle of most of his scenes, waiting to be
poleaxed by life. There are a couple of moments that make clear his debt
to those geniuses, hence my word slapstick, but most of his humour is
more cerebral. An example is the scene in which tanks roll through the
streets of Paris. It’s unexplained, chilling and ‘‘funny’’ only in its
incongruity.
Behind the humour, there is a melancholy examination
of the idea of permanent exile. Suleiman’s character is no longer
comfortable in Nazareth, where Palestinians now predominate, and where
he grew up. He finds that Paris and New York, where he goes to escape,
are not quite ‘‘home’’ either.
Elia Suleiman is the fool in the middle of most of his scenes, waiting to be poleaxed by life.Credit:Potential Films
His
character does not speak for the first half. He walks in eerily
deserted streets in Nazareth, in a straw hat that never leaves his head.
With his owlish glasses and beard, he looks like an Orthodox priest –
and that’s perhaps intentional. Suleiman is from the ‘‘Roum’’ Greek
Orthodox community in Israel, and the first scene is an irreverent joke
about an Orthodox ceremony that goes wrong.
The
only hint that his parents have died is a brief visit to the cemetery,
and the empty house to which he returns. Gangs of armed youths roam the
empty streets, freaking him out, so he leaves for Paris, where the
streets are just as empty – except for all the pretty girls who stroll
past in the sun, wearing flimsy dresses and showing their legs. Nina
Simone sings ‘‘I put a spell on you’’ in this scene – a song he used in
an earlier film.
A few of his actors are familiar too, suggesting continuity with his most recent features – The Time that Remains (2009) and Divine Intervention
(2002). As if to explain the long time between, the straw-hatted man
meets with a Paris producer, who’s full of praise for his work, but
offers absolutely no money. We have a commitment to Palestinian film, he
explains, but your film is perhaps not ‘‘Palestinian enough’’.
Suleiman’s
observations on Paris and New York are wry, sometimes sharp, more
expansively funny. Every person in the New York deli where he shops
carries a weapon – even the children. Cops in Paris chase citizens
through the streets on monowheels and roller skates. A French ambulance
crew serves a homeless man with a full meal – chicken or fish – followed
by coffee, before moving on. That idea of ‘‘no place’’ runs through a
lot of these jokes, but quietly, with a tinge of chaos.
Suleiman
has made more accessible films than this, but he has never been
conventional. This is another hybrid – part essay film, part odyssey,
not quite a travelogue, more like a psychic jigsaw. You have to put the
pieces together yourself, and that is against all popular modes of
current filmmaking. The mood is superbly sustained by emptying most of
the locations of people (astounding, given some of the places he got
closed down for filming, such as the entrance to the Louvre). It’s a
soulful sort of comedy, rather than a thigh-slapper, but thoughtful is
always better than its alternative.
Paul Byrnes
Paul Byrnes is a film critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
The 'perfect stranger'
explores the power of silence
Wherever you go, there you are. It is one of the truisms of
travel: that you bring more than just physical baggage with
you. But Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman magnifies the
idea in his deceptively winsome comedy It Must Be Heaven.
Wherever he goes, Suleiman – who plays himself, albeit more
flummoxed by the world than he seems to be in real life –
finds himself in a version of Palestine.
It's all Palestine to him: Elia
Suleiman in a scene from It Must Be Heaven. Credit:Potential
Films
Helicopters whirr overhead in New York; ordinary citizens are
inexplicably armed to the teeth in Paris; nothing seems to
make sense anywhere. "My feeling is that the Palestinians
might be one of the most oppressed and occupied peoples in the
world today, but I can also say that unfortunately there are
many layers and levels of occupations," he says. "Not only
military, but also economic and psychological (ones)."
Similar tension and
anxiety reign everywhere, he says. "Palestine becomes an
elastic form of oppression."
Suleiman is 60. His character on screen, established in his
2002 film Divine Intervention, hardly ever speaks.
"This time I said 'Nazareth' when the taxi driver asks where
I'm from, and, 'I'm Palestinian'.
They're not even words.
They're codes," he says. "I think that, as much as you can do
with an image, why do you need words? It's always a challenge
to limit and censor information, but I cannot stand giving
information in a film; I find that extremely boring. I prefer
to leave things in the poetic. So I try to reduce as much as
possible and let the cinema do what it can do."
The silence and melancholy that underlie his sense of the
ridiculous might suggest Suleiman is paying homage to Chaplin;
he could be a modern version of Chaplin's tramp, fortified
against misadventure with books and a frequent flyer card. "But
I think what's interesting about this is that I did not watch a
lot of films in my life," he says. It could be, he muses, that
he is just catching up with the past. "Maybe the silent part is
coming as if I were living a century ago." Although he has an
abiding love of old westerns, he doesn't watch a lot of films,
even now. "I don't know what it is that I do a lot of. Maybe
smoking and drinking."
For him, these things are a sort of work. After all, the human
oddities chronicled in It Must Be Heaven are mostly
garnered from life as seen from a succession of cafe tables. "If
you come and sit with me in a cafe, you will see the same things
I'm seeing," he says. "You just have to be alert and watch and
daydream and space out and then come back. It's really a job
with the features of unemployment; you have to do absolutely
nothing, then take in stuff that's happening."
One of his most bitterly
funny encounters is with a Parisian producer who was excited by
the idea of making a film by a Palestinian director until he
read it and realised it was a comedy. Like many of the vignettes
in It Must Be Heaven, this is a slightly embroidered
version of a real event. "It happened when I was trying to
finance my first film in the '90s," he says. "The idea that a
Palestinian makes a film that has humour was not exactly welcome
in the 'lefty' world in Europe, because they are the patrons of
the Palestinian cause." The problem, explains the po-faced
producer (played by Vincent Maraval, one of his producers in
real life), is that his script just isn't Palestinian enough.
Why, it could have happened anywhere!
That is exactly the sense Suleiman wanted to convey. He chose
Paris and New York as his character's boltholes because he had
lived in each of them for 14 years, so he didn't marvel at them
as a tourist would. "There is a kind of cross-border existence
going on with quite a lot of us," he says. "This is about
migration, not only of the unfortunate who drown in the sea, but
also of the middle classes, who are now trapped in a sense of
alienation about who they are and where they want to be."
As a fellow drinker slurs at Elia Suleiman's character in a New
York bar, after taking in his recent zip around the world: "Are
you the perfect stranger?"
Edition No. 307 - 27 JUNE-3 JULY 2020 The Saturday Paper
In his latest film, It Must Be
Heaven, Elia Suleiman continues to explore the
absurdity and tragedy of being Palestinian, and weaves in a
moving contemplation of the ageing body.
By Christos Tsiolkas.
Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven
Elia Suleiman in It Must Be Heaven.
Credit: Carole Bethuel
Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven, which won the Jury
Prize at Cannes last year but due to the Covid-19 crisis is only
now getting a theatrical release in Australia, begins with an
Orthodox priest in Nazareth leading his Easter congregation
through a narrow alley of the old city. The believers are chanting
as they approach an ancient church gate. The priest raps on the
doors, only to be denied permission to enter. We don’t know why
approval has been denied. We only hear the voices of the guards
inside. Like a boxer preparing to enter the ring, the priest
removes his koukoulion, rolls up the sleeves of his robe
and walks into the church through a back entrance. We hear the
sounds of the priest slapping the guards and we hear the men’s
pleading and apologies. The priest flings the gate open and the
congregation recommences its chanting, entering the church.
As always, nimbly and with a wicked comic sense, Suleiman
introduces us to the surreal world of Palestinian existence, where
the threat of violence always simmers just below the surface of
the everyday, and where regulations and prohibitions are often
unnamed and seemingly ridiculous. He is deeply influenced by two
of the greatest comic directors in cinema history, Buster Keaton
and Jacques Tati, and like those filmmakers creates meticulous
absurdist worlds of authority and surveillance. Suleiman shares
Tati’s great talent to imagine and then create his own
idiosyncratic spatial architecture, so the world we view in his
films is at once familiar and strange.
In It Must Be Heaven he utilises highly stylised and
elegantly composed tableaus, in which he is always a silent
observer. Two hard-drinking men berate a waiter for daring to
serve a meal doused in alcohol to their sister. Are they offended
on behalf of their sibling, or is it a ploy to get some free
drinks? A man picks fruit from a neighbour’s citrus tree, and then
waters and tends to the garden. Are his intentions honourable or
is it an attempt to appropriate his neighbour’s plot? We get the
sense every interaction involves second-guessing, and that daily
life is a constant negotiation of conflict.
Suleiman directs his
actors to be deliberately theatrical in their gestures and
performances, again emphasising a state in which everyone is aware
of being under constant observation. Yet, as with the priest in
the opening scene, Suleiman never condescends to or stands in
self-righteous judgement of his characters.
The first of Suleiman’s films I saw was
2002’s Divine Intervention, and it was revelatory,
firstly because of Suleiman’s phenomenal control as a filmmaker,
and also for daring to make comedy out of one of the most
intractable and unjust of all global conflicts, the denial of a
homeland for the Palestinian people. Divine Intervention,
which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in the year of its release, had
the shock of the innovative when I saw it. I had never before
quite felt that permission to laugh at a situation – the plight of
the Palestinians – that had always been depicted with utmost
seriousness or tragic weight. Seven years later Suleiman made The
Time That Remains, which I think is an even greater film.
The comedy is still there, as is the bemusement, but that film
reaches back into Suleiman’s own family history to evoke the
tragedy of the Palestinians’ dispossession by Israel since 1948.
It Must Be Heaven doesn’t have
the audacious jolt for an audience that Divine Intervention did,
nor does it have the operatic sweep of The Time That Remains.
It is a much quieter film. Playing himself in the film, Suleiman
leaves Nazareth for Paris and New York to try to get some money to
finance a film. There is a great sequence in Paris where he is
politely and with excruciating pomposity told by a film producer
that his new script isn’t “Palestinian enough”. There is also some
delightful poking fun at the absurdity of European Union laws,
capturing both the benign and coercive aspects to much
contemporary regulation.
However, though the Parisian scenes are
as scrupulously composed as those in Nazareth, they seem static in
comparison. We understand that Suleiman is being tongue in cheek
in inserting himself in depopulated vistas of Notre Dame and the
Louvre, but there are no comic payoffs or great insights generated
from those moments. They remain pretty postcards. Apart from the
obnoxious film producer, there aren’t any other distinctive
characters in these sequences for Suleiman to play against, and
this also accentuates the shapelessness of the scenes. I adore the
weathered grace of Suleiman’s face, but he isn’t physically as
capable a performer as Keaton or Tati. The film feels shambolic in
this middle section.
Thankfully, the pace picks up when
Suleiman arrives in New York. He seems genuinely fascinated by the
contradictions of the United States, where violence is as endemic
as in his homeland but where ethnic and racial singularity is
corporatised. His puzzled reactions to a supermarket full of
shoppers with guns, and to a conference of Palestinian artists
that seems as much an evangelical revival meeting as it does a
political discussion, form some of the funniest sequences in the
film.
There’s also a wonderfully facetious
cameo by Gael GarcÃa Bernal, who is also in the US trying to drum
up money for a film he wants to make about the colonisation of
Mexico. Deftly, humorously, Suleiman and Bernal communicate their
solidarity as non-Western filmmakers as well as the inevitable
competition and division that come from their scrambling for
money. This self-reflexivity skirts dangerously close to
indulgence but it is tempered by a moving acknowledgement by
Suleiman of the wearing effects of age on both dreams and
aspirations. This is true for him as a filmmaker and as a
Palestinian.
Age, and the limitations of the body, are
themes subtly woven into It Must Be Heaven. They
culminate in a scene where Suleiman visits a tarot card reader,
and we hear the clairvoyant’s answer to a question that is never
asked in the film but is central to everything we have witnessed.
“Yes,” the fortune teller exclaims triumphantly, “There will be a
Palestine.” And then with the turning of another card, he adds
sadly, “But neither of us will be alive to see it.”
This contemplation of age makes sense of
a scene in Paris that has troubled some reviewers of the film.
Suleiman sits at a cafe and, in an extended slow-motion montage,
we share his point of view as a parade of stylish and attractive
women walk past. Ostensibly, the scene grates as a stereotypically
sexist fetishising of young women. But I think Suleiman is very
much aware of what he is doing here. If any of the women notice
him, it is only to turn away in disdain. For the young women he
might as well not exist. It is the film’s coda that makes sense of
this scene, and also makes sense of the constant tension between
observing and being observed – of having to perform being
Palestinian – that is at the heart of Suleiman’s filmmaking.
In the final scene, Suleiman has returned
to Nazareth and is getting drunk at a bar. A group of young
Palestinians are dancing. They are straight and they are queer.
The music shifts and it is a dance remix of the song “Arabiyon
Ana” by Lebanese singer Yuri Mrakadi. The title translates to “I
am an Arab” and the defiance of the song’s lyrics is echoed in the
ecstatic response of the dancers. The music rises and the bodies
move in sensual unison in the crammed bar. The euphoria of the
moment returns us to the beginning of the film, to the more muted
rapture of the Orthodox Christian chanting. It’s a different form
of resurrection from that pledged to by the priest, but it is
still a promise. The music becomes louder and louder.
As in the Paris cafe sequence, Suleiman
is the old man, always the outsider, watching from his corner. It
is exhilarating and it is deeply affecting. His desire doesn’t
need to be spoken out loud. The old man is hoping that these young
people will one day have what the Parisians and the New Yorkers
take for granted. He is praying that these children will have a
homeland, that one day they will see a Palestine.
This article was first published in the print edition of The
Saturday Paper on
Jun 27, 2020 as "Heaven’s stakes".
My partner and I are
in our 90s and we live in Preston. On Tuesday afternoon, 23
June 2020, we had to go to a doctors' clinic in High Street,
Northcote and we went by taxi. We were at the
clinic for about an hour and when we were finished there we
knew we would have to walk down to Northcote Plaza where there
is a taxi rank, because there was no hope of hailing one in
High Street at 4.15 in the afternoon.
If the government
and the police think they will control the spread of the
virus, all they need to do is look at the people walking
around the streets of Northcote to see that hardly anyone was
taking any notice of the directive to keep the spaces between
people as recommended by the health experts.
We are in the most
vulnerable age group and only go out when we have to visit
doctors or hospitals, other than short walks around where we
live for some exercise, but if anyone walking the streets of
Northcote has the virus and either of us catch it, we will be
goners for sure!
Mannie De Saxe
(while I am still around!)
Letter in The Age today 30 June 2020:
No wonder the numbers are climbing
I agree with Mannie De Saxe (Letters, 25/6) that social
distancing in Northcote is rarely being observed.
We have been abused for asking people on the streets to observe
the rules, while others flip the bird or even yell "What are you
going to do about it?" No wonder numbers of cases of coronavirus
are climbing.
The
only way I can see that attitudes will change is a more visible
police presence on foot along High Street and surrounding
streets.
Photo on front page of Preston Leader (now closed down) on 10 MARCH 2020
Hotel
hell for refugees
No
freedom in sight for asylum seekers at Mantra Bell City
By
Richard Pearce, Preston Leader, 10 March 2020
The
55 asylum seekers detained in Preston’s Mantra Bell City for 7
months have had no sign of impending freedom, despite increasing
public support for their release.
The
men were brought to Australia from Manus Island and Nauru, some
having spent up to six years offshore.
But
seven months later there is no sign they will be returned or
released, leaving them in permanent purgatory inside the 4-star
hotel.
The
men have received great community backing, with more than 100 people
turning up to Bell Mantra on 29 February to show their support,
holding signs calling for compassion and their immediate release. The
refugees are being housed in 27 rooms, taking up an entire floor of
one wing of the hotel.
The
Leader has estimated the cost
over 223 days, at $160 a night, to be $963,360.
Social media posts have also detailed an extensive guard presence,
with rooms checked about three times a day.
The asylum seekers were brought here under the Medevac Bill, a piece
of legislation allowing refugees access to healthcare as long as they
had recommendations from two Australian doctors.
They would have been released into the community after treatment but
that legislation was repealed in December last year, leaving their
fate in the hands of the Minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton.
Refugee Action Collective spokesman Chris Breen said while the idea
of staying in a hotel might seem like a holiday, there was no
mistaking the men were prisoners.
“It’s become a place of torture”, he said.
“They can’t open the windows to get air. They’re stuck inside
19 hours a day.”
“The only way they can get exercise at all is if they request to go
back to Broadmeadows Detention Centre.”
Some
of the men have used social media to seek support for their
cause.
“We
have been locked up in hotels by the Australian Government,”
Kurdish musician Moz Azimi wrote on Twitter.
An
Australian Border Force spokesperson said detainees transferred to
Australia for medical treatment were expected to be returned
afterwards.
The
spokesperson said decisions to place detainees in hotels or other
forms of accommodation were determined case-by-case.
They
refused to answer when the asylum seekers would be released.
The
Department for Home Affairs and Bell City Mantra were contacted for
comment.
This photo was provided by Gary Jaynes on 30 JUNE 2020 and the middle column of the wall obliterates the bottom word on the banner. The banner reads:
"FREE REFUGEES FROM MANTRA THEY ARE NOT CRIMINALS"
Demonstration in Bell Street, Preston, outside Mantra Hotel in support of Asylum Seekers incarcerated in one of the concentration camps in Australia
My Article submitted to Overland, but not accepted for publication
18 March 2020
SOUTH AFRICA - APARTHEID POLICE STATE; AUSTRALIA - APARTHEID POLICE STATE; ISRAEL - APARTHEID POLICE STATE
"HOTEL HELL FOR REFUGEES"
Headline on front page of Preston Leader on Tuesday 10 March 2020 (This is a Murdoch paper!!! )
Whatever happened to our so-called democracies?
Starting with South Africa, the world waited with bated breath for
dramatic changes when Nelson Mandela became the first black president of
a united South Africa and possibly the end of apartheid - and the
police state.
Mandela retired after his first and only 5-year term as president -
he was, of course, quite elderly by then and after the criminally hard
life he had had in South Africa's infamously dreadful prison on Robben
Island, he rightly thought a younger generation should govern for South
Africa.
He wrongly favoured Thabo Mbeki who was disastrous during his
periods as president because he was an AIDS denier to the extent that
even today, a few presidents later, HIV/AIDS still presents a major
health challenge for the South African people.
A little later Jacob Zuma became president and corruption set in,
with disastrous results for the economy and all other facets of South
African life.
One of the disasters of this period was the Marikana massacre of
many miners who had gone on strike because of the murderous
mismanagement of the company owning certain mines.
The person who is now the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was apparently
the person who ordered the police and the army to open fire on the
miners. In an earlier incarnation he had been the president of the
organisation Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Then he
became a business man and also very rich.
Disaster all the way, and the rich got richer and the poor poorer -
if possble - and South Africa still remains a mess - in 2020.
I arrived in Australia from South Africa in 1978, hoping apartheid and police state would not be as bad as in South Africa.
Idle hope! After all, apartheid started in Australia on 26 January
1788 and the nature of the British colonisation of Australia was that it
was already a police state. Instead of improving over the years, the
police state has intensified to the extent that asylum seekers managing
to get to Australia - escaping mostly from brutal regimes around the
world and arriving here to ask for asylum, hoping to have peace in their
lives, are locked up in concentration camps from which escape is
virtually impossible.
Some slightly more humanitarian politicians - and they are few and
far between in Australia - managed to pass legislation to bring refugees
to Australia from the concentration camps on Manus and Nauru for
medical treatment. This legislation was overturned by the government
as soon as it was possible, and 55 asylum seekers have been locked up in
a Mantra Hotel in Preston in Melbourne for the last 8 months with no
chance of any relief in sight and no hope of change from a government
and opposition determined to follow a police state mentality of locking
people in concentration camps and throwing away the keys.
What is mostly ignored by most white Australians and many migrants
in the last 200 years or so is that the indigenous inhabitants of this
ancient country are still treated like savages in their own land and
they are imprisoned at alarming rates where they are also suffering
deaths in custody by a brutal police regime determinedly maintained by
the police state governments of the country.
Some of those of us who have experienced the 'joys' of living in a
police state despair of any changes in Australia because so many people
behave like sheep and also can - or won't be bothered with making any
sorts of protests and leaving the rest of us with that hopeless feeling
that there is never going to be any changes - ever!
At the age of 93 I thought I had seen and experienced most of the
worst aspects of human nature but the longer I live the worse it gets -
and I haven't spoken about Israel yet.
Israel is not only a police state, but one with fascist tendencies.
Israelis resent being compared to the Nazis but most of what they are
doing to keep the Palestinians under control is to keep them
incarcerated in their concentration camps in Gaza and the West Bank on
land stolen from them by the zionist settlers. Even those Palestinians
who were and are in Israel as citizens of their own land are treated
like second or third class citizens without full citizens' rights
because the zionist project is to occupy the rest of Palestine which has
some old Jewish names - Judea and Samaria - for them called after some
of the old tribal groups of a few thousand years ago.
Israel wants a Jewish state and if that is what they want, Israel
under no circumstances can be called a democracy - it hasn't been that
for most of its existence - but a theocracy similar to Iran and other
similar religious states.
.........and Israel is the propagator of much of the anti-semitism in the world in the 21st century.
Posted by Mannie De Saxe at 4:12 PM
Labels: anti-semitism, apartheid, apartheid South Africa, Australia, democracy, Israel, police states, South Africa, theocracy
