Former ambassadors question silence on the ‘excesses’ of Israel
DAN OAKES | Sydney Morning Herald | June 29, 2010
A former Australian ambassador to Israel has accused the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, of being silent on the ”excesses” of Israel and questioned why her partner has been given a job by a prominent Israel lobbyist.
In a letter to the Herald, Ross Burns, who served as an ambassador between 2001 and 2003, said Ms Gillard has been ”remarkably taciturn on the excesses of Israeli actions in the past two years”.
Ms Gillard has been part of the Australian delegation to the last two meetings of the Australia Israel Leadership Forum, founded by the Melbourne property developer Albert Dadon.
Mr Dadon employs Ms Gillard’s partner, Tim Mathieson, as a real estate salesman, at Ubertas. Mr Burns said yesterday that Ms Gillard was at the forum’s inaugural meeting in Israel last June, six months after the Israeli army invaded the Gaza Strip, killing more than 1000 Palestinians.
She was also the acting prime minister when the invasion took place, and issued a statement at the time criticising the Palestinian group Hamas for firing rockets into southern Israel. It did not condemn Israel for causing civilian casualties.
The former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, and the Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, have since expressed unease at the subsequent blockade of Gaza by Israel.
”It looks a bit funny when you go on this tour to promote bilateral relations, but you don’t seem to have any reservations about the issue that was number one on the horizon,” Mr Burns said.
Another former Australian ambassador to Tel Aviv, Peter Rodgers, who served in the Israeli capital from 1994 to 1997, also criticised the government’s attitude towards Israel.
He said last night that under successive governments, Australia’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had become increasingly unbalanced, and that this was unlikely to change under Ms Gillard’s stewardship.
”There’s been a marked swing away from the old attempt to be even-handed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to a much more determined pro-Israeli position, and I think Gillard is part of that,” Mr Rodgers said.
The Herald sought comments from Ms Gillard, Michael Danby, a prominent Jewish federal MP – and a supporter of Ms Gillard in last week’s leadership coup – and Mr Dadon for this article, but received no response.
Copyright © 2010 Fairfax Media
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6 MAJOR US foreign policy failures of the post-Cold War era
By Adam Garrie | The Duran | September 14, 2017
In the 1990s, US officials, all of whom would go on to serve in the George W. Bush White House, authored two short, but deeply important policy documents that have subsequently been the guiding force behind every major US foreign policy decision taken since the year 2000 and particularly since 9/11.
These documents include the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 fiscal years (more commonly known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine). This document, as the name implies was authored by George W. Bush’s deeply influential Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as well as I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who served as an advisor to former US Vice President Dick Cheney.
The other major document, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, from 1996 was authored by former Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee in the administration of George W. Bush, Richard Norman Perle.
Both documents provide a simplistic but highly unambiguous blueprint for US foreign police in the Middle East, Russia’s near abroad and East Asia. The contents of the Wolfowitz Doctrine were first published by the New York Times in 1992 after they were leaked to the media. Shortly thereafter, many of the specific threats made in the document were re-written using broader language. In this sense, when comparing the official version with the leaked version, it reads in the manner of the proverbial ‘what I said versus what I meant’ adage.
By contrast, A Clean Break was written in 1996 as a kind of gift to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who apparently was not impressed with the document at the time. In spite of this, the US has implemented many of the recommendations in the document in spite of who was/is in power in Tel Aviv.
While many of the recommendations in both documents have indeed been implemented, their overall success rate has been staggeringly bad.
Below are major points from the documents followed by an assessment of their success or failure. … continue
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Tim Mathieson has risen from hairdresser to the employ of an Israeli lobbyist. Perhaps a just reward for Gillard last visit to Israel and her ensuing criticism of Hamas, the legitimate elected representative of the Palestinian people.
Someone ought to remind Ms Gillard that Israel remains in blatant violation of over 250UN resolutions more than Saddam Hussein. That despite the US using its veto power to hinder the implementation of sanctions, the US can in no way prescribe legitimacy to the illegal rogue state and its numerous violations, it’s illegal occupation, siege or blockade.
The last impression PM Gillard wants to give, is that the UN resolutions are meaningless and are to be ignored because the tentacles of the Israeli Government now reaches all the way into her bedroom.
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