Gaza - Australian Politicians Duped By Dud Declaration

[Published 22 August 2014]


The Canberra Declaration on Gaza signed by 76 current and former Federal and State parliamentarians in Australia displays their total factual ignorance and political naieveté concerning the war raging between Hamas and Israel for the last six weeks.

The Declaration has been “Published courtesy of Kohram”

Kohram is a 24/7 online Hindi and English News and Views website based in Delhi, India. It offers real information relating News Analysis, World Wide News, Politics, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Industry and Feature Articles on Education.

Australian politicians acknowledging assistance from an Indian media website seems a strange circumstance indeed.

The Declaration was created by Maiy Azize -a Canberra based health and social policy analyst. She is a parliamentary advisor in health and community services and campaigner for @GreensMPs. 21 of the Declaration’s signatories are parliamentarians representing the Greens Party.

The header image is attributed to Nakshab Khan and was featured in an article written by him for Kohram on 13 July headlined “Will Israeli Offensive Achieve Anything In Gaza?”

Khan wrote:

“Israel always justifies its aggression on the Gaza strip by blaming Hamas militants for firing crude rockets on the Jewish nation’s southern territories.”

Khan was apparently unaware that in the five weeks preceding 8 July - 234 rockets had been launched from Gaza into Israel reaching as far as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Hadera - sending hundreds of thousands of civilians scurrying into air raid shelters and disrupting normal life in Israel as well as threatening its tourist industry in the peak summer season.

Long range rockets such as the M-302 were employed‚ the same missiles confiscated from the KLOS-C weapons seizure.

Israel’s inherent entitlement to self-defence under article 51 of the United Nations Charter to prevent the indiscriminate firing of these rockets into Israeli population centres — each rocket an internationally acknowledged war crime — was not worth a mention in Khan’s article.

Australian politicians need to be very careful about their names being identified with a document whose origins are so murky — a Declaration that itself is deceptive and misleading in the following respects:

1. It claims to bear the signatures of members of Australian federal and state Parliaments — yet 5 of the 76 signatories are former members of those parliaments.

2. Although titled “Canberra Declaration on Gaza” and updated to 4 August it supports:

“an immediate cessation of hostilities and a ceasefire deal which includes an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and to the blockade of Gaza”

The Declaration ignores any reference to Hamas having rejected a cease fire deal proposed by Egypt on 16 July and accepted by Israel - and to a number of ceasefire agreements broken by Hamas since then.

The Declaration ignored the findings of the 2011 United Nations Palmer Report which found that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza complied with the requirements of international law and recommended that Israel should continue with its efforts to ease its restrictions on movement of goods and persons to and from Gaza in accordance with Security Council resolution 1860 - all aspects of which should be implemented.

The Declaration omitted to include the following underlined words:

“We call on all Australian politicians to also support the United Nations Human Rights Council’s decision to launch an independent inquiry into purported violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014”

The Declaration alleged that the rockets fired into Israel were:

“imprecise” and “cannot be compared with the broad-scale bombing of Gaza by Israel”

A grossly misleading allegation indeed — echoing Nakshab Khan’s spurious claim—considering Hamas rockets were landing all over Israel — whilst Israel’s response was limited to specific targeted areas within Gaza.

The Declaration asserted that:

“Collective punishment is not permitted under the Geneva conventions and is a war crime”.

Whilst not specifically accusing Israel of perpetrating this crime — it is clear that the entire civilian population of Israel was being targeted by the broad-scale Hamas barrage of rockets — whilst large parts of Gaza’s civilian population were not being affected by Israel’s actions.

The Declaration claimed that hospitals and places of worship were among the Israeli military’s targets—but ignored mentioning that such places were used to conceal underground tunnels and weapons and their use as command centres by Hamas.

The Declaration concluded:

“The international community including Australia has a vital responsibility to put pressure on Israel to end its current military attack on Gaza and broker a solution of justice and peace.”

Why no pressure on Hamas — especially as Israel had agreed to end its military attack on Gaza three weeks previously and subsequently on a number of other occasions — only to see them broken by Hamas.

The Declaration — like Khan’s article - makes no mention of Israel’s inherent right of self defence.

Those parliamentarians who signed this Declaration have some explaining to do to their constituents.

I wrote to Senator Lee Rhiannon - one of two named parliamentarians to contact about signing this Declaration — requesting she comment on my criticisms of the Declaration.

Regrettably at the time of writing this article — no response has been received.

71 out of a possible 598 Federal and State politicians have signed — which attests to the savvy political acumen of those 527 who have refused to be duped by this dud Declaration.

Israel Over The Moon With Ban-Ki

[Published 3 August 2010]


Israel is to be applauded for its agreement to participate in the Inquiry announced yesterday by UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki moon into the aborted attempt on 31 May by a flotilla of six ships to break the naval blockade imposed by Israel on the entry of goods and supplies into Gaza.

This Inquiry - first mooted in a statement by the UN Security Council on 1 June - called for :

” a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards"

The attempt by another United Nations organ - the Human Rights Council (UNHRC) - to hijack such an investigation and inflict as much political damage as it could on Israel has now been effectively terminated by the Secretary-General’s announcement.

The UNHRC on 23 June had indicated it would be initiating an investigation - which promised to be biased and far from independent - one that Israel could not possibly co-operate with.

The UNHRC had already prejudged the issues as was clearly evident in the terms of the resolution that it passed:

“to dispatch an independent, international fact-finding mission to investigate violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, resulting from the Israeli attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance;"

Any idea that there might not have been any violations of international law or that the ships might not have been carrying only humanitarian assistance had already been predetermined by the UNHRC in this blatantly worded resolution.

Israel had been effectively hung drawn and quartered by the UNHRC before the members of its Inquiry had even been named.

So far as the UNHRC was concerned it had:

(i) Condemned in the strongest terms the outrageous attack by the Israeli forces against the humanitarian flotilla of ships, which resulted in the killing and injuring of many innocent civilians from different countries;
(ii) Deeply deplored the loss of life of innocent civilians, and expresses its deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims and their families;
(iii) Called upon the occupying Power, Israel, to immediately lift the siege on occupied Gaza and other occupied territories;

without hearing one word from Israel.

This identical pattern of prejudging Israel had been established by the UNHRC when appointing the Goldstone Inquiry into Israel’s invasion of Gaza in December 2008. Israel had no option but to then refuse becoming a sacrificial lamb in such an Inquiry whose outcome had been pre-determined before the Commission had even begun its work and whose Commissioners were totally conflicted by statements they had made before their appointment. Any hope of Israel getting a fair hearing were doomed from the outset.

The UN has proved far more circumspect on this latest occasion and the UNHRC has been sent packing.

Israel’s agreement to now participate in the Secretary-General’s Inquiry - to be co-chaired by New Zealand’s Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Columbia’s Alvaro Uriba with the addition of one representative from Israel and one from Turkey - promises to provide a fair and transparent setting for the determination of the events that lead to the blockade being instituted, the attempts to undermine it and the tragic consequences that followed.

Issues such as the legality of the blockade and its enforcement, provocation, the use of force, disproportionate use of force and acting in self defence will be examined and appropriate judgements made.

The terms of reference are still to be finalised but Sir Jeffrey Palmer has charted an optimistic course stating:

“I can’t say anything of substance on the details of this inquiry or indeed its procedures until I’ve been to New York and discussed the issues with both the Secretary General [Ban Ki-moon] and my colleagues on the inquiry… This is a very sensitive matter. It’s a quasi-judicial inquiry, so it is really very important to maintain a sense of detachment”

Hopefully the details and procedures when released will prove to be fair and balanced and enable Israel and Turkey to appoint representatives to the Committee and allow its deliberations to proceed in an atmosphere of calm. The Inquiry should certainly serve to ease tensions between Israel and Turkey.

Hopes are high that the UN might at last have hit on a path to reducing conflict that will see the last of any flawed and unreliable inquiries such as that conducted by Goldstone.

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has said - following the announcement of the Inquiry:

“Israel has nothing to hide. Quite the opposite: The State of Israel’s national interest is to ensure that the factual truth on the entire raid incident will be known to the world”

Israel’s President - Shimon Peres - is confident Israel will be exonerated.

In an interview with Benny Morris published on 26 July Peres was asked and responded to the following questions:

“Q: About the Turkish flotilla, do you think we acted correctly?

A: We acted correctly, except in terms of explaining what happened.

Q: We killed nine Turks, they killed no Israelis.

A: There were six boats. Only on one — where they came prepared for violence — was there a clash. There was a long delay in broadcasting our explanation. There is no starvation in Gaza and no siege. If Gaza would agree not to rocket us, we would leave the entry points open.

Q: But we prevented items like cardamom from reaching Gaza.

A: OK, we made some mistakes. [But] we made another mistake—we restrained ourselves for eight years and allowed them to shoot thousands of rockets at us until the rage came out at one go [in the IDF assault on Hamas in Gaza in 2008-2009]. Had we done then what we do now, retaliate each time they fire a rocket — there would have been no problem. In the end, it turned out that restraint was a mistake"

Israel will now be given the chance of fully explaining what happened in a forum that will hopefully act responsibly and carefully without resort to reliance on innuendo and unsubstantiated allegations.

The precedent created by this Inquiry could lead to the UN undertaking similar inquiries into future international incidents between conflicting antagonists.

It serves to end the political grandstanding and double standards of organizations such as the UNHRC and the Arab League - whose member countries include some of the worst abusers of human rights and violators of international law among the international community.