25-05-2010, 05:50 AM
Magda Hassan Wrote:I presume it is the Lowry Institute that Sheridan is funded by? This move has taken me by surprise. They've grown a pair at last! The opposition are saying it is an 'over reaction' :banghead: and that there is no proof. :argh: There's plenty but some do not want to see it.
Yes Magda, that odious individual Julie Bishop has been chosen by the opposition to vent their outrage at their Zionist masters being punished.
Watch the media go for Rudd's head now. He's already being described as worse than Whitlam, who of course was blamed for every ill under the sun back in the 70's.
There's a bit of deja vu here. Whitlam's Government was the victim of the OPEC oil embargo, which caused petrol to go through the roof, dragging the price of everything else up with it. This was of course the OPEC response to Israel's Yom Kippur war of 1973.
Whitlam's big mistake was his criticism of Israel after that war and his Government's support of UN resolutions condemning Israel's behaviour towards the Palestinians. What followed was a media firestorm aimed at Whitlam which was unparalleled in Australian politics, until now.
If you publicly criticise Israel, you are finished in politics. This holds true like a mathematical equation in western 'democracies'.
Most people are too stupid to realise that they regard us as nothing more than their slaves:
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowP..._Relations
Quote:It is generally agreed that, despite a solidly pro-Israeli record up until that point, the election of an ALP government under Gough Whitlam (December 1972-November. 1975) marked a sharp departure in Australian policy toward Israel and Arab-Israeli issues. The Middle East was not a matter of controversy during the campaign and did not feature in the platform of either major party. Whitlam, speaking to Jewish gatherings during the lead-up to the campaign, emphasized his fraternal ties with the ruling Israeli Labor Party and friendship with leaders such as Golda Meir and Yigal Allon, and received a majority of Jewish support.[52]
In office, however, the Whitlam government moved farther from the United States and closer in its foreign policy to the nonaligned movement, where condemnation of Israel was the norm. Although Whitlam described this policy as "even-handedness and neutrality,"[53] such neutrality was a far cry from the sort also proclaimed by his conservative predecessors.
The effects of this new policy became most apparent during the 1973 Yom Kippur War when Australia failed to condemn either the Egyptian and Syrian attacks that launched it or the Soviet airlift of arms supplies to the Arab combatants. However, once the United States began to airlift arms and supplies to Israel, the Australian UN representative, on instructions from Canberra, condemned both airlifts with a particular emphasis on America's.[54] Even before this, there had been repeated one-sided condemnations by Australia in the United Nations of all Israeli reprisals for terrorist and cross-border attacks, but silence about anti-Israeli aggressions.[55]
In a meeting with predominantly ALP-affiliated Jews called to clear the air, Whitlam apparently became angered by hostile questioning. He equated Israeli responses with terrorism, said an Israeli reprisal raid on a PLO base in Lebanon had been "not only a mistake, but a crime," and cited the growing Australian Arab community becoming "more articulate" as a reason to change Australian policy.[56] Most controversially, he referred to those present as "You people"; asked about the failure to condemn the Arab attacks that had launched the war, he responded: "You people should realise that there is a large Christian Arab community in this country."[57]
Under Whitlam, Australia also voted for a resolution equating Zionism with racism at a UN women's conference in Mexico, though it voted against the equivalent resolution in the UN General Assembly.[58] Whitlam later approved the establishment of a PLO liaison office in Canberra and became embroiled in scandals involving the acceptance of Arab loans to Australia and the ALP. In the 1974 Khemlani affair, Australia sought to borrow $4 billion from dubious Arab sources, repayable as a lump sum after twenty years.[59] Even more controversially, during the 1975 election campaign Whitlam secretly approved a scheme to obtain a substantial sum, often said to be $500,000, from the Iraqi Baath Party to help fund ALP campaign expenses.[60] It later emerged that the man at the center of the Iraqi loans affair, ALP activist Bill Hartley, had also written to Yasser Arafat seeking PLO funds for the party.[61] Approaches for funds also were reportedly made to Saudi Arabia.[62]
Following his highly controversial dismissal by the governor-general and subsequent loss of an election in 1975, Whitlam continued to maintain that his stances were justified by the existence of the growing Arab community in Australia.[63] He also criticized Australian Jewish leaders for having "blackmailed" him, and implied that Israel dominated U.S. foreign policy and that the international media was monolithically pro-Israeli.[64]