What did Howard do to deserve a B'nai B'rith
honour?
And why isn't the Sydney Morning Herald telling its readers
about it?
John
Howard is off to Washington,
reported the
Sydney Morning Herald last night. According to this
story, the purpose of the trip was to further cultivate
relations with U.S. President George Bush:
'Mr Howard and Mr Bush will
discuss the future of troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Iran's nuclear program, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and
the growing importance of China and India in formal talks on
Tuesday. The two leaders will meet informally on Sunday
afternoon when Mr Howard will
plant two saplings from the White House garden in the grounds of
the Australian embassy. The trees are a gift from the president
to mark the relationship between the two countries. President
Bush will also host a black-tie dinner in the White House on
Tuesday night - only the seventh such honour he has accorded to
a visiting leader during his two terms of office.'
What the Herald didn't tell Australian readers, but what
the
Australian Jewish News
had no problem informing Australian Jews, is that between his
Sunday and Tuesday appointments with Bush,
Howard will receive 'the
prestigious B'nai B'rith international Presidential Gold Medal
for his "outstanding" support of Israel and the
Jewish people at a ceremony'
in Washington. (NOTE)
I can't imagine why the Herald is ignoring this aspect of
Howard's Washington trip. It's hardly a secret, given that it's
already been reported by an Australian
Jewish newspaper. Actually,
I'm lying - I can imagine it only too well. Thanks to selective
media reporting, it would come as a great surprise to most
Australians to discover that Prime Minister
Howard has performed
'outstanding' services to Israel. Presumably, what the Herald
doesn't want the Australian public to realize - but what
Australian Jews are allowed to know - is who
Howard, along with Bush and
Blair and the other most fervent supporters of the Iraq war - is
really working for. As it's increasingly obvious that the Iraq
war was essentially a war to advance Israeli interests, it's
also increasingly obvious that Howard's support for that war -
over and against the wishes of the Australian people - issues
from Howard's Zionism. (Cynics would probably point out here
that Jewish donors give
something like twenty million dollars to Howard's Liberal party
each year.) Howard has been
notoriously inflexible on Iraq, despite the overwhelming
opposition to the war from ordinary Australians, precisely
because he's not working for Australians - he's working for
Israel.
Although Howard would probably
deserve a highly 'prestigious' B'nai B'rith honour solely on
account of his support for the neocons' diabolical Middle East
misadventures, he has performed numerous other favours for the
Jews over the years. Let's attempt a partial list:
(1) Forced the withdrawal of an invitation to Yasser Arafat from
the then-deputy prime minister, Tim Fisher, to visit Australia
in 1997.
(2) Put in place an extradition treaty with Latvia in order to
enable the extradition of alleged war criminal Konrad Kalejs,
specifically as called upon to do by Australia/Israel
Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)
Director Colin Rubenstein in 2000. (SOURCE)
(3) Has made Australia join the U.S. in the United Nations as
the sole source of opposition to measures that would hold Israel
accountable for its persistent mistreatment of the Palestinians.
As AIJAC Director Rubenstein put it in 2002, 'at the United
Nations under John Howard's
leadership, the Australian government has abstained from or
opposed morally skewered [sic] and sometimes viciously [sic]
anti-Israel resolutions. It's assisted Israel's admission into
the WEOG Group at the United Nations. Australia was right to
stay away from the conference of high-contracting parties to the
Fourth Geneva Convention in December that convened solely for
the purpose of hectoring [sic] and delegitimizing [sic] Israel.
Above all, at the Durban Conference on Racism, which just turned
into a display of the very evils they were supposed to combat,
Australia took a vitally important role in moderating [sic] the
proceedings.' (SOURCE)
(4) Aligned Australia with the neocons' insane and destructive
war on Islam.
(5) Has manipulated Australia in the direction of a society in
which public criticism of Israel is becoming virtually
unthinkable. NB: At the time of writing, an Australian MP, Julia
Irwin, is under attack for having pointed out that there is
effectively in force a 'code of silence' forbidding
parliamentary discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(SOURCE)
In addition, there have also been allegations that the Port
Arthur massacre was actually an Israeli operation: Joe Vialls,
"Special Forces at Port Arthur"
here and Judicial Biz, "Port
Arthur Massacre"
here. Although I can't claim to
have seen any evidence implicating Israel so far (other than the
fact that several key members of the Australian anti-gun lobby
are apparently Jewish), the
massacre, which took place only about nine weeks after he took
power, could well have been a 'baptism of fire' by which
Howard proved his willingness
to sacrifice Australian lives for Israeli interests. If Port
Arthur was a Zionist black op, it is not hard to see that
Howard would have earned the
eternal gratitude of Israel for having covered up the conspiracy
so well and for so long.
But whether the state of Israel is also indebted to
Howard for the Port Arthur
coverup, the fact remains that there is a generous amount of
information already in the public domain on the 'outstanding'
services Howard has been
performing on for Israel for ten years. But if Jews are allowed
to know about it, doesn't the Australian mainstream media have
an obligation to tell the Australian public about it? Why is the
only way an Australian citizen can ever find out what his or her
country's leader is really up to is by dipping occasionally into
the Jewish press, something
that most of us Gentiles would rarely think of doing? Is it
because they are afraid people might asking questions like the
following: if Howard can do so
much for the Jews, how come he doesn't seem to be able to find
it in him to do something for Australians?
NOTE: I can find no information concerning previous recipients
of the B'nai B'rith international Presidential Gold Medal -
which tends to make me wonder how 'prestigious' it can be. In
any case, it is hardly Howard's first such honour - he has a
seemingly endless list of Jewish
plaudits. In 2000, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from
Bar-Ilan University. (Previous recipients included Margeret
Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev.) (SOURCE)
In 2002, he was bestowed 'the American
Jewish Committee's Award for
distinguished public service for his record and that of his
government, for his steadfast alliance with the United States,
its strong support for and close bilateral ties with the state
of Israel and his open and warm relations with Australia's
Jewish community.'
(SOURCE)
In 2004, the American Jewish
Committee awarded him the American [sic] Liberties Medallion.
'Previous recipients of the award include Martin Luther King,
Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, Vaclav Havel, Natan Sharansky,
and Elie Wiesel.' (SOURCE)
And in 2005 [?], he was awarded the Australia-Israel Chamber of
Commerce's highest honour, the Leon Liberman Award for trade.
(SOURCE)
The B'nai B'rith medal looks like merely the capstone to a
period in which Jewish
organisations have thanked Howard
at every opportunity for his ten years of devoted service to
Israel.