Danby responds to Coulton’s speech in parliament
The National Party Deputy Whip, Mark Coulton has joined pro-Palestinian lobby according to Federal Labor MP Michael Danby.
Last week in Parliament he claims he saw the “effect of 600,000 illegal settlers living on Palestinian land”, when visiting “Palestine”, as the leader of an unofficial delegation!
Coulton’s remarks to Parliament were a report on his programme with other MPs with the Australian Palestinian Network on a trip that spent a week on the West Bank. Their program focused on the Palestinian Authority and its institutions. The delegation spent a minimal time in Israel, apparently visiting Jerusalem for a few hours, meeting no mainstream Israelis.
“They got none of the range of Israel’s opinion nor visited anywhere in Israel apart from a visit to Arab Members of the Knesset. Now he even denounces roads connecting these settlements back to Israel”, Michael Danby said in response to his speech
Olmert’s plan
Mark Coulton MP, a National Party representative from the rural seat of Parkes in NSW, bemoaned “Palestinian hosts that did not have access to those roads that were only for the Jewish settlers”. (In fact some roads are divided for security purposes but are open to all Israeli drivers, which includes the 20% of Israeli’s that are Israeli Arabs. There are no roads for “Jews only” Michael Danby pointed out.)
Mr Coulton, a farmer, says he “witnessed farmers who didn’t have access to some of their fields because there happened to have been a 700-kilometre dividing wall between their home and their farm.” He went on to talk of days when“…access was only for a very short period of time,… because of various reasons”. Coulton did not elaborate what those “various reasons” were.
“It is difficult to overstate the inherent and overall ignorance of this speech” Michael Danby said.
“All of the three previous Israeli peace offers for a two state solution which were refused by the Palestinians seem to have passed entirely over Coulton’s head.”
“Over a thousand people were killed before the security fence was built. This seems to have also passed over his head, and it was the original purpose that constituted the “various reasons” for building the barrier. It is surprising that this does not appear to have occurred to Coulton or his ill-informed group”.
“The fence has saved hundreds of lives of Israeli civilians since it was built” Danby said.
“It is amazing that a right wing party MP in the Australian Parliament could have so little understanding of the indivisibility of opposing jihadist terrorism” Danby said.
“I wonder what his rural and regional constituents would think of his hanging around with an organisation that spends nearly a third of its budget on salaries for Palestinian terrorists who are rewarded for killing innocent civilians. Imagine if taxpayers in Burke, Dubbo, West Wyalong and Parkes were forced to pay pensions to the family of the terrorist who shot and killed the police accountant in Parramatta. That is the appropriate parallel” Danby said.
“His inability to understand the difference between public roads and roads built for security purposes is quite alarming. Unlike the government of Norway which had demanded a refund for its foreign aid, he seems to have said nothing about women’s centres built to honour Dalal Mughrabi who hijacked a bus and killed 38 civilians and wounded over 70 in the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre.” Danby said
“Perhaps if he’d taken the time to speak to people from both sides of the debate, and spent some time in Israel he would not sound quite so ignorant.” Michael Danby concluded.
The following is the full text of Mark Coulton’s speech:
“I’d like to speak about my recent experiences in Palestine. I will say from the outset that I have always been a strong fan and very impressed with the story of Israel, from what I’ve seen, and the struggle that the Jewish people had to find a home and start the state in Israel. In recent times, I have been made aware of the struggle of the Palestinian people and the effect that 50 years of occupation, since the 1967 war, has had on the Palestinian people.
Mark Coulton
Recently, in April, I was privileged to lead an unofficial delegation from this parliament to Palestine. It was a bipartisan delegation, and it included my good friend and colleague here the member for Flynn, Mr O’Dowd. Spending eight days in Palestine—staying in Ramallah and living with the Palestinian people with none of the special privileges of being part of an official delegation—gave me a small insight into the daily struggles of the Palestinian people. The reason I’m speaking here tonight is that I am concerned that the Palestinian issue might become a political one in this country. The Greens have a strong position on that. I know the Labor Party is struggling at the moment with a position on Palestine, with strong views on either side. As a member of the National Party, with my colleague here, the member for Flynn, I don’t believe the people of Palestine will be served if this becomes a party political issue in Australia.
I have heard speeches here in support of Israel, but I think it’s important to note that until you actually go and live and stay with these people and understand the deprivation of liberty that goes with being a Palestinian on the West Bank, it’s very hard to comprehend. On a daily basis we not only witnessed but experienced the indignity of going through checkpoints at random at gunpoint. We witnessed people being held up from going to work and from going about their daily activities. We witnessed farmers who didn’t have access to some of their fields because there happened to have been a 700-kilometre dividing wall between their home and their farm. On some days the access was only for a very short period of time, morning and night, and for days at a time, because of various reasons, the access was denied completely. As someone with a farming background, I understand the frustrations and the difficulties a farmer would have in not having control of and access to your lands in a timely manner.
Not only that but we also witnessed the effect of 600,000 illegal settlers living on Palestinian land. There was the demolition of Palestinian houses to allow these settlements to go through. There are roads connecting these settlements back to Israel that can only be driven on by Israeli citizens. There is the indignity of going on a journey that would take 20 minutes by a direct route but having to take two hours because the Palestinian hosts that we had did not have access to those roads that were only for the Jewish settlers.
This is not an anti-Israel speech. I’m reflecting on what I have witnessed and my concern for the future of this area. I believe it’s in the interest of the Israeli people to have a resolution for this. We’ve seen, in other parts of the world where an entire section of the society is repressed and has no hope for the future, how that can lead to a disaster. This is not something that is just coming from me and a few supporters of Palestine in this country. There are two United Nations resolutions that have been passed, criticising and condemning these illegal settlements and demanding that they be removed, which have just been ignored.
This morning, as a matter of fact, I saw on social media a YouTube clip with the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Netanyahu, asking the rhetorical question: ‘Why are Palestinian children taught to hate?’ And that’s probably something that I think we saw on both sides: that the level of distrust and hatred on both sides, if a resolution cannot be reached soon, will nearly be irrevocable.
The figures are that, in that area, basically 50 per cent of the population are Israelis and 50 per cent are Palestinians. Australia supports a two-state solution and, indeed, from our conversations with the Palestinian Authority, that is what they’re aiming for. I personally am wondering how a two-state solution will possibly work. There is the incursion of the Israeli settlements into those areas, but not only that. In certain areas of the West Bank that are categorised as area C, which is a sort of joint ownership, all the prime farming land and indeed all the water supply is controlled by Israel. We saw the Palestinian farmers removed to the inferior countryside and being starved economically because of that dislocation from their area. We saw in the city of Hebron that settlers have just taken over the centre of the town and now, with the support of the Israeli army, at gunpoint have taken over several city blocks in that area.
So what we have at the moment is basically one state. The West Bank and Israel have all been run by Israel, with an apartheid rule. We’ve seen the outrage of the world, and we saw the downfall of that system in South Africa. We need to make sure that that’s not repeated in this area.
One of the most chilling conversations that I had was with a member of the Palestinian Authority. He said something that I’d actually been thinking, and that is: the young people who have been removed from opportunity, some of them quite well educated, would be vulnerable for radicalisation from outside forces. If that happens, if the Palestinian youth graduate from throwing rocks at the Israeli army and end up being armed and trained by some terrorist force, we are going to see a level of destruction that we could possibly not tolerate.
So my request is that Australia lends its strong support to a resolution of the issue with the occupation of Palestine and the West Bank. I know this is not a simple issue. I know it’s in the interests of Israel to have a resolution to this. I can’t imagine that Israel would want to be ruling that area from the point of a gun for another 50 years. If that happens, I shudder to think what the outcome of that will be. There are many Palestinians who have migrated to Australia. I have some in my electorate. They have great connections back to that area. My strong wish is that as a country, in a bipartisan way, we can put pressure on Israel and we can lend support to the peace process so that we can avert what inevitably will be a large amount of bloodshed if nothing happens.”
ADRIAN jackson, above, wrote -” After all the Jews, Muslims and Christians who make most of the population are basically the same people with the same one God so what is all the fuss about.”
WRONG. Jews (Hebrews), the few Aramaic Christians (with Armenians and others thrown in, from all over), and the Arab (and Arabised) Muslims are NOT ‘the same people” in any meaningful sense of the word. And as for ‘the same one God’, that is a nonsense. Jews and Christians, yes, pretty much; Muslims, NO. Read Mark Durie, “Which God?” – he shows, very clearly, what any number of others, down the years (not least, the great Jewish philosopher and theologian, Moses ben Maimon) have also understood – that the ‘god’ of Islam is not merely *different* from the Biblical God, Ha-Shem, but… *antithetical*, fundamentally opposed, indeed, hostile. Everything that YHWH is, Allah is not.
“For 1500 years after the Romans left they all lived together without any serious problem with the Ottoman Empire running the show quite well for hundreds of years before WW1.”
Read James Parkes and get a clue. Islam was not in *existence* until the 6th century AD; between AD 135 and the 7th century Muslim Arab invasion and occupation the land of Israel was essentially ruled by Rome and then by Rome’s successor, Christian Byzantium. Jews were a subjugated minority in Byzantium, but still fared better under Byzantine rule than they *or* the Christians *or* the Samaritans did when they were forced into the near-slave status of Dhimmis under the Muslim boot. For what it is to be a Dhimmi, read 1/ Bat Yeor, “The Dhimmi” and “The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam” and 2/ Mark Durie, “The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom”. To be a dhimmi is to be Abused, systematically, continually, and cruelly, in every imaginable way: spiritually, psychologically, economically, often sexually, and to be in perpetual fear for your life. THAT is what Jews, and Christians, and Samaritans, endured, under Muslim rule, whether Arab, Seljuk Turk, Mamluk, or Ottoman Turk. Humiliated, degraded, exploited, and in constant physical peril, at the mercy of the capricious Muslim mob and the capricious Muslim despot and the rabid ‘preacher’ in the mosque who at any minute might unloose the mob upon you. Like living at the bottom of a predator pit. Buying your life… sort of.. by paying exorbitant ‘protection’ money aka jizya. No sane human being, once they fully understand what the dhimma system did to its victims, would *ever* dare to praise it.
Dr McCosker, Mr Jackson’s posts indicate a pattern of regarding facts as an inconvenience, with myth, fiction and fabrication greatly to be preferred.
Looking at the map the pockets of Israeli and Palestinian land are unworkable. Some of the yellow areas could be cut off with a few small territorial claims by the blue areas.
One option is to have partition like in India and Pakistan. without the blood shed, to distinct whole areas instead of a patch work of enclaves.
Another option is call the whole area a new name as one country with all resident equal citizen in all respects. This will see similar numbers of each major group represented in the parliament. Other educated nations are able to have a multicultural population.
After all the Jews, Muslims and Christians who make most of the population are basically the same people with the same one God so what is all the fuss about.
For 1500 years after the Romans left they all lived together without any serious problem with the Ottoman Empire running the show quite well for hundreds of years before WW1.
You have to ask yourself why would a couple of Australian farmers, who live thousands of kilometres from the Middle East, and who are struggling with high energy prices, floods, droughts, bushfires, debt, poor harvests and the same-sex marriage issue, leave their farms and traipse off to the “Palestinian” Arab Terrorist Two-state Refuser ‘Authority’; and, once there, to imbibe PalProp as voraciously as an Aussie farmer imbibes cold ones on a scorching summer’s day.
Then on their return, regurgitate the trash in the august chamber of Australia’s national parliament.
Don’t tell me it’s altruism or a lust for peace in the Middle East: the evidence would not support that fatuous assertion.
It’s an anti-Israel’s existence lobby, not a “pro-Palestinian lobby.”
It subscribes to the longstanding Palestinian Arab plan for the phased destruction of the national self-determination of Israel, a member of the U.N.
That phased plan is now supported also by various powerful sinister elements within the Australian Labor Party.
The plan explicitly envisages forcing Israel to relinquish security control over Judea and Samaria, which would then be established as a base for the final blow, which Israel’s enemies in the West, including those in Australia, hope for.
The steadfast adherence to the final solution which that plan foresees was confirmed by the late Egyptian/Plaestinian Arab fuhrer, Yasser Arafat, in Johannesburg shortly after he solemnly and deceitfully signed on to the Oslo Accords “peace process.”
Now that this Country Party clique has signed on to the Arafat agenda, who gives a tinker’s curse about their “admiration” for Israel’s achievements: they are in league with the international ideology that aims to destroy those achievements.
The Country Party in Australia was renames the National Party a few decades ago.
now send him for the mirror image trip to israel
Australian parliamentary delegation from the Commonwealth and the various State Parliaments visit Israel annually and these visits are reported in J Wire and the AJN. Delegations also wrote a report of their visits too.
The pro Palestine parliamentary delegation was visiting Palestine not Israel and were probably only in Israel as that is where the aerodrome is located.
Remember the internationally funded aerodrome in Gaza was bombed by Israel soon after it was built decades ago.
As far back as WW2 Gaza had an aerodrome that was used by 2nd AIF.