The UN General Assembly’s decolonization committee, which includes all 193 member states, on Friday 15th November 2019 adopted eight resolutions condemning Israel’s occupation and violations against the Palestinians, its repressive measures against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, renewed the mandate of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and renewed the mandate of a UN special committee to investigate Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people. Australia unlike all European countries, New Zealand and the overwhelming countries around the world, supported only one resolution, opposed two and abstained on five. Below are the votes and the resolutions.
Following are the resolutions and the full votes:
1 “Assistance to Palestine refugees” [A/C.4/74/L.10]: Adopted by a vote of 170 – 2 – 7 (Australia voted yes)
2. “Persons displaced as a result of the June 1967 and subsequent hostilities” [A/C.4/74/L.11]: Adopted by a vote of 162 – 6 – 9 (Australia Abstained)
3. “Operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East” [A/C.4/74/L.12]: Adopted by a vote of 167 – 5 – 7
(Australia Abstained)
4. “Palestine refugees’ properties and their revenues” [A/C.4/74/L.13]: Adopted by a vote of 162 – 6 – 9 (Australia Abstained)
5. “Work of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories” [A/C.4/74/L.14]: Adopted by a vote of 82 – 11 – 78 (Australia voted against)
6. “Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan” [A/C.4/74/L.15]: Adopted by a vote of 156 – 6 – 15
(Australia Abstained)
7 “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including EastJerusalem” [A/C.4/74/L.16]: Adopted by a vote of 154 – 8 – 14 (Australia voted against)
8 “The occupied Syrian Golan” [A/C.4/74/L.17]: Adopted by a vote of 155 – 2 – 19 (Australia Abstained)
Ali Kazak is a former Palestinian ambassador and head of delegation to Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific region. He is an expert in Australian-Arab relations and affairs, and author of “Australia and the Arabs”. (In Arabic).
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4 responses to “ALI KAZAK. The UN exposes Australia’s shameful votes on the Israeli occupation.”
The actions of a vassal state, voting as directed
5. “Work of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories” [A/C.4/74/L.14]: Adopted by a vote of 82 – 11 – 78 (Australia voted against)
So we see yet another vote made as a slave state of the USA and Israel, a vote totally unrepresentative of what has always been required by the Australian people, but voted in by a pathetic government on the demands of their sponsors, the Melbourne-based Jewish pressure group, AIJAC.
In the same week, against that corrupt vote we saw the The European Court of Justice ruling two days ago that goods from Israeli colonies on occupied Palestinian land must be labeled as originating from settlements, a judgment is a severe blow to Israel’s efforts to legitimise its colonies in the occupied West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights – the construction of which is a war crime.
The court, the highest judicial authority for interpreting EU law, stated that labelling settlement goods is mandatory “in order to prevent consumers from being misled as to the fact that the State of Israel is present in the territories concerned as an occupying power and not as a sovereign entity.” Quoted from yesterday’s P & I.
And Israel is the same country that controls every decision that is made in the USA and now by association, Australia.
But this court was in Europe, not Australia. Here, based on the corruption and daily influence from Melbourne, we have seen Ministers like Julie Bishop and the current incumbent, Marise Payne, both internationally recognised as US and Israeli sycophants, bow down to this lobby and humiliate Australia year after year, being quite often the only other vote against progressive and honest resolutions in the UN to remove a hated military occupier from stolen land. Never a slight hesitation, just doing what they are told. In the background sits an over-paid collection of LNP members and a irrelevant and timid (by defeat) Labor “opposition”. Not a word from the parliamentary sheep. Not a single word about justice, inhumanity and truth making it the world’s #1 world disgrace for over fifty years.
Has Australia ever degenerated to this level of irrelevance before?
Such a shameful period for Australia on the International stage of human rights (yet there’s Marise Payne finger pointing at China – along with that suppository of wisdom Tony Abbott – when will he ever shut up?) I am just returned from a visit to the three Trans-Caucasus countries of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia – small nations – the bridge between Europe and Asia – the literal crossroads of history – well aware of invasions and subjugation’s and cultural dispossession over the millennia – and so they fully supported the humanity of the rights of Palestinians in these resolutions. Would that we – with our people made up of those fleeing persecution and wars in their own lands over the past century plus (and a supporter of the Armenians during their period of massacres and displacement – cultural and human genocide by the Ottoman Turks into the early 1920s) could have representatives not guided by US geo-political and hegemonic interest – and simply take a human rights-0based approach, But that would seriously call into question our inhumane practice against asylum-seekers, Indigenous-First Nations Australians and even those poor benighted women and children in Syrian border refugee camps – let alone the way this country treats New Zrealanderrs in our midst. I am praying for the rise of a Jacinda ARDERN NZ Prime Minister type of leader in Australia. And being either very sotto voce abroad when identifying myself as Australian (looking for the slightest hint of reproach – similar to that undergone by US citizens abroad back in the 1970s, and 1980s – and indeed still – sadly – for most of those abroad nowadays – generally speaking the better sort – travellers – aware and learning) or else explaining the “not in my name” case – at which point most people in other lands identify their familiarity with what is going on here – to be quite frank. A lot of response to the announcement of one’s nationality is blandness-masking-awareness. That’s my own response – trying to retain my awareness that nationality is not necessarily synonymous with the government policy of that land!
It’s interesting that Micronesia and Marshall Islands always votes per the US (except on the Golan Heights resolution where they abstained). Do these countries actually think independently or simply follow whatever the US does?
If global democracy is to work, UN member states ought to think independently, reflect objectively on the merits of a particular resolution, and vote responsibly! Just saying.