Israeli War Criminal Welcomed in Australia

The news that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in Australia and was welcomed by the honourable members of our parliament came as somewhat of a shock. It is one thing to have allowed a man on corruption charges as well as facing war crimes indictments into Australia at all; it is another thing that he was listed as a distinguished guest in Hansard – the official record of parliamentary proceedings – and received a resounding "hear, hear" from our elected representatives.

This is, after all, the man who approved the genocidal attack on the 1.5 million imprisoned and defenceless Palestinians in Gaza less than a year ago. This is the same attack that was the subject of numerous enquiries, not least the UN fact-finding mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone, which found that "the operations were carefully planned . . . and designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population . . . [and] that the serious violations of International Humanitarian Law recounted in this report fall within the subject-matter jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC)." With further investigations, these violations may well amount to "war crimes and "crimes against humanity".'

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