Australia’s Labor Party’s recognition of Palestine as a State on March 30 is a welcomed position, though it comes with many caveats.

Pro-Palestinian activists are justified to question the sincerity of the ALP’s stance and whether Australia’s Labor is genuinely prepared to fully adopt this position should they form a government following the 2022 elections.

When I met a seven-year-old girl named Guljumma at a refugee camp in Kabul a dozen years ago, she told me that bombs fell early one morning while she slept at home in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley. With a soft, matter-of-fact voice, Guljumma described what happened. Some people in her family died. She lost an arm.

Troops on the ground didn’t kill Guljumma’s relatives and leave her to live with only one arm. The U.S. air war did.

There’s no good reason to assume the air war in Afghanistan will be over when -- according to President Biden’s announcement on Wednesday -- all U.S. forces will be withdrawn from that country.

Since 1871 the Civil Rights Act has held state and local officials—including police officers—legally liable for damages if their actions violate a citizen’s Constitutional rights. 

That’s until the Supreme Court punched a huge hole in the law, making it now nearly impossible to hold police officers accountable—even for acts that clearly violate the rights of citizens.  Such actions multiplied massively under the war on drugs.

As part of that “war,” state and local police departments, in the 1970s, ramped-up their acquisition of military equipment and adoption of military-style tactics, including the use of Special Weapons and Tactics Teams (SWAT) and no-knock drug raids. 

The timing is curious. Just as police departments began gearing up their war-like tactics, the Supreme Court created a legal defense—known as qualified immunity—in time to protect police officers engaging in such tactics.

By the mid-1990s, according to criminologist Peter Kraska, nearly 90% of U.S. cities with a population over 50,000 had a SWAT team—almost double of what existed in the mid-1980s.

8

Jack Barns punched his cell phone, texting. The intercom on his desk buzzed. He tossed the cell phone onto the desk with a clatter and punched the in-desk phone.

“Yes, Louise?”

“Ms. Sachs and her party are here for their 10 o’clock.”

“Tell ‘em to swing it in,” and they did.

“Come in, let’s sit over here. The view is better. Anyone care for a drink?” Barns said.

“Tequila and a Coke, in separate glasses, for Mr. Smith Wilson,” Louise said without prompting.

“Ms. Sachs will take Zia-Zong tea and Mr. Papilov will have black coffee, correct?” she said, walking to the bar on the side of the room.

Their drinks dispensed, Louise left the room and closed the door behind her. Papilov pulled a flask from within his coat pocket and spiked his coffee.

“Well?” Barns said. “Where do we stand?”

“You said not to poke around PPD yet. Did you make your call?” Sachs asked.

“No, because there’s something else,” Barns said.

The popular narrative of plucky little Israel prevailing over hordes of bloodthirsty Arabs has captured the Western imagination even though it is manifestly false in almost every detail. But Israel’s greatest accomplishment might well be something else, it’s ability to make things disappear. It plausibly all began in June 1967 when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a lightly armed but well identified US naval vessel cruising in international waters under a large American flag. Fighter bombers and torpedo boats sought to sink the ship, destroying the lifeboats so no one would escape. In the engagement, 34 American military personnel were killed and a further 171 wounded, before a heroic defense by the crew managed to save the vessel. President Lyndon Johnson, who said he would rather see the ship sink than embarrass his friend Israel, started a cover-up which has lasted to this day. There has been no legitimate court of inquiry into the attack and when the ship’s captain received a Medal of Honor for his heroism, it was awarded secretly in the Washington Navy Yard rather than openly at the White House.