Australia as Zionist-Occupied Territory
Photograph Source: מעין שרון – CC BY 2.5
Australia has always been susceptible to the Zionist siren song.
H. V. Evatt was a brilliant lawyer and High Court of Australia judge (at 36, the youngest appointee ever). He was also joint Foreign Affairs Minister and Attorney-General in successive Labor governments, 1941-49. However, Evatt moonlighted as Chair of the UN Special Committee on Palestine in 1947. In that capacity, through crude partisan means (while claiming otherwise), he legitimized the preposterous Resolution 181 (II) of November 1947 for the partition of Palestine – that Resolution itself the product of corrupt threats to voting members. Caroline Graham, sometime journalist and academic, has re-told the Evatt story. Graham cites Evatt’s contemporary – equally reputable lawyer, Pakistani delegate Muhammad Zafrulla Khan – who took umbrage at Evatt’s blocking of a submission of the partition plan to the recently empowered International Court of Justice. For Khan, this was “a confession that the General Assembly is determined to make recommendations in a certain direction, not because these recommendations are in accord with principles of international fairness and justice.” Yet Evatt is feted for his significant role in using UN auspices to legitimize the state of Israel then being forged by terrorist means.
Another ‘bonding’ of Australia to Israel was in the attraction of elements of the Australian union movement for Histadrut. Histadrut was not and is not a conventional peak union federation. The British anti-Zionist Tony Greenstein has succinctly captured (2009) the historical character and role of Histadrut. Formed in 1920, it was the economic and industrial center of the Zionist enterprise in Mandatory Palestine, bonded with the Haganah militia and the Jewish Agency as political wing, and subsequently a cornerstone of the economy of the apartheid Israeli state. Some Greenstein quotes: ‘a great colonizing agency’; ‘From its inception it excluded Arab labor and thus rejected worker solidarity in favor of national exclusivism’; ‘actively collaborating with the South African state’. After 1970, Histadrut allied with the military to institutionalize the exploitation of Palestine workers from the Occupied Territories, with Palestinian workers forced to financially contribute to their own exploitation without benefits. Australia might be in the antipodes but how could its union leaders be so ill-informed on Histadrut’s character?
If larger-than-life Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke (1983-91) was a loyal friend of the US, he became fanatically pro-Israel. Raised in a fundamentalist Christian household envisaging Israel as end times eschatology, Hawke early was close friends in the labour movement with left-wing Zionist Jews working to aid Jewish refugees. Personal friendships drew him closer to the mainstream Zionist lobby from which he became a front man for its cause, oblivious to the contemporaneous slaughter of Palestinians and destruction of their livelihoods.
During the 1970s, Hawke was omnipresent – contemporaneously President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and President of the Australian Labor Party (and Australian go-between at the ILO), Hawke was enraptured by Histadrut’s multi-pronged activities and sought to replicate elements by the formation of multiple joint business ventures between the ACTU and Jewish businessmen and even with Histadrut directly.
Hawke made innumerable trips to Israel, becoming honorary ambassador and feted, not least for his intercession in the Soviet Union (through a Russian unionist counterpart) for the right of Soviet Jewry to emigrate. He was constantly attempting to overturn the ‘balanced’ (or, rarely, pro-Palestinian) stance of his ACTU and Labor Party peers. Finally, after being elected to Parliament in 1979 and becoming Party leader in 1982, elected as Labor Prime Minister in March 1983 he puts his pro-Israel stamp on the government itself.
In November 1975, The UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 (dependent on the USSR, Soviet satellites, Arab states and non-aligned nations), determining that ‘Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination’ – which it is. Chaim Herzog, Israel’s UN Ambassador (1975-78), father of a certain Isaac Herzog, was apoplectic. On 23 October 1986, Hawke moved a motion in Parliament to rescind Resolution 3379, then taken up globally by opposing forces. (Resolution 3379 was rescinded belatedly in 1991, after the collapse of the USSR.) The move was reinforced in Australia when, in November 1986, Hawke invited and entertained the same Chaim Herzog, becomes Israeli President (1983-93). This was a successful PR stunt. Only in his dotage did Hawke step back partially from his pathological devotion.
(From L-R) Former Australian treasurer Wayne Swan [Labor], chair of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) Jeremy Liebler, former Australian prime minister John Howard [Liberal], Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer [Liberal], former Australian communications minister Stephen Conroy [Labor], former Australian defense minister Brendan Nelson [Liberal], Ginette Searle ZFA Executive and Australian Ambassador Chris Cannan meet in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on October 28, 2019. (Amos Ben Gershom/PMO) [A bipartisan tugging of the forelock, visit organized by the Zionist Federation of Australia]
Julia Gillard, pro-Israel Labor Prime Minister (2010-13) employed US expatriate Bruce Wolpe as her sometime chief of staff where he also doubled as her direct liaison with Zionist Jewish community leaders (vide Bob Carr’s 2014 Diary of a Foreign Minister).
Representative of the Australian Liberal Party’s toadyism was then Foreign Minister (and lawyer) Julie Bishop’s visit to Israel in January 2014 during which she expressed to find no illegality in Israel’s increasing settlement population in the Occupied Territories, defying the transparency of international law. Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison (2018-22, possibly the most irresponsible and incompetent Australian Prime Minister ever) cynically followed President Trump’s lead in promising to move the Australian embassy to Jerusalem (calling it ‘West Jerusalem’, but Israel considered it a positive move), before being forced to retract on the idea.
Australia’s voting record in the United Nations with respect to Israel has been abysmal, generally tied in with the other colony Canada and a handful of Pacific Island satellite statelets. James O’Neill again elaborates (December 2020).
In office from May 2022, the Labor Party’s Anthony Albanese and his Foreign Minister Penny Wong did nothing after Israel began the mass murder and demolition of Gaza after the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023. ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ – well, as an apartheid state long committed to ethnic cleansing, no it doesn’t. ‘We support a two-state solution’. Given that the words are not accompanied by appropriate action, Labor de facto supports the ongoing ethnic cleansing (now genocide in Gaza) of apartheid Israel.
In January 2024, the Labor government (as with some other countries) suspended aid commitments to the UNRWA on Israeli claims that the UNRWA was infested with Hamas operatives. Israeli authorities lie as a matter of principle, but Australian authorities have yet to twig to it. Then in March 2024 (and in the other lapdog countries), UNRWA funding resumed without these diligent countries admitting that they had been conned.
Israel has long disdained the presence of UNRWA on Gazan soil, giving a semblance of sustenance against the relentless Israeli depredations. Then in January 2026, the Israelis dismantled UNRWA premises in East Jerusalem. UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese decried the act. Anthony Albanese (definitely no relation) looked elsewhere.
In December 2024 the Albanese government, atypically, put its head above the parapet and voted with over 150 countries (this time with the equally unreliable Canada, the UK and New Zealand on board – so that’s all right then) on two resolutions: for an ‘immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire’ in Gaza and in support of the work of the UNRWA (in which Israel is rightly accused .of ‘a campaign of misinformation’). However, the Australian representative maintained its puppy dog sanctimonious mentality in regretting that the first resolution did not include a condemnation of the ‘terrorist’ actions of the ‘terrorist’ group that is Hamas. For this rare show of ‘courage’, the government was criticised by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), one of Israel’s prime local fifth columns, and the shameless Coalition Opposition. Mass murderer Netanyahu soon chimed in to blame Labor’s vote on a subsequent firebombing of the orthodox Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne.
In September 2025, the Albanese government acquired another smidgeon of courage in voting at the UN to recognise the ‘independent and sovereign state of Palestine’. Merely a smidgeon, as Australia would have been out on a limb if it had not followed fellow waverers France, Canada and the UK belatedly on a more principled path. Mass Murderer Netanyahu responded immediately, claiming that the vote was a product of the government catering to electoral considerations (i.e. Muslim voters), that there will never be a ‘terrorist state’ on Israel’s borders (Israel has yet to define them as they are ever-expandable) and that settlements expansion will continue apace. Netanyahu shows the world who’s boss.
Comes the 14 December 2025 Bondi massacre and Albanese has fallen back into line. New South Wales State Labor Premier Chris Minns never left it. Both Minns and Albanese have ditched any self-respect by wearing kippahs at Jewish gatherings.
Meanwhile ECAJ’s co-CEO Alex Rychin (I see no genocide) decides to invite Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Australia. Albanese readily succumbs, legitimizes the outrage, and instructs the Governor-General Sam Mostyn to formalize the invitation. Mostyn should have declined, counselled Albanese against this rash move guaranteed to generate disruption and left Albanese to handle the evident anomaly.
Herzog duly arrives in Australia and readily confirms the foresight of his detractors. He spends the proverbial two minutes sympathizing with Bondi victim families and survivors. The bulk of the time he spends deflecting responsibility from Israel for the rise of ‘antisemitism’ and criticizing protestors for attempting to ‘delegitimise’ Israel. The delegitimization of Israel has been well handled by Israel’s leaders since its establishment through terrorism in May 1948.
Shockingly, Herzog was taken to the Jewish Moriah College in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs where he was paraded amongst ranks of vulnerable children. This is the same school where children seemingly went hysterical at the visit in February 2017 of mass murderer Benjamin Netanyahu. Then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (and his wife) basked in the limelight of Netanyahu’s presence in Turnbull’s own electorate where resides Sydney’s most substantial Jewish population. Herzog’s father Chaim pulled a comparable stunt in visiting Melbourne’s Mount Scopus college in 1986.
Some commentators muddy the waters by claiming that Herzog is ‘merely’ the titular head of the Israeli state and bears no responsibility for the actions of successive Israeli governments which might ‘possibly’ be on the nose. Herzog is an integral and defiant component of the Israeli killing and ethnic cleansing machine. Protestors at the 10 February Sydney Town Hall demonstration against the Herzog visit chanted “From the river to the sea, Herzog to the ICC.” Quite.
The ongoing official tolerance of apartheid Israel in Australia is grotesque, obscene. The Albanese government expels the Iranian ambassador on the basis of Mossad ‘intelligence’ (Iran’s IRGC supposedly being behind several ‘antisemitic’ acts) yet refrains from closing down the Israeli embassy. Materiel for Israel’s war machine (especially parts for Israel’s F-35 contingent) continue to be exported from Australia.
The once student radical Anthony Albanese has led his government and the Labor Party into total capitulation. At the Sydney anti-Herzog protest, Greens Party Senator Mehreen Faruqi claimed that “never even in my wildest nightmares would I have thought that we would reach this level of depravity and immorality”. Quite again.
Gareth Evans, sometime Labor Foreign Minister (1988-96) and would-be international player, describes Australia as a middle power. No, Australia is a non-power, by the long-term auto-immiseration of its potential capacities.
Rather, Australia is a vassal state. There is no indication that this status is going to be transcended in the near future.
How Australia’s Tobacco Excise Produced Crime
Prohibitive Puffing
The cutting of pleasures, the trimming of delights and telling people how they can enjoy life, is the sort of thing that will be tolerated, up to a point. Otherwise liberal countries do suffer moral convulsions, be it about sex, drug taking, smoking and boozing. Regulations and laws are inevitably passed, much of it tolerated. But instead of addressing the vice in question, invigilating rule makers and bureaucratic needlers often end up creating something worse. That’s when questions start being asked.
The demon tobacco is particularly relevant here. While tobacco companies deserve their satanic reputations for ruining health, knowingly denying medical science and encouraging addiction, governments and state authorities have also capitalised. The smoker, in effect, has become a unique exploited species, derided by the moralists for taking to the puff and polluting sacred air, seduced into addiction, and having the wallet raided by the severe excises levied upon the product.
The relentless battle against tobacco consumption has had a curious turn of late in a country which counts itself one of the most successful in restricting it. Over five decades ago, the Marlboro Man vanished from Australian billboards and was nowhere to be seen on television. An aggressive health campaign, accompanied by images of graphic savagery and brutal steep rises in the tobacco excise, accounted for a decline in consumption. (From 2013, the Commonwealth legislated 12.5% annual increases, followed by further rises in the excise.)
In recent years, however, a few problems have emerged. In 2025, the revenue model that the Commonwealth had relied upon was no longer providing expected returns. Legal cigarette and tobacco sales had fallen by 29% in the year through to September. The Australian Tax Office, in calculations made for 2023-24, estimated a net loss of A$3 billion.
Economist John Quiggin explains this decline with admirable clarity: “The short answer is that, over the past decade or so, the tobacco excise has been steadily increased to the point where there are big profits to be made from dodging the tax.” The Australian Financial Review, with a dash of cynicism, also noted that the unquestionable harm caused by smoking had “given successive governments social license to ratchet up taxes on tobacco products for decades while enjoying the accompanying budget bonanza.”
A paper by the conservative Centre for Independent Studies published in November last year argues that a misalignment of priorities has emerged in the policy of taxing tobacco consumption. The Commonwealth, in the main, had been “rewarded for over-taxing while states and local communities bear the health, policing, and insurance costs of the disorder that results.”
Punishing excises have, effectively, encouraged smokers to shop elsewhere. The number of tobacconists and innocuous convenience stores have proliferated, profiting from under-the-counter sales of untaxed tobacco with plain packaging and illegal vapes. The variation of price between a legal pack of 20 cigarettes (about A$50) and one available at such stores (say A$16), should make policy makers blush. The onus has fallen to the States to try to punish infringements, something they have been doing with a certain degree of leniency. To this can be added a throbbing surge in violent crime, thriving criminal syndicates and, if any concession to abject failure was needed, an increase in smoking rates.
In the face of such a collapse in policy, government wiseacres and health advocates remain stubborn to any change on taxing tobacco. Terry Selvin, chief executive of the Public Health Association, sees no reason why the tobacco lobby should be placated, placing the stress, as all fundamentalists on controlling behaviour do, on stiffer regulations. “I think it’s perfectly legitimate for the current excise rate to remain at its current level to allow time for proper enforcement to be put [in] place.” The Australian treasurer Jim Chalmers and the federal health minister, Mark Butler, have both refused to lower the excise. This is despite Butler’s admission in September last year about instances of “violence and arson taking place as rival gangs try to take control of what is a very high-revenue market for them.”
The prohibitive nature of the tobacco excise in Australia has created a state of affairs uncannily similar to the banning of liquor for sale and distribution between 1920 and 1933 in the United States. Initiated by the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, Prohibition was the fruit of frightful earnestness and fanaticism, progressive hope and aspirational absurdity. “The American people have said that they do not want any liquor sold, and they have said it emphatically by passing almost unanimously the constitutional amendment,” declared House of Representatives Judiciary Chairman Andrew Volstead. Instead of discouraging the consumption of liquor, it created an industry of illicit, often dangerous consumption, producing such criminally enterprising types as Al Capone, encouraging the bootlegging antics of Joseph Kennedy Sr, father of the 35th President of the United States, and gave birth to The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald’s near perfect, sublime novel of debauched sensibilities and ruined dreams. From then on, America became a nation of habitual lawbreakers.
The effect of Prohibition was inimitably captured by the Republic’s most acerbic critic on the subject. “None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass,” thundered H. L. Mencken in 1925. “There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.”
The Australian model of prohibitive sale of tobacco, accompanied by a zealous public health campaign, initially diminished consumption. The tide has turned. Government greed and monomania set in. The continuing increase of the tobacco excise has encouraged a tobacco black market run by savvy syndicates waging turf wars over distribution. In response, both the bureaucracy of ineffective law enforcement and the number of smokers has increased. Even the generally dull New South Wales Premier Chris Minns had to grimly muse that “this would be the only tax in the world where it’s doubled but the rate of revenue collection has halved. Something is obviously happening here.” The obvious trend, however, is often the least observed in Canberra.
