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Councillors in what was known until recently as the Victorian city of Moreland in Melbourne’s inner north feel that their municipal talents should not be limited to such tiresome tasks as collecting rubbish and filling in potholes. They ought to have a voice, they think – even as they reel from the blow of the ignominious collapse of their other cherished “Voice”– a voice this time that ‘racists’ and rednecks can’t torpedo, that will carry beyond their dreary municipality of jerry-built apartment blocks and unenticing cafés, one that will be heard in the counsels of the world. So they sign up to the idiocy that currently reigns supreme in the West (they’ve long been on board with the earlier idiocies of race and sex) and pass a resolution that goes beyond the usual wishy-washy requests for a ceasefire in Israel’s war of self-defence against Hamas but actually condemns Israeli military action in Gaza full stop. They mutter about “war crimes”, though not those committed by the terrorists of Hamas, and they wouldn’t mind a boycott too.
Moreland is a hotbed of “progressive” prejudice. As befits a Greens-Labor stronghold you only have to think of any silly or mendacious leftist notion and they’re all for it. They recently changed the name of the city to Merri-bek, using as justification a great slab of leftist-invented misinformation about wholly imaginary “links with slavery”. One would have half-expected them to call the place Andrewsville in tribute to the now mercifully vanished figure who gave every indication of becoming ruler-for-life of Victoria (and is now reduced to being blackballed by golf clubs. Ei fu – “he was” – as Manzoni said of Napoleon). But they selected instead one of those “Aboriginal” names which you can never be sure weren’t invented by the redrawing-the-map-of-Australia unit at Pascoe House, the head offices of the First Nations Corporation Pty Ltd. They decided on Merri-bek’, which to me sounds less Aboriginal than Dickensian – “Mr Merri-bek, meet Mr Fezziwig.”
The Arab constituency in Merri-bek is a large one, and the Jewish one presumably small, since it is Israel’s “constant bombing and the total siege of Gaza” that the councillors wring their hands over. This, they say, (the bombing not the hand-wringing) is “traumatising for many Merri-bek residents who have relatives in the region”. “Traumatising” – but not half as traumatising as babies with their heads hacked off, who get no mention in the resolution beyond a brief reference to the “tragic and horrific loss of civilian lives in the current conflict.” And somehow the council resolution forgets to mention that most of the traumatising – even of many Palestinians – is perpetrated by the subhuman savages of Hamas.
In keeping with all the lies over the years about Israel’s aggressive behaviour, this resolution, though but a squeak in the orgy of anti-Israeli vituperation sweeping the West, lays all the blame on the efforts of a small country to defend itself against a Palestinian enemy that shouts from the housetops its intention to eliminate it. And though the Palestinians have long persuaded themselves that they have a grievance, they have several generations of their own devious leadership to thank in part for that – remember Yasser Arafat turning down the Camp David peace offers in 1978?
That’s when the Left turned on Israel – not on the weaselly Arafat – with a bitter loathing. Till then the hatred had been more selective, with a distinction made between “Zionism” (bad) and Jewishness (less bad, but only because the spectre of the Holocaust was still haunting Europe). It is impossible to imagine now but up until the 1970s Israel was internationally acceptable enough for platoons of leftish female students in anoraks to go there to work on kibbutzes. They’d be shrieking in the streets now, baying for Netanyahu’s blood.
Abhorrence of Israel is now near universal and few apart from politicians with Jews in their electorates make any pretence at distinguishing between the race and the nation. But why the concentrated hate? Why the coordinated mobs worldwide, why is there not even a vestige of sympathy for butchered victims whose only offence was to have been Israelis? Why is it the Israelis whose “war crimes” are condemned in our federal parliament, with the sinister Adam Bandt, showing all the compassion of a judge in a Moscow show trial, parroting Hamas about “illegal occupation of Palestinian territories”? Doesn’t he know Israel no longer “occupies” Gaza? Doesn’t he know that the “ceasefire” he and the rest of the Left harp on about would leave Hamas unopposed in its crusade to destroy a state and its population? Leftists are always going about the evils of genocide. Ah, but this would be an acceptable genocide, the triumph of justice, evil “occupiers” and “colonialists” getting their just deserts – you wouldn’t put it past some on the Left to want to try the same thing here.
Why a hatred so visceral that it has led to derangement? One thinks here of that quaint group Queers for Palestine at Sydney University who provided a rare moment of hilarity in the dismal proceedings. Did it never occur to the queers, blind with “intersectionality”, what would happen to them if they actually went to Gaza to lisp their support in person?
In truth, the hatred has little to do with the labyrinthine politics of the Middle East and everything to do with Israel’s existence as a free and functioning democratic state. The Left hates Israel because it hates ourselves. Hatred of Israel is a vicarious manifestation of the Left’s insane detestation of our own culture and society. Leftists never cease trying to tear down our civilisation by any means available – climate fanaticism to weaken us economically, gender tinkering to destroy our sense of self, racial discord fomented to tear us apart. There has been no war since the Left went on the march in the 1960s in which they haven’t supported an enemy of the West, Vietnam being the textbook example.
Add to that the grubby antisemitism, not confined to the Left unfortunately and still lurking beneath the surface in corners of Australian life, and you have a case of poor Israel, stuck with a double whammy – Jewish and a Western democratic state. A true international outcast. You wouldn’t bet on its survival if the Americans pulled the plug.
When the Left demonise Israel as being colonial, they are just transferring to it the hatred they have of Australian history. Or is it the other way around? There is a clear link between the renaming of Australian cities and anti-Israelism. Its not just the same perpetrators, it’s the same dumb anti-colonial ideas.
First comes hatred of Jews, then comes whatever rationalisation suits fashions of the time. Hatred of Israel isn’t due to anything about colonialisation – that’s just one of the current fashions. It’s their excuse for the miserable affectations of those unthinking over-educated political dilettantes.
So from whence did you acquire your big words?
Sorry, I did not mean to suggest they hate Israel because of colonialisation. I meant that it is their standard go-to name for anything they don’t like – their current fashion as you call it.
But did they hate Jews or Australian history first?
Possibly (a guess) they were first taught to hate our history and given touchstone terms as paradigmatic catch phrases. Later the constant spew of slanderous news reports about Israel was shoved into their attention. That would fit your comment.
But that can’t explain why their views correlate so well with old traditional antisemitic concepts.
1 – Jews have limited permission to choose where they can live. It’s subject to agreement from the authority of a territory, and can be withdrawn when considered inconvenient. That was the practice for centuries in Europe and the Middle East. Permission was granted by the Mandate, greatly reduced by the UN partition, and today there’s calls that establishment of Israel was an error that should be corrected.
2 – Jewish evidence and submissions about their situation was not regarded as valid unless supported by a known decent non-Jew in medieval courts. News reports question Israel’s reports of Hamas’s human shields, hospitals, UNWRA facilities, etc – until a non-Jewish NGO or UN verifies it. As in the past, Jewish evidence is disbelieved until verified by others such as the UN and NGOs who just happen to support Hamas.
These centuries old traditional antisemitic themes are catch cries among supporters of what Hamas did, but they have no foundation in colonial concepts. If ideas of colonialism have informed anti-Israel protests, why do their themes correlate so well with centuries older attitudes about Jews. Ther’s something deeply and subtly embedded in our cultures that land these things on Jews.
In Australia the tendency is to demonise our colonial history, and my response to this is to point out that Australian colonial society produced one of the world’s greatest nations. It can’t have been absolutely bad. For all its failings, it had enormous achievements. But when I explain this to the mob they often become angry, as if they want to believe bad things about colonial society. In my view it makes them feel better about themselves for some reason. They need to believe these things.
I detect the same thing in their treatment of Israel. They want to believe the worst and that is why it gets accused of evermore ridiculous things. But at the end of the day they are angry it exists. Is that some kind of jealousy and envy?
I’m guessing the Left insists on demonizing our history because they, deep down, know they would have done better. No, more than better, they would have formed the worker’s paradise with no oppression and no oppressors. You know, like Lenin, and Stalin after him.
Yes. Jew-hatred is deep, spiteful envy, seen most clearly in the millenia old screech: “Oh, they took all the money”. Despite the small global Jewish population, about 25% of the Nobel awards for *real* achievements (ie. not Bambi-type peace medals) has gone to Jewish people. This obviously energetic, talented characteristic always inspired spiteful envy.
>” … babies with their heads hacked off”< [part quote from Christopher A's article here].
Beyond horrific, but babies grilled alive in an oven (with the shape of the oven element still embedded into the little, charcoaled bodies) causes me to wander around in no-mans land – a red fog envelops me. That there are people capable of doing that is less understandable than an astronomically large black hole engulfing a smaller black hole.
ianl: There will always potentially be enmity between peoples, more or less, and particularly if it is perceived that there is a people constituting a “universal minority” that is disproportionally represented among the professions, or is perceived to have a disproportionate influence in finance and banking, particularly of the international kind. Another point of contention is a perceived history of disproportionate influence in government policy, through lobbying and personal contacts, such as the case of Baron Rothchild and Winston Churchill, and the religious sympathies of Arthur Balfour and David Lloyd George, which advanced the cause of Zionism.
As well, a perception or “aloofness” and “specialness”, dating back to the “Torah”, is a recipe for suspicion, envy and hostility. The creation of the State of Israel, rather than solving the “Jewish Problem” by becoming a safe haven for Jews from the long history of persecution, has only magnified the potential enmity between Jews and non-Jews, by adding to the equation the elements of territory and warfare. The Jews of the world have not all moved en masse to the State of Israel, rather, only a minority, which adds to the perception of “divided loyalties”, in that the State of Israel recognises that all Jews have the “right of return”. The perception of a “dual nationality” is always a potential cause of suspicion, conflict and enmity.
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The above speculations and perceptions are not my personal opinions, rather they are some observations and commentary of a historical narrative, the intention being to look at some sociological and anthropological factors that may be at play in the interactions between groups of peoples that can possibly be a source of frictions leading to an entrenched enmity.
Why are all of you people talking to the hand? And why are there so few of you commenting?
What Hamas did was ghastly and was a horrifying war crime .
But just how many babies were decapitated and what proportion of the Hamas invaders actually did that ?
We know how many Palestinian children have been blown to pieces by Israeli bombs or suffered lingering painful deaths under the rubble or are dying in hospital from their injuries because of lack of medicines or doctors or dying of sickness because of the siege of Gaza .
Are their deaths less painless or horrific than those of the innocent few that were murdered by decapitation ?
Are the Israeli pilots that dropped those bombs knowing that they would kill children as well as soften up Hamas targets not “subhuman savages ” too ?
Our are they brave heroes fighting their country’s sworn enemy ?
How bad would the situation be without this outcry from the West that is pressuring Israel ?
The instant Hamas terrorists entered Israel in a full-blooded military campaign on 7/10, the Gaza statelet provocatively declared war on Israel. Israel accepted the challenge on behalf of its 10 million people, as it should and must if it is to survive. It declared war on the Hamas dictatorship.
Hence, the rules of war now apply to this conflict, rules which others expect Israel to adhere to but Hamas and its rage-blind supporters conveniently ignore.
At the same time as Israel strives to avoid civilian collateral deaths, Hamas insists on them … deaths of both Israeli and Gazan alike. Stuffing hospitals, schools and ambulances with Hamas terrorists and by refusing to allow civilians to flee to the south as advised by Israel.
So yes, there are children and civilian adults killed, maimed, burned in Gaza, just as there were during WW2, or any other modern or ancient conflict, and just as there were on 7/10. Hamas provoked this war, and now complains when Israel seeks to end it with as few casualties (except Hamas terrorists) as possible.
My take on this is. There are only a few holocaust survivors and wartime refugee descendants left in Israel. As it is no longer a “developing country” and, due to its strong European economic and strategic presence in the Middle East, opportunistic outsiders have flocked there, their only necessary qualification for entry being Jewish. Hence, overpopulation in what was originally a small area to house the oppressed migrating from war-torn Europe, primarily to appease the conscience of our Western Democracy Christians who failed them so tragically during the early years of the 20th Century. Of course, the conscienceless and consequenceless re-establishment of a site once occupied by the Tribes of Israel thousands of years ago wasn’t really a British-led postwar solution to the “Jewish problem”, which many feared would not really go away after the War? Despite all the humanitarian language documentation currently available in the public domain, I believe paperwork regarding and even quoting the latter does exist to that effect.
Continuing on. So what are a lot of noisy American boomers doing in Israel now? Population overflows into Palestinian-designated territory, no statehood there, so nothing to stop them. “Settlers”, my foot! Meanwhile, Israeli government continues to gain support from all of the ex-pat newcomers and their contacts back home. A good way to solve the lazy Arab problem – keep them within ever-shrinking boundaries and hope they eventually go away. Now, those who have studied history past high school would know that there has been traditional resentment towards Jewish populations throughout Europe, England and notably Russia, worsening since the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution and the recessions of the 1880s. It blew up in 1930s Germany.
So here we now have a tradition, passed down with Passover, of reverse-resentment, and what better people to take it out on than a bunch of indolent itinerant Arabs, camping in a desert, hogging the oases and basically doing nothing visible to our heroes to help themselves? All there for the taking. And who cannot equate the living conditions in Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto? Who are we to demonise those who try to fight back? No blame on regular Israeli citizens nor Jewish people anywhere – but who is behind the current Israeli government? You might be surprised to learn that, among the post-war intake into the Kingdom of Israel, and similar to South America and the prettier parts of Southeast Asia, merged an influx of those who were able to conceal their complicity in war-crimes and other atrocities. What better places to hide with a new identity? In its current configuration, Israel’s power brokers (both local and foreign) are looking about as Jewish as ISIS is Muslim, and it would be nice to know who they really are and what they really stand for. Perhaps our very wordy commenters here could spend some time doing a little more research. Records sealed for 99 years are becoming available now, and could contribute much to the lead-up to the current problems. There are two sides to every argument.
With juvenile Australians having TikTok as their go-to source of information. Consider this :
https://www.memri.org/tv/chinese-social-media-video-tiktok-won-big-for-palestine-jewish-elite-information-cocoons
With juvenile Australians focusing on impoverished Palestinians. Consider this :
Hamas’s three top leaders alone are worth a stunning $11 billion, enjoying a life of luxury in the sanctuary of Qatar.
https://www.jns.org/jihadi-marxism/
“We know how many Palestinian children have been blown to pieces by Israeli bombs or suffered lingering painful deaths under the rubble or are dying in hospital from their injuries because of lack of medicines or doctors or dying of sickness because of the siege of Gaza .”
I don’t think we know the details of Palestinian casualties. However, whatever the death toll is it would be less if Hamas did not deliberately put its people in harms way – a war crime. Civilian casualties happen in war but there is a protocol, followed by the IDF but not Hamas that tries to minimise civilian casualties.
On the subject of beheading babies, can I just say that I hope the people who deplore this – as I do, in principle, without offering an opinion as to whether Hamas did it recently – are irreconcilably opposed to abortion. Because that is precisely what abortion involves – i.e. the barbaric slaughter of an infant aka ‘foetus’ – in this case in the mother’s womb (mostly but not always). There seems to be some kind of moral disconnect in the worldview of some who condemn the killing of babies by Islamic terrorists but support the same actions when performed by doctors in what is fast becoming the modern medico-fascist state.
With Australian media uncritically reproducing every statistic offered by the ‘Gaza Ministry of Health’. Consider this :
https://david-collier.com/doctors-shifa-hospital/
They hate Jews out of jealousy, because Jews, in spite of being kicked around during most of their history, are successful. They win out over adversity. Palestinians on the other hand are seen to be losers that even no other Arab country wants because they bring their miserable philosophy of life wherever they go. Jordan learned that lesson the hard way when they offered Palestinians a homeland in Jordan. The Palestinians only brought misery and unrest and had to forcibly be kicked out for Jordan to get its sovereignty back.
Further along in recent history, in order to facilitate a two state solution, Israel forcibly repatriated its own citizens who had settled in Gaza so that the Palestinians could have their own turf. As history shows the Palestinians under the ruthless tutelage of Hamas, turned Gaza into a miserable existence for themselves.
And now to current events: Those in the West protesting the plight of Palestine with that political slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ and waving Palestinian flags and wearing martyr-soldier garb such as the Palestinian keffiya scarf are likely suffering from the guilt of having been brought up in relative freedom and affluence. To atone for their guilt and their relentless self-loathing they adopt a bleeding heart cause of hapless Palestinian victim against colonialist oppression, in the immediate case, the Jews who, against expectation, created the successful State of Israel from the, largely, desert wastes.
The Germans have a special name for this atonement to assuage guilt. It’s called: Leidensneid, or an envy of suffering. Unfortunately this naive approach of marchers and protesters for the Palestinian cause only works as a counter productive minority racket that benefits only those who want to undermine the rule of law where protests are still allowed.
“tragic and horrific loss of …. civilian lives in the current conflict.”
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I presume they unwittingly omitted the qualifier – as in “Palestinian civilian lives”, or maybe they consider “the current conflict” started only when Israel reacted to 7/10.
Nice to see sanity in the comments to this article, as opposed to so many of those on other ones. Thank you.
Don’t see any opposition here to any of this nonsense. Same people every week too, using the same dictionary.