The following editorial appears in today’s Australian newspaper:
Cheap “dissent” enables global anti-Semites
WHILE Winston Churchill will always be remembered for staring down the Nazis, a recent discovery by a Cambridge academic suggests the wartime prime minister’s attitudes towards Judaism were not perfect either. In a never-published 1937 essay entitled, “How the Jews Can Combat Persecution”, Churchill complained that cheap Jewish labour was “taking employment away from English people”, adding that despite terrible persecution “the Jew is different. He looks different. He thinks differently . . . He refuses to be absorbed”.
But while some will say Churchill’s comments were simply a reflection of his time – and in his defence he also urged Britons to fight “evil” Jewish persecution – the more disturbing thing is how such attitudes continue to reflect a contemporary European culture where anti-Semitism can sometimes lurk just under the surface of society. When in 2001 the French ambassador to the UK made an off-the-cuff remark calling Israel a “shitty little country”, he was articulating a feeling that is commonly seen and heard throughout Europe whether in immigrant ghettoes or at posh dinner parties. And while in Europe opposition to Israel is largely cloaked in strategic cowardice – Western support for a Jewish state only makes us a target for Islamic terrorism – across the Middle East all the demented ancient fantasies of anti-Semitism, from blood libel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, are still given wide airing.
All of this is useful to bear in mind given news of the formation of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, which claims to “dissent” from the supposed uniformity of opinion among high-profile Australian Jews on the subject of Israel. Yet even as IAJV purports to take the moral high ground it promotes a dangerous moral equivalence between Israel, a legally sanctioned state created by the UN, and its neighbours who have since its birth repeatedly tried to push it into the sea. And we wonder what controversial Israeli actions they feel they are not allowed to disagree with. Yitzhak Rabin’s signing of the Oslo Accords, which enshrined the principle of land for peace only to be roundly violated by the Palestinians? The growth of the Kadima party, which was formed by no less a hawk than Ariel Sharon and is predicated on giving up territory for security, and which is now the largest party in Israel? Likewise their wilfully naive analysis of Israeli-Arab relations ignores the reality of Middle Eastern geopolitics and the bloody struggle between Sunni and Shia Islam. Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s antagonistic comments towards Israel have failed to provoke uproar in Europe. But Iran’s nuclear ambitions have lifted tensions throughout the Middle East and forged a new level of co-operation between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Certainly, Israel is not without sin. But it is a democracy that has voted repeatedly for peace and coexistence. This will not be possible until its enemies come to the same conclusion.
All of which goes to show that a lot of work will have to be done to get anything like a balanced reflection on Israel/Palestine from the editorial writers at The Oz. But I am encouraged by their felt need to disparage IAJV; they must be worried about the prospective emergence of a credible alternate view.
Precisely when did Israel vote for peace and co-existence pray tell?
Was it in 1947 when they enacted David Gruen’s ethnic cleansing plan and pushed over 750,000 Palestinians into the sea, bulldozed or blew up 531 towns and villages, destroyed 3 million acres of land and crops and then decided they had won a big war against the non-existent marauding arabs?
What about 1956 when they joined in the bizarre plot over the Suez Canal with Britain and the French and wrote the plan of the spontaneous war on a cigarette packet the week before the spur of the moment attack?
Or how about 1967 when a Palestinian academic and priest has written that Israel’s IAF flew over all the arab nations on 5 June and blew up all their air capacity and then launched a land strike the next day among all the confusion?
Or 1973 where Uri Avnery graphically outlines how Israel provoked the Syrians and then wondered why they actually fought back?
How about that they have been told since 1948 that the Palestinians have an inviolable right to return so they build bigger walls around them?
Lebanon invaded, people slaughtered in their thousands, the Khiam torture chambers, the phalangist collaborator killing machines in Sabra and Shatila.
And the latest attack on Lebanon planned in January - March 2006 and just waiting for a pretext.
Jesus, I would hate to know what Israel would do if they didn’t just want peace.
I fail to understand why Ahmadinejad is a ‘dictator’? Is it ignorance or do these people just lie reflexively?
Perhaps because the correct Farsi translation’s has been reported there, rather than the debunked version about Israel being wiped off the face of the map.
my brief dip into middle east history suggests that israel started off by invasion. jews were less than 20% of the palestine population when clandestine armies called ‘irgun’ and ’stern gang’ began adjusting this ratio with guns and bombs.
since then, fatah and hamas have been trying to get their native land back. it suits the west to support israel so fatah and hamas are terrorist organizations rather than liberation fighters.
the situation is bleak for palestinians, yet there is some cause for hope: the west supported the equally illegitimate regimes of apartheid in south africa and rhodesia for a long time, yet finally withdrew recognition. in any event, when the zionists have taken your land, your home, your family, resistance unto death comes easily.
the zionists have no choice, for them too, it is win or die. so there can be no peace until israel is dissolved and a secular state of palestine is born.