Rally: stop Israeli attacks on Gaza!

18 thoughts on “Rally: stop Israeli attacks on Gaza!”

1. Gaza has been attacked by Israeli forces on the ground this morning (Sunday).

   This is a notice that there will be a meeting of Australians for Palestine this afternoon at AHIMSA house at 26 Horan Street West End (in the bookshop) at 4:30 this afternoon Sunday 4 Jan 2009.

   Those who wish to help organise to prevent the killing on Palestinians are welcome.

   This thread is now being spammed by overtly racist commentators so I am going to close the comments to this article “Rally: stop Israeli attacks on Gaza!”

   Those you wish to organise resistance are welcome to attend the meeting this afternoon.

2. Inter Alia,

   Why do you claim that Israel has borders?

   Where are these borders? Define them.

   How many Israeli citizens support the bombardment of the people of Gaza?

   What do leaders like Olmert and Netanyahu wish to achieve by killing 400 Palestinians in Gaza? Do they care how many Palestinians they kill in their contest for power?

   Did Israeli leaders before them — Sharon, Begin, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir?

   What do the settlers from New York, Melbourne, London and elsewhere wish to achieve when they shoot at women and children in the fields? Why do they build their condos, walls and highways in the place of olive groves and lemon orchards that have been there for generations?

   What did the Stern Gang wish to achieve by their murderous activities in 1948 when they blew up the King David Hotel and terrorised the people who have lived in the region for millenia??

   Did they, like Ben Gurion, follow the creed of Zion? The formation of a racist state of Israel for the chosen to the exclusion of all other peoples?

   Why do you ignore the suffering of the Palestinian people?

   Where is your sincerity when you will not say who you are?

3. And tell me this. If Hamas care so much about their people’s suffering why are they putting so much of their money and energy into buying and smuggling in weapons, which are not for self-defense, as Israel has no desire to conquer the Gaza strip, but purely but for offensive purposes to continue to snipe at Israel, and of course other Palestinian factions? Why do they not use money to start productive enterprises that actually benefit their people? Why do they choose destruction over creation? Why would they rather buy weapons than medicines and food for their people?

   But I am willing to learn if I am wrong about any of this. I am asking quite genuinely. Just don’t tell me it’s all America’s fault.

4. Honouring the original inhabitants does not equal “exclusive territory”. And I also said “if you’re into that kind of thing”. Signalling even further that i was being ironically.

   My point, if you read again, what I wrote originally was that what guarantees Israel’s existence is international law, the same law that guarantees Australia’s existence. The main difference is that whites have absolutely no prior claim to Australia, while there has always been a Jewish presence in Judea/ Palestine/ Israel. But that’s irrelevant to the wide question that *everywhere* has been conquered by other peoples but the Arabs will not respect the borders of Israel. Just wait till the Indonesians decide that because their were Indonesian traders here before the Anglos got here, that they have a prior claim. What will you do then?

   And abt mythology, that’s exactly what I meant. Stop casting stones, notice you’re living in a glass house, and then go and sin no more. IE do not dump hatred exclusively on Israel, for responding to 60 years of attrition. Show equal compassion towards Israelis and Palestinians locked in this terrible tragedy. That’s what I’m asking. Mind you, I don’t see you particularly as a hate-monger, I quite enjoy arguing with you. It clarifies my thinking. I think Ian’s a bit of a worry though. All ideology, full of passionate intensity, and terribly confident of his mistaken “facts”

5. Interalia,

   You ask…..”Where did I say anything about ‘ Palestine is the exclusive territory of the 12 tribes of Israel’?”

   The opening line in your first message on this thread is….. “Let us begin by honouring the original custodians of the Land of Israel, the twelve tribes of Benjamin, Dan, Issachar, Reuben, etc. If you’re into that kind of thing…”

   The descendants of Hagar or of the pre-Abraham Caananites (who were kin to Abraham) have been written out of your traditional perspective.

   I do not agree with Edna Yaghi. I acknowledge that the people of Israel (as different from the state of Israel) have an important connection to the land. In my opinion, the Maccabean revolution against Greek colonisation and the first century revolution against Roman colonisation give an eternal connection to land above and beyond the covenants of Abraham and Joshua. I acknowledge that the Hebrews were scattered across the Roman empire and enslaved as a direct result of their indigenous resistance.

   During the Maccabean revolution, all those who collaborated with the foreign empire were executed. Today, those who collaborate with the foreign empire (U.S.) are in the most powerfull positions in the land as a result of their collaboration.

   The indigenous Palestinian resistance to foreign empire is much more in the tradition of the Maccabean revolution than the creation of the Israel state.

   If you are going to rely on Christian mythology regarding casting the first stone, then this story must also include the conclusion which is “go and sin no more”. this is not a call to moderate tolerance but to historical change.

6. John T

   I agree with you, two wrongs don’t make a right. The rest just proves what we learned in Communications 101. You can write your heart out, but people will read a text according to what they need to see.

   Where did I say anything about ‘ Palestine is the exclusive territory of the 12 tribes of Israel’?

   What I said was “let s/he who is without sin cast the first stone”. In this case, the sin is taking sides, like so many punters watching gladiators, while two tiny suffering peoples fight to the death over a land that has practically no natural resources.

   Real peace activists who are neither Jews nor Palestinian refugees are seeking out organisations that are trying to heal the wounds and do not take sides. Real peace activists do not cast stones.

7. You’re not living in Australia, Ian, but in Fantasia. Israel is a multi-cultural society. There are heaps of grass-roots people to people movements by Israelis and Palestinians who are tired of extremists. Just check out http://www.onevoicemovement.org. The SMH had an article about how Arabs and Jews were nowhere near as hostile to each other as you’d think, the day before Israel launched its attack. Jason Koutsoukas should follow up what happened.

   And why indeed are the Palestinians still refugees? A huge number of the people in Australia are refugees from somewhere, but few are wearing keys, let alone throwing rocks at their home of origin.

   The difference is that Australia and most other Western countries took them in, and they built new lives. The difference is that the Arab countries never took their own ‘brothers” in the way the West takes in Arabs. No, they preferred to keep them in situ as thorns in Israel’s side, to foment hatred against the Israelis, and to deflect the masses hatred of the Arab ruling class. The Arabs are so much more adept at massacring Palestinians and keeping them in misery.

   This does not detract from the terrible suffering inflicted on innocents by Israel’s over-reaction to the constant shelling from Gaza. All the more reason that, you should realise that instead of fomenting more hatred, and picking sides, and making up facts gleaned from a very selective reading of the tragedy of Israel and Palestine, you really are not helping anyone. You’re just adding fuel to the flames. Yeah, I know, so am I by taking you on. But at least I’m not pretending to be on the side of the angels.

8. Hello John,

   There is no shortage of land in Australia, the problem is that the wealthy have stolen all the prime land.

   Nor did the rich ever give over land that was worked and developed by workers. The rich confiscated the land for profit — land that should have been for the benefit of all.

   Early settlers in Brisbane like the Petrie’s never gave back the land that Tom Petrie stole from aboriginal people.

   Instead, his daughter, Constance, wrote condescending stories about her father’s engagement with aboriginal people and culture. It is painful to read how she big-notes the family patriarch, as the kind and respected man among the ‘natives’. [See Constance Campbell Petrie, Tom Petrie’s “Reminiscences of Early Queensland” (first published 1904) Sydney: Angus and Robertson 1983.

   One difference between Australia and Israel is that there is a more open, multicultural society here in Australia. People should be asking why it was necessary for aboriginal people to fight for land rights in a place so bountiful in sea, plains and mountains.

   Israel is a closed society.

   People should be asking why Palestinians in Gaza fire their ineffectual rockets into Israel. They should be asking why old women, wearing keys around their necks to homes stolen 60 years ago, hand rocks to their grandchildren to throw at the Israeli soldiers, still.

   People should be asking themselves about the injustice that causes peaceful Palm Islanders to take up rocks to throw at Queensland police officers’ houses, still.

   Queensland has been closed to some — it is still closed to Aboriginal people, it is closed to many poor and unemployed workers.

   It is no coincidence that many Palestinian refugees have found their way to more open secular societies in the Middle East, places such as the Lebanon.

   in solidarity
   Ian

9. Interalia,

   Your claim that Palestine is the exclusive territory of the 12 tribes of Israel is discarding any ideas that Palestinians might have about who they are.

   While you correctly identify a contradiction in Australian colonials opposing israeli colonisation, you seem to make this argument to justify Australian and Israeli colonisation rather than to speak against it. The guilt of Australia does not redeem the guilt of Israel.

10. Ian’s Curr’s confidence in his facts, sitting up there in his Brisbane Qld stronghold is breath-taking. Has this hodge-podge of nonsense cobbled together from the rantings of the loony left the slightest relationship to any facts on the ground in either Israel or Palestine, let alone how actual human being behave under stress?
    There is no such thing as “Zionists”, Ian, or hadn’t you heard? Zionism was once the liberation movement of the Jewish people. Nowadays, they have their land. They are now Israelis. The only people who still use the term “Zionists”, are the old left, stuck in a time warp of the 60’s. Expropriating the name of a people’s liberation movement, in order to twist it to hate them with it.. And it is not “Israel” pursuing this war, but the Israeli *government*. My advice to you is, colonialist, heal thyself. And remove the log from your eyes before complaining about the mote in the “Zionists'” eyes.

    And who the hell is that incredible expert on Jewish Identity, Mrs Edna Yahgi, whose fame has apparently even reached Queensland.??? Maybe someone should inform her that there is such a thing as culture.

    And I love the way Mrs Yahghi, ably abetted by John T, has simple discarded any ideas that the Jewish or Israeli people might have about who they are.

    If only they had such clear-sighted prophets as you to lead them out of the wilderness!

11. Ian,

    “Aboriginal Australia must have land” – where will they get this land from except from under the feet of the colonisers?. Or can we make some new land to give them?

    I think you are wrong if you are suggesting that the real Palestinians support the existance of the state of Israel

    The PLO began to disintegrate after it adopted a two state platform in 1988. before then it was committed to the destruction of the Israel state. The war between Fatah and Hamas since Arrafat’s death has been around the issue of recognition of and collaboration with the Israel state. Hamas’ militance is no more to blame for Palestinian disunity than Fatah’s collaboraition. It is the issue of recognition of Israel that smashed the PLO more than any Israeli state terrorism.

    The two state plan has been a colonial imposition since the league of nations, not the will of the Palestinians. It is a condition imposed by the U.S. today because the U.S. needs an ally state in the middle east, this is the only reason for Israel’s existence.

    The PLO and Fatah’s acceptance of Israels/USA terms is only because Israel had a gun to their head. Hamas’ military resistance is also because Israel has a gun to their head.

    As long as Israel has the (US funded) gun to the head of the Palestinians it is irrelevant who might win any Palestinian election.

12. Hey John,

    Like Baz Luhrmann’s film “Australia” my analysis of Aboriginal struggle is probably hugely flawed.

    But I do not think I am wrong about the importance of the struggle for Aboriginal Land Rights.

    In the 1970s we marched for Land Rights, not reconciliation or native title. We were right to do that.

    Aboriginal Australia must have land and the economic wherewithal to use the land according to their dreams, plans & culture.

    I think that you have a lot to learn about the struggle of the Palestinian people.

    Hamas has not the military capacity or will to “drive Israel into the sea”. That is stupid Zionist propaganda.

    Hamas gained popular support in Gaza because of the actions of the zionists in the Israel government.

    In the early 1990s Israel destroyed secular political organisations like the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) — one of the groups that led the first intifada in 1989.

    Hamas is the product of the crushing defeat of such groups in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) — Hamas is therefore a creature of the savage repression of the Palestinian people by Israel.

    When this crisis in Gaza is over it will be interesting to see who wins the next Palestinian election.

    Even more interesting will be, now that the organisation of Hamas is crushed, will the group that replaces it, will that group learn from the mistakes that the PLO made.

    I hope for the Palestinians sake, that they have better leadership and organisation that we have on the Left here in Australia.

    in solidarity
    Ian

13. Ian,

    There are some Palestinians who may agree with you, on the other hand there are some who are determined to “drive Israel into the sea”. Hamas are quite explicit about this.

    “The prevailing culture in Australia is Anglo-Celtic” – You sound like Pauline Hanson now.

    Do you not think Australia was captured by force? The genocide of 90% of the population and the internment of the surviving remnant into concentration camps sounds pretty forceful to me. This is the only reason for the dominance of the english language and legal system.

    The purpose of the resistance in this country was indeed to force the invaders to go home, this is why the crops and stock was destroyed, this is why the white homesteads were burnt, this is why the white population was terrorised for over a hundred years. The demands for the invaders to go home only subsided after the resistance was smashed.

    Aboriginal land rights cannot improve things for white Australia, the two have competing interests. Just as Israeli settlers must give up their homes and land to be returned to Palestinians, so too with the occupied homes and land in Australia. The eviction or dispossession of the invader may well be good for them in a spiritual sense but in historical material terms it means the invader must give up what they have – it means loss in real terms.

    It is pure bullshit to say that white Australian culture has been influenced by Aboriginal culture. What do you mean by this? At the most, Aboriginal culture has been appropriated and misrepresented by white culture as a commodity for the entertainment of white people.

    People like Petrie were freaks, not at all representative of colonial society. Yet even people like Petrie refused to hand over one square inch of their family property to the traditional owners. Petrie’s charity allowed the Turrabul to camp on his property and work on his enterprises, but there was clearly a power hierarchy backed up by the military and economic might of the colonial society. Petries relationship with his black workers was still a master/slave relationship, even if the master was more curious than most about the culture of his slaves. Petries cavorting with the natives was tolerated only because of his families power and prestige in the region. Ordinary white folk (workers) were ostracised for their relationship with Aboriginal people (except for sex with black women which was quite acceptible).

    White Australia has its own mythology, well represented in Baz Luhrmann’s film “Australia” that re-writes history in terms of the brave white individuals that provided sanctuary for Aboriginal people on their properties. The church missions justify their own damage in the same terms. The truth of this sanctuary was still slavery, with the white slave master/property owner and disposessed Aboriginal people surviving in a hostile world any way they can – including befriending their master.
    (See Germaine Greer on Luhrmann’s Australia http://treatynow.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/germaine-greer-on-baz-luhrmanns-australia/ )

    The myths of peacefull settlement and the benevolent coloniser is a lie to replace the true history of this country, a lie too easily adopted by radicals, including supporters of the slogan “Land rights” to justify an alternative assimilationist ideology, as if Aboriginal land rights can somehow dovetail into the colonial land regime.

    Land rights is about land – who is on it, who benefits from it, who has power over it, what is done with it and who is the government for it. In Palestine and Australia there is a material conflict of interest about land that cannot be explained away by multicultural evolution. Israel knows it and Hamas knows it – that is why there is a war. No matter how much we wish that some other reality might exist, be it christian or socialist escapism, the material facts of history are what they are.

    Inter Alia’s defense of the Zionist State can indeed be found all over the mainstream media, but his challenge to non-Aboriginal australians who support Palestinian land rights is very valid – and is not represented in the mainstream media.

14. Hello Ray and John,

    Thank you Ray for the excellent quote of Saladin’s rule being one of the few examples in history of a multicultural Jerusalem. I was trying to remember the history that you described so well at Dan O’Neill’s 17 group last year and here it is in a powerful quote from Mrs. Edna Yaghi – an example of a multicultural Jerusalem which the christian crusades in the middle ages and zionism in the 20th century have tried so hard to stamp out.

    As you are both aware, Palestinians are not trying to drive Jewish people from Palestine, they are asking for a right of return to their homeland. This has been their unshakeable demand since they fled during the United Nations sanctioned catastrophe in 1948.

    Similarly, Aboriginal Australians are not seeking to drive Anglo-Celts from Australia, they are struggling for land rights as they have done since their own catastrophe in 1788.

    As a non-indigenous person, I have supported the struggle for aboriginal land rights for nearly 40 years (I marched for land rights for the first time in 1971 as a young medical student).

    I believe that Aboriginal land rights can only improve Australia. This is for both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

    Equally a right of return for Palestinians can only improve life for Arabs and Jews alike.

    The reason is that Zionists have captured Palestinian land by force. Curiously, at the same time, Israelis have adopted much of the prevailing culture of the middle east which is predominately Arab culture [which should be distinguished from Muslim culture].

    It is inevitable that Arab culture will remain dominant in Palestine. But, hopefully, the new rulers of Palestine will be as understanding of multiculturalism as Saladin was in the 12th century.

    Zionist attempts to set up a Jewish state is countered by their own need to adopt the culture which they have attacked. This is the contradiction behind Israel, the humanity of the Jewish people is defined by the culture of their Arab brothers and sisters.

    The prevailing culture in Australia is Anglo-Celtic [which is a variant of but different from christian culture].

    This prevailing culture is influenced by aboriginal culture and in time will become something else, i.e. the anglo-celtic hold over Australian culture will diminish.

    You can even read it in the earliest settler accounts from South East Queensland. That is how position and respect in anglo-centic culture is defined (only in part) by their ability to communicate and negotiate with aboriginal tribes and their elders.

    For example, one of Brisbane’s earliest settler families, the Petrie’s, gained respect within white society because their patriarch, Tom Petrie, gained the respect of some Turrbal elders. The contradiction was that Petrie’s station (position) in white society was defined (in part) by the respect of the very people he sought to dispossess.

    John, my use of the word ‘absurd’ was calculated to confront people on the left in Australia who still see it as necessary to provide ‘balance’ by giving the anonymous ‘inter alia’ a voice when anyone can read their position on the front pages of the Australian or the Courier Mail.

    Why do institutions like the ABC, the Liberal and Labor parties still give credence to the nonsense that is zionism under the pretext of balance?

    Their ‘balance’ is to disguise their bias against both Arab and Aboriginal culture.

    Why such institutions and their supporters persist, perhaps inadvertently, to permit orchestrated attacks on any message from indigenous peoples (i.e. Palestinians & Aboriginal people) to explain their culture and their struggle.

    Ian Curr
    1 Jan 2009

15. From the article at http://www.mediamonitors.net/edna5.html by Mrs. Edna Yaghi entitled Palestinian Holocaust

    Much of the land that the Zionists claim as exclusively theirs has been predominantly populated by Jews for less than 1% of its history. From AD 70, when the Roman emperor Titus destroyed the Jewish Temple, the Jewish community in Palestine practically ceased to exist until Saladin, the Muslim conqueror, retook Jerusalem in 1187 and allowed Jews to return.

    Modern anthropologists believe that today’s Palestinians are descended from the Canaanites who are the earliest recorded inhabitants of the land and the Philistines. The Palestinian people, despite the infusion of other peoples, have remained the natural inhabitants of the land.

    Jews are no longer a race of people but those who follow the religion of Judaism. To prove this point, there are European Jews, Russian Jews, Asian Jews, American Jews, Ethiopian Jews, and yes, even Arab Jews. It is ludicrous to think that all the Jews in the world should have a country of their own and that this country must be that of another people, the indigenous population of Palestine.

    
    Mrs. Edna Yaghi is a free-lance writer and a regular contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN) Source: by courtesy & © 2000 Edna Yaghi

16. 1/ According to the bible, the traditional owners of the land between the Euphrates, Nile and Jordan rivers and the “Great Sea” are the descendants of Abraham, which include the people now known as Arabs, not just the 12 tribes that formed after the exodus from Egypt.

    The people who have come to be known as “Jews” are the descendants of the traditional owners of Palestine who survived the Roman genocide and were exiled to all parts of the Roman empire.

    The construction of the Israeli state has nothing to do with reclaimation of indigenous heritage, it is like the Australian descendents of Irish convicts or the American descendants of African slaves returning to their homeland and disposessing and exiling indigenous Irish and Africans and imposing a new regime by military force – it is a betrayal and desecration of heritage. It is a continuation of the same imperial process that smashed Jerusalem in 70AD.

    2/ Inter alia correctly draws a parralel between Australia and the middle east but is wrong in saying “Aren’t we all lucky that the Aboriginal people are not so warlike”. There was 150 years of guerilla fighting including psychological warfare that would be today called terrorism. While the Aboriginal wars did not enjoy the same media coverage as the Palestinian wars and the technology of colonial and indigenous war was much less sophisticated, the situation is the same.

    3/ The reasons why migrant Australians should or should not “go back to where they came from” is exactly the same as citizens of the Israeli state. The idea that the coloniser should leave the country are dismissed as absurd by the colonising society in Australia and Israel.

    Ian, why is it so absurd to suggest that white Australia should not give the land back as with Palestinian claims? If this were to occur, members of the colonising society would have a choice of leaving or being integrated into the indigenous law and political structure. The only other alternative is to hold onto the colonising state and sociology which means, in Australia and the Middles East, perpetual war with the indigenies.

    4/ The English did not invade Australia as a way of dealing with a criminal underclass. ( Most of the first convicts were political prisoners from the Irish struggle, not petty thieves as the mythology has presented them.)

    The English claimed Australia in order to exploit its economic resources as part of the capitalist imperialist project, just like Israel.

    The English sent the scottish working class into Ireland and the Indians into Fiji just as the Australian and Israeli migrant working class was imported as a colonial occupation force (as well as a supply of labour loyal to the colonial state).

17. Hello Dan,

    I found propositions put by the anonymous ‘inter alia’ absurd.

    It is true that Australia, like Israel, is a settler state — aboriginal land was taken by British force.

    Likewise Palestinians were driven from their homes by heavily armed Zionists in 1948.

    Support for Palestinian just claims to their homeland is not hypocritical, it is consistent with support for aboriginal land rights.

    Inter alia’s reference to the twelve tribes of Israel is bizarre and confusing.

    The present conflict in Palestine arises from a contest for land (and water) between the Jordan river and the Mediterrean since 1948.

    The formation of the modern state of Israel was sanctioned by the UN, fueled by European guilt over the holocaust.

    Israel’s existence and expansion was/is only possible through massive US funding of the Israeli war machine.

    Europe wanted a quick fix of getting rid of Jewish refugees caused by Nazi military occupation of Europe and death camps.

    The English wanted to get rid of their poorer classes whose survival often depended upon thieving (food).

    Convict Australia was the result.

    The main difference between Australia and Israel is that Australia has defined borders whereas Israel is a state with no borders [although some say the border with Egypt is now defined].

    Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land is illegal and not sanctioned any law (other than the law of the jungle).

    To take inter alia’s proposition to its logical conclusion would mean that non-indigenous Australians would have to return from whence they came i.e. Britain and Europe.

    Equally Europe, the US and Russia would have to allow Jewish immigrants to return from Palestine.

    Neither is likely.

    Ian Curr
    31 December 2008

    PS A Qassam rocket weighs about 20 kilos, the bombs that the Israeli airforce is dropping on civilians in Gaza weigh over 2 tonnes.

18. From: Daniel O’Neill
    Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2008 1:23 PM
    Subject: FW: Gaza: The slings and arrows of outraged hypocrites

    Hi to all

    One of you who are on this list has just sent me an email on the Gaza issue taking a different view from the ones I have sent out so far. I’m sending it out because it raises points, some of which go beyond the present crisis, which are worth discussing.

    Regards
    Dan

    From: Inter Alia [mailto:interalia@iprimus.com.au]
    Sent: Wednesday, 31 December 2008 1:07 PM
    To: Daniel O’Neill
    Subject: Gaza: The slings and arrows of outraged hypocrites

    Let us begin by honouring the original custodians of the Land of Israel, the twelve tribes of Benjamin, Dan, Issachar, Reuben, etc. If you’re into that kind of thing…

    Where was all your outrage while 8000 rockets rained down on Israel from the Gaza strip last year. What do you care about Gilad Shalit? Where is the outrage about Mugabe, where is the outrage when Arabs slaughter each other in their thousands? Where are the flurries of emails denouncing suicide bombings, or expressing concern that Arab opinion has it that Mossad organised 9/11?

    Perhaps you’d be happier if more Israelis had been killed. Is it Israel’s fault too, that despite all the oil money and egging on from their Arab “brothers”, Hamas can’t get it together to build a decent weapon of mass destruction?

    What hypocrisy! Most of you who get this will be descendants of Anglo colonialists, who brutally expropriated the land of the Aborigines. I don’t see any of you giving your real estate back to the Aborigines.

    Hypocrites!

    By what right are you here in Australia?

    Kevin Rudd has explained exactly by what right. Israel was created 60 years ago by the same legal process that guarantees the borders of Australia, as it does all the nations of the globe. And yet for 60 years Israelis have put up with constant attrition from the Arabs. Aren’t we all lucky that the Aboriginal people are not so warlike.

    Consider this accurate scale map of Greater Sydrael (except Israel is in mirror image).

    That’s how much land the entire middle east with all their oil trillions begrudge the traditional owners of the land of Israel.

    Consider how you would feel if Penrith was constantly shelled from Katoomba.

    Oh, you’d never want to retaliate. Not even after 60 years of it.

    You, I know, would be saints.

    Not like those arrogant Jews, …er… “Zionists”.

    The middle-class, small-c christian pro-Palestinian lobby makes me sick.

    Yes, my heart breaks for the people stuck in Gaza.

    But it didn’t happen out of the blue.

    Does it never occur to you who is fueling the flames of this war? Apart from our oil guzzling of course.

    It’s punters, like us, having a great old time, laying our bets, studying the form, picking favourites, getting off while Israeli and Palestinian gladiators fight to the death for our ideological gratification. Even me.

    While there’s such a avid, voracious audience, you can be sure the games will continue.

    So, if you care about peace, stop sniping and stop picking favourites.

    Remember, (as even I try to hold on to remembering at a time like this), that there are now organisations of Israelis and Palestinians who have had the wisdom and courage to try to eschew extremism. I have attached a list of them. Unless you’re Israeli or Palestinian, you, like me, are just perving, surreptitiously dropping your payload of well-oiled fear and anger onto the conflagration.

    So dry your crocodile tears, stop your perving, and if you genuinely care about peace, find ways of funding and supporting the joint grass-roots moderate organisations that are springing up as per the attachment.

    Apologies for the harsh language. I don’t have the patience of a saint to put up with the slings and arrows of outraged hypocrites.

Comments are closed.