Gaza
Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? Palpably so. But have you bothered for even a second to step back and ask why it is happening? Probably not if faux outrage without historical underpinnings is your usual herd follower instinct.
I’m not going to fully fill you in on the history that has led to the current Gazan catastrophe. Maybe a few Google searches will ease your path out of your rigid stance, but probably not, because such an effort requires a questioning of both yourself and the automatic prejudices that you carry. Nobody voluntarily subjects themselves to such scrutiny, do they?
Read the history. Try to understand the ramifications of it. The christian church blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus. The fact that the Romans did the actual deed is historically uncomfortable. Sure, vatican conclaves in the 400s AD tried to reverse the untruths but by then the damage was done and entrenched. Google it.
Ever since, over the last 1600 years, your christian west has subjected the Jewish people to an unending experience of pogrom, ethnic cleansing, and outright genocide. Think Venice in the medieval era, think England in the 16th cenury, think Russia in the 19th century, think the Nazis and their final solution. Uncomfortable thoughts that don’t fit in with the current zietgeist of being a lefty supporter of Palestine.
I’m proud to be a lefty. Doesn’t mean I left my brain and its capacity for critical thinking behind in the morass of the current sport of dumping on the Jews. You know, a while ago I published a little piece called The Gaza Sten-Gun Staccato, and people were that prejudicially entrenched they weren’t quick enough to understand that the piece outright pilloried both sides in the current conflict, it simply said that what both sides are doing is wrong. Well, that did not, for sure, appeal to the herd followers of either side.
I support the notion of a Palestinian State. The establishment of it is beyond due, and Israel will lose land to that new State. I support the notion of the Jewish People retaining a State of their own without the constant threat of outside interference.
I have no time for those who fail to read or comprehend the sharp bite of the history that informs the current actions of both the Palestinian and Jewish People.
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Return to home pageI support the states palestine and israel.
There should be a stop to the religious killing now and in the future.
This is unlikely to happen because women are not involved.
Australia should get behind Israeli-based Women Wage Peace and Palestinian-based Women of the Sun, these women will stop the killing.
History do you mean jewish bible history? The european(pommie) guilt built israel, in 1948, on top of the palestinians. The heavily outnumbered IDF used brilliant tactics in 67 to defeat egypt, jordan and syria. Sadly their expansion into palestinian homes is unwarranted and the iraeli law made sure palestinians displaced were no longer entitled to compensation or able to return to their homes. However, regardless of history, the israeli government’s IDF are committing crimes by killing palestinian women and children.
Good balanced article while any person, especially when lacking proximity and geopolitical expertise, can support sovereignty for Palestine and Israel, abhor both Netanyahu and Hamas regimes, but respect civilians.
As opposed to the simplistic and temporal ‘zero sum’ noise directed at ‘Israel’, ‘the west’, ‘US’ and ‘Biden – Dems’ by pro-Palestinians, Israel’s neighbours, faux anti-imperialists, anti-semites, Islamophobes, RWNJs and Putin, while like Ukraine’s sovereignty being ignored, assuming Israeli &/or Palestinian civilians have no agency vs following internal and external state propaganda.
Seems more about deflecting from both ‘codependent narcissists’ in Netanyahu and Hamas regimes, extreme ideologies, tactics and not offering realistic pathways to long term peace, democracy and productive societies; too many authoritarian allies and enemies of both also seem to prefer ongoing disruption in the region, for their own agendas.
I think we all aware of the long history of Jewish persecution. We are constantly reminded of the legacy of the Holocaust.
There is a problem with Holocaust and persecution victimhood overriding every other moral principle in this conflict, such as massive retaliation and collective punishment over proportionality in military retaliation, legitimate criticism of Israel policy being labelled anti-semitism, ‘human shields’ used an an excuse for mass civilian slaughter and so on
I am sorry but this is an insulting and, frankly, crap article. The suggestion that support of Palestine — the faux outrage and usual herd-follower instinct — makes us complicit in anti-semitism is the same argument the Zionists are using to try to reshape any criticism of Israel as antisemitism.
Keith I am afraid you clearly did leave your brain behind if you can’t see that the current morass of dumping on the Jews (your words) is actually criticism of Israel, not Jews. You may be right about the pogroms but so what, they do not excuse what is being done to the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Palestinians. If you want to quote history then look at the history of Palestine since 1948 when the guilt-ridden west decided to impose a Jewish state on Palestine, and look at the escalating imposition of disaster on the residents. I suspect most people of my age read Leon Uris and, like me, were sucked into the narrative of the brave Jewish people coming back to their homeland, making the deserts flower through their kibbutz’s and seeing off the evil philistines. We may even have applauded the Israelis for their success in the 1967 six-day-war. Who can forget the cartoonists image of the field of empty boots as the primitive Arab forces were routed by the smaller but heroic Israeli Army. But since then, some of us have had their minds changed by the cruelty and oppression of the occupation of Palestinian lands, the dehumanisation of the Palestinian people and the unending brutality. Most people condemn Hamas for the October 7 attacks, killings and hostage taking though it is now becoming clear that the Israeli Defence Forces were responsible for at least some of the civilian deaths and the more lurid allegations against the Palestinians are being shown for the propaganda they are. I am among those who see that action by Hamas as a legitimate response to decades of escalating oppression by a desperate people against an occupying force. Israel is undoubtedly committing genocide in Gaza and Australia, by its support of Israel including the sale of weapons, is now complicit. I support a two-state solution with Israel restricted to the 1967 borders and with a UN controlled demilitarised zone between the two states.
I don’t know why I feel patronised by the tone of this piece, but there you go.
As to more recent history, one might google the strategic ‘Israeli disengagement from Gaza’ by Ariel Sharon’s government in 2005. One of the many disturbing aspects of the Israeli military operation was settler resistance, the Guardian reporting: ‘some settlers had their children leave their homes with their hands up, or wearing a Star of David badge, to associate the actions of Israel with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Some protestors said that they would “not go like sheep to the slaughter”, a phrase strongly associated with the Holocaust. On August 22, Netzarim was evacuated by the Israeli military. This officially marked the end of the 38-year-long presence of Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip, though the official handover was planned for several weeks later.’ [Wiki].
I’m with RC in regard to what is seems often a careless or even mischievous conflation between Israel and the Jews – or in the ideological context, between ‘anti-Zionism’ and ‘anti-semitism’. IMHO the issues are complex, nuanced, and distressing enough without merging separate things and making them harder to talk about…
Might the raging poetics of Gaza Sten Gun Staccato have inadvertently thrown the distinction out with the bathwater?
RomeoCharlie, your description of reading Leon Uris and applauding Israel after the six day war could have been written about me. It took me decades to wake up to the facts.
As much as I admire Keith’s work, I see this as a case of “We all make mistakes.”
Well, if this isn’t genocide it is certainly a good imitation !
Chasing down Hamas militants doesn’t require the killing of innocent men women and children or the mass demolition and destruction of buildings and essential infrastructure.
South Africa was well within its rights to refer the issue of genocide to the ICJ as both they and Israel are signatories and have ratified the Genocide Convention : as a matter of international law we need a determination from the ICJ so that we all know what is genocide in practice – maybe this is not genocide.
This determination from the ICJ will give an ‘advisory opinion’ only as the ICJ (unlike the International Criminal Court) cannot prosecute offenders. Nonetheless its opinions carry weight with the UN and in the international community.
Personally I’m all in favour of referring matters like this to the International Court of Justice as it helps to establish international norms ; whether nations stick by theses norms or not is another matter and in some cases we need to consider trade and other sanctions to bring a rogue nation into line.
The entire elimination of Palestinians, victims of evil zionist plans and hopes, would be self defeating eventually, as the remaining Muslim world would plan the elimination of all Israelis. All Israelis gone, or all Palestinians gone.., is this to be tolerated as a future nightmare of failed world diplomacy? Is civilisation, simple sense to be crushed? Murder and triumph, Holy war of elimination…?
This article just begs the question, what is it about religious cults that people initially tolerate
But then turn against.
Has anybody ever asked why the Jews are in perpetual turmoil. What is it that they do that turns everyone into homicidal maniacs? It’s a cycle that keeps repeating. Just look at their history.
I think we were all into kibutzism. Being naive and not understanding the ramifications was pretty well universal. I guess after ww11 we were all traumatised. Trying to make biblical restitution has come undone.
Time to just do what’s right and fuck off the shackles of past mistakes that lived in false assumptions.
As usual, human pawns in a death cult game of strategic hegemony.
Palestine / Israel, the Levant, the Fertile Crescent has for at least 3,500 years been rightly understood to be the most important commercially strategic locale on the planet.
Accordingly it has been attacked, fought over, conquered and imposed upon by various aspirants from the north, south, east and west. Some treated the inhabitants extant with some sort of respect, even some form of self-determination within the territory, but most did not. It is notable that every armed and aspiring hegemon, except Spain and Portugal sought the territory.
Mind you it is not insignificant in the realms of modern hegemony that Spain’s manoeuvres gave rise to Pope Alexandra’s papal bulls amounting to the Doctrine of Discovery which brought a competitive onrush of horrendously brutal and destructive colonization and the modern plundering empires. I digress.
Through all the incursions into the region, the Arabs stayed, but the Jews variously came and went in various diasporas or reverse-diasporas. Right back to before formation of the Abrahamic ‘lineage’, in the Pharaonic times, the ‘Hebrews’ were disdained and set upon. How do we know? Because the ‘Hebrews’ rendered their stories to text in various forms, as far back 10th century BCE, whereas, the ‘tribal’ Arabs seem not to have until around 5th – 6th century CE with the development of the Quoran. Nevertheless, in modernity, we know fairly well by archaeological means, who was where, when and what they were doing.
In the arc of history, it would seem that the early Roman empire was brutal and exploitative, destroyed Jerusalem, caused the mass expulsion / emigration of Jews to Europe, North Africa, Egypt, Southern Arabia, Turkey and Greece. It saw the usurping of Judaism, and the Christianization of the empire via ‘pilgramage’ to the ‘Holy Land.’ Later, in the Byzantine era, through the ‘Crusades’ and into modernity, the Europeans, now fully Christianized, ran amok in innumerable sprees into the region, seeking to control and own everything, and subjugate everyone under the auspices of Christian ‘Holy’ rights – an utter ruse overlaying the the real venture of commercial / trade / strategic enterprise.
Of course, as the Arabs (in part now Muslims) sought to deal with the Mesopotamians et al, the Byzantines and the Crusaders (England, France, Spain, Germany and Norway were running amok, hacking and rending anything and everything in their path. And so it went on and on and on in the ‘Fertile Crescent’.
In the meantime, the Europeans in their homelands were busy orchestrating the hating and oppressing and murdering of the Jews.
Come the Great War, opportunity arose, a ruse to expiate European guilt, whilst sneaking into a collaboration with the Zionists. The Balfour Treaty – a farce, claptrap – never mind the Arabs, the Jews or anyone else. In its grasping, Britain looses its mind, engendering and immersing itself in a bloodbath. It couldn’t fuck off quick enough.
Fear not, the League of Nations, not only Europe, but America will sort out all the messes.
And before too long, comes WWII, Germany (again) and the Holocaust. And then 1946-48, opportunity II, the United Nations and ultimately, UN Resolution 101. Yet another farce and claptrap of convenience – never mind the Arabs, they don’t count, and they have to be hated anyway.
So it comes to pass, yet again the obsessive hegemonic aspirations of the ‘western empire’, and the strategic wiles of the 5-eyes+ seeking to blockade, under their ‘special’ rules-based-order the most strategically important groin on the planet. Never mind the Arabs …. are they semites? By gosh some of them are very rich! Best be well oiled-up, readied with multiple masks, and plenty of ammo.
For some it may be hard to divine, whose hand is doing the chopping, and who will be doing the wielding into the future?
There can be no doubt that the Jews have suffered many forms of historical prejudice but as one bloodied and dust covered Palestinian man said to a reporter in Gaza, “why does Palestine have to pay for the Holocaust?”
You dont hand over the keys to a very expensive tank, complete with a licence to kill to just anybody.
No, you select a thug who has been brainwashed to believe they are special, not subject to any form of justice, exceptional.
The religious bit is the brainwashing portion in getting the killers ready.
The villian in the piece is the president who was sufficiently frightened by the prisoners under his charge, and authorised the sub-humans on his payroll to commit genocide, with a tick from the “Orthodox” who are the nodding donkeys in this fracas.
Common sense says we are all equal, but not to the members of this cult
” … what both sides are doing is wrong”
And that is it in a nutshell, if something so complex can be summed up so neatly.
There are no winners in this conflict, just a never-ending increase in the roll-call of losers.
RomeoCharlie:
Actualy, there are plenty of people – a few even here – who specifically and deliberately aim their opprobrium at Jewish people in general, not at the state of Israel and/or the expansionist zionists.
another post that may have seemed a bit extreme gone, lol.
I wanted to say, what makes us accepting of religious cults that also makes us want to turn on them, time after time.
Have we been reading history all wrong?
I am so over victim hood being used for sympathy and an apparent free card to do what ever they want.
Both sides have played the victim card and we watch in horror as the media wants to take sides. Unfortunately, both sides play for keeps and both sides have learned lessons from the other.
apparently, the biggest victim gets the goodies…….
I read something recently where many protesters in London were asked why they were protesting against Israel and the majority had no idea.
This is the world we live in, just a great big bunch of sheep, let’s not bother with details. Sounds awfully like the teachings of the Lieberal Party .
‘That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into oh Lord’, said Israel to the star of the movie – God bless America!
This is a balanced article, the deeply entrenched Intergenerational hatred is on both sides.
1. The response of Israel to Hamas terrorism is disproportionate.
2. Too many people gloss over the Hamas charter, which has stated – killing Jews is a responsibility.
3. Israel’s sensitivity about security is because each of its neighbours is, or has been, committed to its elimination.
4. Australians should reflect that we’re incredibly fortunate that our original inhabitants aren’t as inclined to a violent response to dispossession
AC should specify, when making statements about the Hamas Charter, which document he refers to, the 1988 document or the 2017 document.
Did you notice I used the term “has stated”
If the Liberal Party adopted a policy of union rights, would you believe them? Hamas had a written policy of killing Jews for 30 years .
Note this; AC has refused to specify which document he refers to.
He thinks that his weasel words “has stated” is a get out of jail free card. He’s trying very hard to appear here as the voice of reason and balance, but it’s difficult being a devotee of the superpower that could end the carnage with one phone call, a superpower that is using the carnage to prop up its interests in West Asia, and so he’s failing miserably.
Here’s why he refuses to specify which document he refers to.
From Wiki — “While the 1988 Hamas Charter had been widely criticized for its antisemitism, the 2017 document stated that Hamas’ fight was not with Jews as such because of their religion but with the Zionist project. However, Hamas fell short of repudiating the original, 1988 charter, saying it was a document of its time and the new document represented Hamas’s position for now.”
AC is deliberately hiding the full story of the Hamas Charter from readers. And not for the first time . He pulled the same trick, the same weasel words on 11/12/23 with “As this was the written policy of Hamas”, thereby concealing from readers that this was a Hamas position that had since been re-written.
For 30 years it was the written policy of Hamas to kill Jews.
A few months ago they proved they’re still willing to engage in indiscriminate slaughter of Jews
What exactly is incorrect about that?
“What exactly is incorrect about that?”
Ahh, yes. Spoken like a true propagandist. Like a loyal servant of the hegemon.
AC knows that the best propaganda contains a little element of truth which, when presented alone and out of context, paints a distorted picture.
The question readers must ask themselves now, is this — why did AC conceal the 2017 document?
You might prefer it if I expressed this position differently, but my comment containsed only facts.
Fortunately, you don’t get to determine facts, or the manner of my expression
“You might prefer it if I expressed this position differently…”
I would prefer you to express your position honestly.
All you have to do is demonstrate that I’ve posted something that isn’t a fact.
Otherwise, it’s just you trying to determine the manner of my expression.
Fortunately, I don’t take any notice of those that demand compliance with a style
“All you have to do is demonstrate that I’ve posted something that isn’t a fact.”
Posting something that is not factual is forgivable. Withholding information is not.
“Fortunately, I don’t take any notice of those that demand compliance with a style”
Honesty and openness is a style?
You seem to fail to understand basic grammar. I didn’t realise that
You see, what I can’t understand is, how a People so inured of persecution and how it feels, could then turn around and inflict the horrors of Gaza on Gazans?
A commentator, please do not distract from the real issues here.
“You seem to fail to understand basic grammar.”
I am mortified.
I’m cut to the quick.
Such a cutting comment coming from one who three times in consecutive comments forgot the significance of the full stop, leaving me hanging there in expectation of some revelation to come.
Jewish persecution pre-dates the death of Jesus. Their refusal to adopt local religions and customs and their own forms of persecution against other religions caused friction and instability in host countries.
Also, those distasteful Muslim religious attitudes toward them are more than matched by their own arcane hatreds toward others.
All non-Jews (goyim) are regarded as “human cattle” and their official religious destiny is to eventually rule over everyone else.
Muslims would likely have been more tolerant if the Jewish return to the Middle East didn’t involve the displacement, violence and terrorism toward existing citizens (and the British) during the campaign to establish their own State.
The hands of Christians are also not clean. It wasn’t just the Nazis who purged them, it was often their own neighbours throughout Europe who gladly turned them in and even the USA turned back a ship-load of Jews fleeing Germany.
Sometimes history is selectively ignored and often misinterpreted but I wonder how they will put a positive spin on current events?
European Jews had no right to establish a “Jewish State” smack in the middle of Palestine. Especially since “Israel” was founded on terrorism and terrorism continues to be Zionist policy.