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The world’s eyes were on Sydney the night of October 9 as demonstrators lit flares and burned Israeli flags on the steps of the Opera House while chanting “Gas the Jews”. Hundreds of demonstrators had met at Sydney’s Town Hall to snake their way down to Circular Quay and through to the Opera House. One Jewish counter-protestor was arrested “for his own safety”. Another — an Anglican priest — was chased by thugs and had to find sanctuary behind a police van.
The protestors were there following the massacre of more than one thousand Jews in Israel, the rape of Jewish women and the abduction of Jewish hostages. (There were also non-Jews killed and abducted — like the Thai workers gruesomely killed on video. May their memory be a blessing.) No military operation into Gaza had yet commenced, but the protestors were not there to protest military action. They were there to celebrate the massacre of the Jews which, in their view, was an act of just resistance. This Sydney imam, Lakemba’s Sheikh Ibrahim Dadoun, was “elated” by the massacre. An Australian Senator hailed the Palestinian cause. To them, it was not the greatest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust that was objectionable — no, it was that there were Jews in the land “from the river to the sea”.
In light of the expected demonstrations, New South Wales police issued a warning to the city’s Jews. This is what a friend who works in Sydney’s CBD received from his employer:
Hey Everyone,
I was advised by the NSW police to avoid the city tonight, as there is a pro-Hamas rally marching from town hall at 5:30pm to the Opera house where the Israeli flag will be lit in solidarity.
Keeping politics out of work, the concerns are that it is expected to be violent protest with dozens of arrests.
Everyone would be advised to stay away from the area, especially Israelis/Jewish people who might be targeted.
I hope today will go without any violent incidents. Stay safe.
So the heavy police presence was there to facilitate a pro-Hamas rally and to dispel Jews from Sydney’s CBD, for they could not guarantee Jews’ safety.
I’m a Sydney CBD worker and I suppose I was as aghast as anyone at these events. This week Jewish mums cancelled play dates in the park and kept kids home from school. (The mini-forts Australian Jewish schools and synagogues have transformed into over the last few decades seem not enough for some mums). I came home Tuesday with my wife asking me if it was safe for our six-year-old boy to wear his kippah outside. Yes, I said. Of course, I thought. But how obvious is it, when official police and government organs are warning Sydney’s Jews to flee Sydney’s heart?
These events have caused me to reflect on the Jews’ history in Australia. It is perhaps insufficiently appreciated how deep that bond goes. I believe in the goodness of Australian society. With a heavy heart and a deep affection for this great country, here I reflect.
Modern Australia’s beginnings are strangely intertwined with the Jews.
Just like the first Portuguese navigators to circumnavigate Africa chased the land of the mythical Christian king Prestor John, so the British believed there was a colony of Jewish merchants somewhere to the south of the known world, perhaps part of Davis Land, a land allegedly spotted by the Englishman Edward Davis in 1686. William Dampier, the English authority on the island of New Guinea, included Jews living there on his map of his voyages around 1700. More recent news of Jews had circulated after an evening spent by the Dolphin and her British crew in Tahiti in 1767, where someone thought they had seen pale skinned traders. It was considered to be a natural extension of the Jews’ millennium-old trading networks in the Near and Far East. And so, as we might picture, it was in search of a great southern land and trading Jews that Captain Cook set sail.
The first real Jewish presence arrived with the First Fleet in 1788, with at least eight of her convict cargo Jews. But perhaps the singular giant of Australian Jewry is Sir John Monash. Born in Melbourne to Prussian Jewish emigres, he was fifty when he led his first field command of Australian battalions at Gallipoli. From there, he commanded the Australian Corps, at the time the largest individual corps on the Western Front. It was under his meticulous leadership that the Allied forces dealt the first crushing blow against the Germans on 8 August 1918 at the Battle of Amiens. If the Western Front was a meat grinder, it was not for the Australian and New Zealand troops under Monash who that day suffered a more modest ~1% causality rate — fruit of his planning. Not just ANZAC troops either — Monash was the first foreign leader ever to lead Americans in battle.
After the Great War, through the depression years and the rising specter of communism, his stature was such that he was approached by Australian proto-fascists, who would have overthrown Australian democracy and installed him as Australia’s Mussolini. He would have none of it. “Depend upon it,” he wrote in one letter, “the only hope for Australia is the ballot box, and an educated electorate.”
The Jews did just fine in Australia. In the 1890s when the Chief Rabbi of Britain made an appeal to buy farmland for Jews in Palestine (then a part of the Ottoman Empire), half the funds came from Australian Jews, when there were some 10,000 Jews in Australia. After the war, Monash told the Maccabean Society he never experienced prejudice on “any question of race or religion” and that “[i]n Australia we have no Jewish question”. Whilst Monash’s Jewishness wasn’t exactly helpful in his rise to prominence, it was his status as a volunteer militia man and his German background that hindered him more. In a time that followed Britain’s Benjamin Disraeli as Prime Minister, a hero general in Monash and a High Court Justice-cum-Governor-General of Australia in Sir Isaac Isaacs, it’s fair to say the Anglo-Australian world was good to its Jews. (Melbourne Club snobbery notwithstanding: Sir Isaac Isaacs had been an honorary member while Australia’s first native-born Governor-General. It would not have him after his term finished.)
Monash did not live to see Australia’s chief delegate at the 1938 Evian Conference on Refugees reject sanctuary for Jews fleeing Germany, unconsciously and ironically echoing Monash’s own words to the Maccabean Society:
as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one
Despite this blemish — Australia was hardly alone, nor had the Holocaust yet happened — Australia has been a warm home for its Jews since, including welcoming some 30,000 Jews after WWII, and subsequent waves out of South Africa and the former Soviet Union (my family arrived in 1991 from Georgia).
Australia’s Jews are a tiny minority. Around 100,000 mainly between Melbourne and Sydney — roughly equivalent to a quarter of Australia’s immigration intake for this year alone. Certainly, they feel as Australian as anyone else. Obsessed with the same footy teams, speaking in the same twang, broadly split politically in the same way as other Australians. Monash represents one zenith of Australian Jewry — an unexpected hero in an hour of need for the British Empire — but certainly his contribution is not alone. Isaacs may have been Australia’s first Jewish Governor-General, but not her last — Sir Zelman Cowen was the Governor-General from 1977 to 1982. It would take a far more ambitious author than me to list the contributions of Australian Jewry to this nation’s arts, enterprise, education, politics, judiciary.—
On Wednesday, October 11, 2023, thousands of Jews gathered in Dover Heights on Sydney’s eastern coast. Police blocked roads, stood at road corners and patrolled on horseback. Attendees thanked the police as they passed.
Australian Labor and Liberal ministers including the New South Wales Premier Chris Minns and Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton attended, as did a Teal, Wentworth MHR and local member Allegra Spender.
Mourner’s kaddish was said by thousands for those killed in Israel.
Mr Minns apologised for the barbarity at the Opera House. He said he does not want to live in a state where that happens. Going further, with a surprising touch, possibly from an especially thoughtful speechwriter but undiminished if so in its sincerity, Minns said: God made three promises to Abraham. First, a people. Second, a land in Israel. Third, that they shall be blessed. And so it is and shall be. It was a moving moment, a touching gesture to a wounded community from a Premier caught off guard when the steps of the Opera House were ignominiously broadcast across the world.
Liberal Opposition Leader Dutton was unequivocal. Australia stands behind Israel in its mission to destroy Hamas. Australia is a friend to her Jews.
The Book of Exodus begins as Joseph’s contribution to Egypt is forgotten, his saving the Egyptians from terrible drought.
The children of Israel were fruitful and multiplied and became strong, and the land became filled with them. A new pharaoh arose over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph.
Australia has not forgotten her Jews.
Misha Saul kvetches at www.kvetch.au
Well and honourably said Misha. Know this, that most Australians are a quiet and peaceful people, not easily prodded and poked to action, but I, and perhaps others, realise that there is trouble afoot. Know this also: That even though there are evil people in Australia who never have, do not now and never will, wish us well, one day they will prod and poke us just that little too much, and the evil ones will not find succour anywhere, not even in the dark and musty holes in the corners of their webs, where they cower in fear of a righteous anger. At heart they are cowards who need mob rule to commit their atrocities, and in that need is their undoing.
Without any doubt the contribution to Australia by its Jewish citizens has been wonderful. As the author quite rightly mentioned, two of this country’s heads of state have been Jews, and so too our greatest General. How many country’s on earth other than Israel can boast two Jewish heads of state in a hundred and twenty years, not many. In my life I have had the pleasure of having Jewish friends and acquaintences in the most unlikely places. Having said that, just as some Jews are anti zionist, I find it difficult to be a supporter of the Stae of Israel. Putting to one side the mechanics and history of its formation, it broke the Palestinian people and now owns them. It is now responsible for their situation. Moreover it has converted every Jew in Australia into a potential fifth columnist. Its existence and the so called “right of return” places a question mark over their loyalties. That is sad. It is Australia’s loss. As to recent events the Australian state and community must and should do every thing in their respective powers to protect and safeguard our Jewish citizens.
Good Lord Occidental. Is every Australian with dual citizenship a “potential fifth columnist”, with a “question mark over their loyalties”, or only jews?
I read that 700,000+ people born in mainland China live in Australian.
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That is where I see “potential fifth columnist(s)”, with a “question mark over their loyalties”,
Sindri, the short answer is yes. Everyone. That is why the constitution prohibits dual nationals from being in parliament. Remember I said “potential”. For a time the most likely fifth columnists were communists during the height of its popularity. Today right now, the most likely fifth columnists are disaffected muslims, but they are no great loss. Losing part of the heart of Australian Jewery has been a real loss.
It’s a difficult issue isn’t it? I have dual citizenship, and having regard to the other country it’s particularly laughable to think that my citizenship of it could ever conceivably put me in a position of conflict. But that’s not the case with many other countries and I agree, it’s hard to see where and how you draw a prinicipled line.
A difficult issue for the state or the collective, but not the individual. I would seek dual citizenship as soon as I could. The truth is a state can not be trusted, and having a second passport in ones back pocket is a good idea.
Well put.
I know a Brazilian who is now also an Australian, intends to remain here, and travels on an Australian passport, but retains his Brazilian passport because of the possibility that China annexes Australia.
Being a Jew does not create dual citizenship. Most Jews do not, never did and never will live in UN Mandated Israel.
There has never been a UN Mandated Israel. Using that invented phrase is a cunning mealy mouthed attempt to put a question on the legitimacy of Israel existence.
In a way you are correct because the partition of Palestine to allow the creation of an Israeli State was never validated so even the borders of 1947 are not valid.
Also, Jewish terrorist gangs, Irgun and Stern, did a lot of the groundwork for the invasion by Zionist soldiers prior to 1947.
However, Israel was forced on Palestine because of the UN Mandate and those borders are the only ones Israel could hope to defend in a court of law. The rule of conquest was tossed out before Israel was created. So anything taken in war is occupied. Which means, the only borders which might be legitimate are the UN partition borders.
One thing is certain Israel has no right to take all of Palestine. Never did and never will unless it creates one state shared equally by the native Palestinians and the European colonisers.
“the partition of Palestine was never validated”? What on earth do you think you mean by that? Let’s keep it simple. There are 7 million Jews living in Israel. Recent events have shown that your “Palestinians” are a psychotic rabble who want nothing more than blood and rapine.
What’s your arrogant, snide, Final Solution for the Jews of Israel? More of what we saw last week?
@JasonGardner,
I want no final solution for anyone and find the term offensive given its origins.
Your description of Palestinians in their entirety is bigotry of the worst kind and a major problem for much of the violence of the occupation.
I don’t have answers. I just know that Israel debases itself with the violence of its occupation and colonisation and loses the support of many, including Jews. It needs that support to survive. But the occupation must end and the Palestinians given freedom and justice.
Hopefully in a State shared equally by all, a democracy where religion is secondary to citizenship.
RR, I didn’t suggest that being a jew automatically confers Israeli citizenship. I was engaging with Occidental’s comment about the entitlement of returned jews to Israeli citizenship, and the potential for split loyalties where dual citizenship is concerned (as he clarifies, an issue not confined to Israelis).
Sorry, the medium is cryptic. However an easy mistake given how easy it is for those with Jewish ancestry to get Israeli citizenship even though as a religion that confers nothing. It’s a bit like the one-drop mentality abolites like to use today.
I have to say with a Jewish grandparent, who opted out and married a Protestant, I am appalled that I could get citizenship in Israel while some poor sod who is a Christian or Muslim Palestinian, whose family lived there for a thousand years, cannot. It is all a bit religiously racist for me.
I suspect dual citizenship is not a problem unless it has religious factors which tend to make people more passionate if not at times, fanatical.
And one has to understand the fantasy factor at work in the Israeli colonial event. People hoped and dreamed so much and trying to turn religious belief into a literal reality, opposed by many Orthodox Jews then and now, by the way, along with the mythical quality applied to the creation of Israel, has created a heady brew of religion, dreams, myths and allegiances. I have Jewish friends who deplore the reality of the Zionist State because of what they for so long believed the Israeli State was meant to be and should have been. Dreams dashed turn bitter in an instant. That is the problem with dreams and fantasies which ignore realities. The most noble intentions can create nightmares if they are not solidly grounded in realities.
Many really did, in their ignorance, believe the line that Palestine was a land without people when historical facts made it very clear it was not. And I know from reading that a lot of the early Jewish colonists really did want to work with the Palestinian non-Jews and had noble intentions.
They had of course to ignore that the people they wanted to love them were having their land, homes, possessions stolen from them and violently so. One man’s dream is another’s nightmare just as one man’s terrorist is another freedom fighter.
More than anything I feel sorry for Israelis because they have been aided and abetted by their supporters, most of whom live safely around the world, in becoming the colonial military abuser that they are. Without so much support things would never have become as bad as they are. Israel should have been called to account in the years following the foundation of the State. It was not and the violence has continued from the colonisers and created more violence in response.
It’s just another iteration of “some of my best friends are Jews but fortunately they’re not like the rest”.
You spend a lot of time dismissing with trite comments what others say and very little time actually mounting a coherent rebuttal.
Yes, I consider the Israeli treatment of Palestinians one of the greatest injustices and crimes in modern history. I also consider Indonesia’s colonisation of West Papua another and China’s occupation of Tibet. However, neither Indonesia or China treat the people they have colonised as badly as Israel treats the Palestinians.
More critical Israel claims to be a Western democracy and that is the bar by which it is judged. Neither China or Indonesia make such a claim.
Well said.
Just as I do not blame all Muslims for the actions of a few terrorists neither do I blame all Jews for the terrorist actions of the Israeli State and fanatical Jewish settlers in Occupied Palestine.
If Israel had done what others have done, created one State shared equally by the native people and the European colonisers then violence from the Palestinians could be called terrorism. But it has not done that, instead using terrible violence against the Palestinians to maintain occupation and colonisation.
Israel has done everything to provoke more violence from the Palestinians who have generally been very peacefully long-suffering apart from a few outbursts, including this latest tragedy.
I believe Australia should support and defend all of its citizens regardless of their religion but I do not believe we need to or should support the Israeli colonial State given its appalling treatment of the Palestinians.
It seems odd that here in Australia, Aboriginal activists and their Leftist supporters, talk about invasion, genocide, stolen land, truth telling, sovereignty, treaty, reparations, etc., and now such popular support for Constitutional recognition and a Voice to Parliament, by people who have the same citizenship, rights, freedoms and opportunities as every one else, while the Palestinians have no rights or freedoms, being either militarily occupied on one fragment of their land (getting smaller and smaller as Israeli settlements expand), or imprisoned on another fragment. It all seems incomprehensible.
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To put things in perspective, the Palestinian claim that their land is “from the river to the sea”, as was the case pre 1947, is very modest, compared to the claim in Genesis 15:18, “In that same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:”
You speak uncomfortable truths for Israel supporters. Israel denies Palestinians exist by calling them Arabs. It denies the existence of Palestine by calling some of it the West Bank and pretending the Gaza prison is a separate State and has borders instead of an electric fence surrounding it.
It pretends there is no Palestinian Resistance just Hamas, a terrorist group, most of whose senior officials are in Israeli gaols and have been for years, and the rest are in the Gaza prison.
It pretends that violence from the Palestinians, codename Hamas, is unprovoked when it has been provoked by 75 years of Israeli State sanctioned terrorism.
Let us take heart that more and more Jews, particularly American, but also Australian, are taking a stand against the debasing of their religion by the Zionist Israeli State. Everything Israel has done to the Palestinians is a total betrayal of Judaism, a religion of great antiquity and wisdom.
The UN passed a resolution in November of 1947, partitioning Palestine, and the “proverbial” hit the fan in ’48.
Misha, don’t disagree with any of the above. More power to your pen. In common with the vast majority of Australians, I wish Israel well: the only democracy in the middle east, whose citizens, including its Arab citizens, have rights, opportunities, and security that exist nowhere else in the region, while all the while it must defend itself against fanatical theocrats and corrupt despots, none closer than those in Gaza. Only in Wonderland does the area behind a wall, built to stop people being continually slaughtered, become a “prison” imposed on the slaughterers
But I checked out your website. Gosh. Your enthusiastic advocacy of self-determination for Aborigines by the creation of their own independent state within Australia – “zionism for Aborigines” as you call it, “at a very real cost to Australia in land and money”, is balderdash, the more so since the moral argument you make for the idea, to the extent you have exposed it at all, seems to be no more than the idea that the rest of us are living on “stolen land”. That is nursery moralising. You would make a more rational case if you frankly based it on the need to end indigenous disadvantage once and for all by means of giving Aborigines de facto and de jure independence – not that it would make it a better idea.
One kvetch which is, I’m afraid, drivel.
https://www.kvetch.au/p/zionism-for-aboriginal-australians
@Sindri,
I would humbly suggest that just as many have over-estimated what Australians think about the voice, so do they over-estimate what many Australians think about Israel. In terms of the Aussie belief in a fair go, it is surely the Palestinians who have been occupied and brutally colonised for 75 years and not the other way around.
And that includes many Jews because there are Jewish Australians who fight, as do many American Jews, for justice for Palestine.
The ABC’s Middle Eastern correspondent Tom Joyner has labelled reports about babies being beheaded by Hamas terrorists in Israel as “bullshit”.
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He should be sacked but being on the ABC payroll, paid heaps out of our taxes, he may get a bonus, even a promotion. You can bet he won’t be reprimanded!
The White House has also walked back on the beheaded babies claim. It seems the claim came from Israel, not noted for facts in regard to the Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular, and provided no proof. The origin of the charge is said to be a radical illegal settler in Occupied Palestine.
Given how easy it is to fabricate photos in this age, when it comes to war, believe nothing particularly if the information comes from the side which hates the other.
Even in the Gaza prison the best source of information are the UN and international medical professionals who work there. A level of objectivity is critical.
Good piece Misha.
I for one support the Jews, and the state of Israel and wish it well, and more strength to their brave IDF soldiers in once again being called upon to defend their ancient historical land and modern Nation, the only really free democratic country in the middle east, and I’m a good C.O.E. Christian Anglo Saxon, born and bred in Nth Qld, as my father was before me.
I really am curious as to why so many Christians support Israel and its actions as an occupier and coloniser when, by any reading of the teachings of Jesus, it would be the Palestinians and their fight for justice and freedom he would support.
I ask the question in all sincerity because while I follow no religion, I have studied Catholicism and other Christian expressions and I really cannot understand the rejection of the subjugated and victimised Palestinians, many of whom are Christians even if most are Muslims.
If I may raise a moot point, Mr. Marriott, you stated above that IDF soldiers were defending “their ancient historical land and modern Nation”, but over one hundred years of extensive archeology in the “Holy Land” clearly reveal that the Jews/Hebrews/Israelites were Canaanites, and there is no evidence of a Joshua-led invasion of the Children of Israel. Indeed, excavations of demonstrably Israelite houses discover Canaanite idols.
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The Torah can hardly be taken as an accurate history, describing as it does the creation of the Universe (in six days), Noah’s global flood, etc. Sigmund Freud, in his book “Moses and Monotheism”, put forward a credible argument that Moses was actually an exiled Egyptian priest of the short lived monotheism period. Then, there is the issue of the Ashkenazim, the eastern European Jews, movers and shakers of Zionism, and their somewhat unclear genealogy.
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Arthur Koestler wrote a book, some time ago, called “The Thirteenth Tribe”, putting forward a theory that the Ashkenazi were the descendants of the Kazar Kingdom, somewhere north of the Caspian Sea, that had converted to Judaism. That should not seem incredible, as ancient leaders would convert their entire population to some new religion or other, such as Constantine converting the Roman empire to Christianity, and much later a Tzar of Russia converted his people to the Eastern Orthodox religion, adopting the Byzantine Greek alphabet and calendar as part of the package.
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Recently, a book has come out titled “The Invention of the Jewish People”, by Shlomo Sands, an Israeli academic. Sands expands upon the theme introduced by Koestler, but goes much farther, debunking the myth of the “Diaspora” (the Christian Church used to claim that the Jews were thrown out of Palestine by the Romans, and that it was God’s punishment for the execution of Jesus Christ), and puts forward a logical explanation that the Diaspora were likely to be converts. That would seem to be the case if one takes for example the Ethiopian Jews and the “Arab Jews”, who looked and spoke pretty much like their non-Jewish neighbours.
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Sands goes much further, and posits an intriguing idea that today’s Palestinians are actually the original Jews, who had converted to Islam! He explains that, if the Jews had not been expelled by the Romans, they then became subjected later by the Christian Byzantine Empire, who saw them as the “killers of Christ”, and were forbidden to go up on to the Temple Mount to pray, there being a Christian Church where Herod’s Temple used to stand. When the Arabs invaded with Koran and sword, and Byzantine rule was no longer, the Jews were finally free to be on the Temple Mount! Further, Sands imagines, the Jews understandably saw the Muslims as their liberators from Byzantine oppression, and perceived Mohammed as the long prayed for Messiah! Conversion to Islam would be a logical next step, particularly because there was no strong institution of Jewish leadership or Synagogues, and there was the added benefit of not having to pay the unbeliever’s tax.
“The Torah can hardly be taken as an accurate history, describing as it does the creation of the Universe (in six days), Noah’s global flood, etc. ”
There’s an odd equivalence in the superficial manner of reading this by both fundamentalis believers and atheists. They often are the same people who fawn over the spiritual depth of fairy tales about rainbow snakes and how the morning star became fire to toast a wombat.
Egyptologists have transcribed ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs talking about Palestine and the Palestinians who invaded them more than once, 5,000 years ago. They also made a note, in stone, when a tribe called Judea arrived in Palestine/Canaan 3,000 years ago.
What is interesting is that, despite being consummate scribes the Egyptians never mentioned slaves or Hebrews. I don’t think the Habiru theory holds water.
And, when the Hebrews were supposedly fleeing to Palestine/Canaan, that land was an Egyptian colony which makes the story very strange and unlikely indeed.
Keep religion to religion and historical facts to history.
Australians have opened their land and their hearts to many religions and peoples. My Lutheran, Baptist, Wendish, Catholic, Protestant ancestors fled persecution to make a new life in Australia. Ironically my Jewish ancestors only fled poverty and had spent two centuries living peacefully in the UK before emigrating in the mid 19th century.
It is important to separate Zionist Israel from Judaism because the actions of the Israeli State do not represent or reflect the great worth of Judaism as a religion or its followers.
Israel was planned and promoted by Zionists from the 19th century and most of them were atheists. But they garnered support from Judaism and some Jews financial and otherwise, for their plan to colonise Palestine. Interestingly many orthodox Jews rejected the Zionist plan and a lot still do, arguing that Israel was religious metaphor and not meant to be made literal as the Zionists wanted.
All Zionists are not Jews and all Jews are not Zionists is also an ignored reality.
Israel’s behaviour should not reflect on Jews but it will until Judaism separates itself from the Israeli State.
On a heartening note, in recent years a number of groups have been set up by Jewish Americans to fight for justice in Palestine and they are more vocal now, following the latest phase in this terrible colonial tragedy. Two of them are Mondoweiss and If Americans Knew. It will be Jews who have the greatest say in calling Israel to account and bringing resolution to this injustice. And rightly so. We can only applaud their courage and integrity and applaud even more loudly those few Israelis who do the same.
This is totally inaccurate. In 1947 the UN divided the Palestine Mandate between a Jewish state and a Palestinian Arab state. There had been no independent Palestinian state in history up to that time. Plus Jerusalem as a separate, internationalised area. This was reluctantly accepted by Israel, but totally rejected by the Arabs. When Israel declared independence in May 1948, five Arab armies invaded the new state with the aim of wiping it out. The leader of the Palestinians, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was a buddy of Hitler, whom he met during the War, with Hitler promising him that he would exterminate the Jews in Palestine if he conquered the area. To everyone’s amazement, the Jews of Israel won the War, but were unable to conquer the Old City of Jerusalem, with its Jewish and other holy sites, which was taken over by Jordan. Jordan did not allow any Jews to visit the Western Wall or any other site until Israel won the 1967 War and took over the Old City. In 1948-9 ,the Arabs now had what we call the West Bank and Gaza in their hands. Presumably they then established an independent Palestinian state in these areas? You bet they didn’t: the West Bank was taken over by Jordan, and Gaza administered by Egypt. They refused to establish an independent Palestinian state in the years 1948-67 when these areas were in Arab hands, This was the situation Israel found when it won the 1967 War and conquered these area. Israel is the side of the American state of Massachusetts, about 0.3% of the vast Arab area from Morocco to the Persian Gulf. The Arabs have all the rest, in maybe twenty separate countries, most of which are fundamentalist Islamic. What is bad about Israel having 0.3% of this vast area? Which has been at the centre of their identity for 3000 years? White Australia had no connection with Australia in any way, shape, or form before 1788, but now have an entire continent. Which of the two is greedy? Also, it is the far left which hates Israel today, not normally readers of Quadrant.
YES!! and shamed to discover the anti-Semites among Q readers
It’s proudly displayed by rr whenever the opportunity arises here and on Spectator. It’s an unusual and inventive format. where the particular antisemite defines “Jew” and invents fake history to suit their prejudices.
Katzenjammer you seem to be an authority on all things Jewish. Could you tell us all what epithets are used to describe a Jew who has the temerity to criticiise the actions of the Israel government, in and about its treatment of Palestinians. Surely not anti-semite?
Jew-ish – meaning sort of Jewish but not really. Probably had a Jewish mother or father but won’t have any Jewish grandchildren. The sort of Jew we like to lose.
Interesting. Years ago I knew an old nazi who served in Hitlers life guard division, he had similiar views about certain people breeding. Ironic.
Leaving Judaism usually takes a few generations. That’s not breeding – it’s due to the depth of unconscious custodianship of the culture and traditions.m I’m sure you’ll think that’s hogwash because it won’t fit within your personal narrow view of what constitutes Jewishness.
Fascinating. The Mischling test might have been devised by Jews. It certainly sounds similar.
Zionism was invented in the 1890’s and Nazism in the 1930’s. Humans tend to pick up ideas from everywhere. Religions certainly do. The most dangerous ideologies are those who promote themselves as well-intentioned and noble in cause. Both Zionism and Nazism did that from different perspectives. It rarely ends well.
Read my comments on Indonesia’s colonisation of West Papua and China’s colonisation of Tibet if you want to see how my principles of justice, rule of law, democracy and common human decency are applied.
Israel is subject to the same principles but more so because it claims to be a Western democracy.
Katz, I don’t think Rosross is an anti-semite. I profoundly disagree with her on the issues being debated here, not to mention Ukraine, and no doubt she fully returns the compliment. Regrettably, jew-baiters do find QoL (of all places!) congenial. They know who they are; they pop up from time to time, describing their targets in eliptical terms (always “they” and “them”) ranting about how we have let “them” hold the levers of power etc etc, and lacing their comments with spittle-flecked invective. But Rosross isn’t one of them.
@Sindri,
I just caught up with this comment. Thankyou. I respect those who can disagree even passionately and remain considered and courteous.
No problem.
For completeness, there’s a good example of the phenomenon in amongst the comments on David Suissa’s article of 10 October. The person concerned is an occasional commenter but repeat offender when it comes to jew-baiting.
@Londsdale,
Make a case for anti-semitism which is a hatred of Judaism and Jews.
Criticism of Israel cannot be anti-semitic.
“Criticism of Israel cannot be anti-semitic.”
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Antisemites couldn’t possibly have a negative view of Israel, says rosros.
@Katz,
Antisemitism is a hatred of Judaism and its followers. I have often defended Judaism and its followers despite making valid criticism of Israel’s behaviour from 1947. They are different things. I think Jews and their religion suffer being caught in the backwash of the occupation of Palestinians. They deserve better.
You said: . In 1947 the UN divided the Palestine Mandate between a Jewish state and a Palestinian Arab state.
The partition was driven by the Zionists, mostly atheists who fabricated the concept, as atheists they would, that being Jewish was not a religion but a people. This was required to push for a State since religions have no rights to homelands.
You said: There had been no independent Palestinian state in history up to that time.
How could there be when Palestine had been under occupation for more than 600 years? Also, the concept of a state is historically recent. Neither Germany or Italy were nations or States until the mid 19th century but, like Palestine they had been countries for thousands of years.
You said: Plus Jerusalem as a separate, internationalised area. This was reluctantly accepted by Israel, but totally rejected by the Arabs.
Either talk about Arabs, a culture and Europeans or talk about Israelis and Palestinians or Jews with Christians or Muslims. Apples with apples.
The Palestinians totally rejected the plan to tear their country apart to allow European colonists to set up their own State. Why would they not?
You said: When Israel declared independence in May 1948, five Arab armies invaded the new state with the aim of wiping it out.
Why was it surprising that Palestine called on its allies to defend it against invasion? The French and Poles did exactly the same. Difference is they won and the Palestinians lost.
So, your claim is that because the Jerusalem Mufti talked to the Nazis the Palestinians are immediately disenfranchised with no rights? Seriously?
What then is your position on the fact the Zionists worked with the Nazis to send colonists to Palestine?
You said: In 1948-9 ,the Arabs now had what we call the West Bank and Gaza in their hands.
Having had much of their country stolen by European colonists. It is only called the West Bank and Gaza, once just a city and port because Israel hates saying the word Palestine.
As to hating Israel, most who speak brutal truths about the Zionist State do not hate it, they just hate what it does. That includes a lot of Jews and understandably so.
I hate no person, religion, state or country. But I do condemn behaviour which betrays the principles of justice, rule of law, democracy and common human decency.
Peter Dutton has hardly stood out on many things as sensible and credible.
I wonder if Dutton knows that Hamas was created with the help of Israel, as a colonial ploy against the PLO. Hamas became popular with Palestinians because unlike the PLO it was not corrupt and was actually effective in helping them survive the misery of their lives under Israeli occupation.
Hamas was elected by the Palestinians but by then no doubt the worm had turned, as also happened with Hezbollah, and Israel and the US decided that Hamas had to be destroyed. Clearly Hamas, not being corrupt like the PLO and the PA could not be so easily manipulated.
The rest as they say is history. Hamas is a powerful part of the Palestinian Resistance but most of its senior figures are in Israeli gaols and have been for years. The rest are in the Gaza prison spending a lot of time as prisoner support workers, and effectively so it seems.
Would the Palestinian resistance exist if Palestine were not occupied and continually being colonised? No. Resistance forces exist under occupation and not where their is freedom.
Would Hamas exist if Palestine were not brutally occupied? Possibly but as a political party and perhaps a very effective one.
Netanyahu, and others, have vowed to destroy Hamas once and for all. The problem is, that Hamas as the government of Gaza, runs and maintains the civil infrastructure, and those vital services and facilities are of course part and parcel of the civil fabric of Gaza. Imagine an Australian city that had all government infrastructure, Federal, State and Local, destroyed by air-strikes and assault by ground forces; what would be left? Yes, Hamas has a military wing, but they are not likely to line up in a “Waterloo” formation to be obliterated in seconds by the IDF, rather they will retreat into the civilian population (whatever’s left of it). When wiping out Hamas, how to identify a Hamas militant from another young man who isn’t?
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Well, hopefully the pro-Zionist Israeli rhetoric calling for blood will diminish a little, as the score measured in dead bodies is now in Israel’s favour! And the ground assault hasn’t even started!
I wonder what the revenge killrate is for Israel supporters. When is enough, enough. It used to be 10 for the life of one Jew but the Israelis are well past that. Perhaps for such humiliation it is 100 for the life of one Jew so we have about 90,000 more to go on top of the nearly 2,000 currently dead.
However since Israel has dropped more bombs on the Gaza prison so far than the Americans dropped in Afghanistan in a year, perhaps they may increase the dropload to hasten toward their goal.
I remain astonished that seemingly intelligent and reasonable people can support such Biblical eye for an eye and your head as well approach. It is not Palestine which occupies Israel but the other way around. By all means condemn Palestinian violence but condemn 75 years of Israeli violence more.
Of course, it goes without saying, as is usual, that critics of Israel aren’t necessarily anisemitic Jew haters. But I wonder what a genuine antisemite would say about the current events.
Well it is quite possible he would talk about Jews, and their alleged misdeeds or crimes, as opposed to Israel’s.
Katz is getting desperate. He cannot mount a coherent rebuttal so he resorts to personal abuse and the weary old charge of anti-semitism.
Anti-semitism is a hatred of Jews and their religion.
As a Zionist State Israel does not represent Jews or Judaism. In fact it betrays both.
Criticising Israel cannot be anti-semitic. Fact is most Jews do not, never did and never will live in UN Mandated Israel.
Since many orthodox Jews condemn the Israeli State are you saying they are anti-semites? Odd.
Tell me Katzenjammer, as a defender of Israel right or wrong, what is your top figure for killing Palestinians in Gaza as acceptable?
Israel usually works on 10 for the life of one Jew but this attack was so profound, do you think it should be 100? Already 1800 Palestinians in the Gaza prison are dead with nearly 600 of them children. What is your cutoff point for justified revenge? Is it 100,000, 500,000, a million dead men, women and children, the latter making up 47% of the Gaza population?
When is enough enough in this barbaric biblical ritual of revenge which Israel has practised since it was invented?
Be brave, give me a figure of how many lives are required to avenge the deaths of Jews at the hands of the Palestinian Resistance.
You think it’s a pub darts game with body count scores to determine something or other. Far more Muslims have been slaughtered by Muslims without a simper from you – you really don’t care a dot unless you can pin whatever on Israel. Where are your criticisms of the thousands of Palestinians held in Syrian prisons or Syria’s apartheid treatment of tyhose they keep locked in refugee camps, generation after generation. Your obsessive targetting of a single aspect of the conflict is obvious.
@Katz,
Far more Muslims have been killed by Christian Americans than anyone else but that is not the topic.
I agree with you the treatment of Palestinian refugees is to be condemned. But that is also a separate issue although it results from the core problem which is occupation and colonisation of Palestine.
What came first, the Resistance by the Palestinians or the occupation and colonisation of their land?
rosross is getting closer and closer to overt antisemitism. If the Cuban government launched thousands of missiles and rockets at Florida, and then sent there groups of Cuban terrorists who murdered in cold blood 420 young Americans who were enjoying a music festival, and then attacked an American town, decapitating babies and burning them alive – among other things which were too extreme to be taken up by Himmler and the Nazi SS – what do you think the response of the US President to these attacks would have been- any President, of any party? Do you really think that if this happened, the US would turn the other cheek? Isn’t it a lot more likely that within a few days Havana would be a pile of smoking rubble? How does that differ from what Israel has done? When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the US declared war on Japan. Do you think that was wrong? If you do, explain why, please.
Your analogy is wrong. Cuba is an independent country. Palestine is an occupied country and the occupier is Israel.
For your comparison to work, the US would need to be occupying and colonising Cuba. If the Cubans then attacked the American occupiers who were forcefully colonising their land and dispossessing them, then their attacks would be as a Resistance force. Condemn the violence but not their right to resist.
Even the White House has stepped back from the beheaded babies claim and the journalist who first said it has retracted and apologised, as have others who used the story. An Israeli women settler who survived the attack said most died because the IDF fired indiscriminately at everyone and the IDF fired missiles into the Kibbutz house and that incinerated people.
You said: How does that differ from what Israel has done?
The US does not occupy and colonise Cuba even though it might wish to. Israel does occupy and continue to colonise Palestine. That is how it differs.
As to Pearl Harbour, the history is complex and not as simple. The Americans had put in place sanctions against Japan which were in themselves an act of war.
Let us not dispute the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China before WWII and those committed after. But, the whole history leading up to Pearl Harbour needs to be taken into account. As does the American atrocities of dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But that is a digression.
rosross , you really are jumping the shark in your anti – Semitic rants . I’ve always agreed with you on any other subject but this . How on earth can you support barbarians ? I don’t care about who was there first , to the victor go the spoils , as today’s No victory exemplifies . Israel is the only functioning country in the region , with no oil to enrich it , only hard work and intelligence . They have conceded much , and have offered the palestinians every opportunity to civilise themselves to no avail as they are only interested in hate and destruction. The billions given have resulted in concreted tunnels, and weapons , not infrastructure ,hospitals or food production . Their raison d’etre is the total annihilation of Israel and are really just the tip of the Arab/Muslim spear . They don’t want peace . Am very disappointed in your position . If the Palestinians put down their weapons , there would be peace , If the Israelis put down theirs , No Israel . What kind of culture puts suicide vests on their children !? What culture uses “civilians” as human shields!? What culture parades the corpses of their enemies in the streets , and names said streets after martyrs? They cannot BUILD anything , only destroy . If you think that I’m an apologist for the Jews , I am not , as in the west , so many secular Jews are busily undermining our own culture , from Marx to Mordecai Bromberg , Hollywood and Academia , ACLU, JDL , SPLC , and too many in the Democrat party in the US.
“To the victor go the spoils”- But Hamas is obviously of the view that Israel have not yet won. You might not be an apologist for Jews (who need no apologist), but you appear to be an apologist for Israel. Frankly this black and white approach to an interminable conflict is not very helpful. How long before Hamas acquires wmd’s. Israel has no strategic depth, and it is in its best interest to start accomodating the 8 million or so Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories. Of course very few Israelis and their supporters seem able to look past their own strengths, which are considerable, and at the possibilities in the future.
@Occidental,
Great post on proportionality.
@Johnmac,
Sorry I missed your reply earlier.
Antisemitism is a hatred of Judaism and Jews. Criticism of Israel is not anti-semitic. Even Jewish lawyers have said that.
Most of your comments about the Palestinians remain unproven propaganda. Demonising the other is common in human cultures when people do not want to deal with realities.
Justice and freedom for the Palestinians can bring peace. No-one is asking Israel to give up its weapons, just stop using them to maintain occupation.
Your last remarks. What a bizarre and ugly piece of scapegoating. You think that there aren’t vastly more non-Jews doing whatever it is you’re complaining about? Take your little rants over to stormfront or veterans today where they belong.
I know I am not antisemitic .
Jews have been a part of Australia from the beginning of colonisation and the latter waves of immigration have assimilated seamlessly in spite of some social stigmatisation in the past that has all but vanished today .
They have contributed greatly in our society at many levels .
I look at the situation between the Israelis and Palestinians with despair .
The disproportionate body count and the fact that the territory of the state of Israel and / or the territory they control has grown after every war is a fact that cannot be denied .
I believe very strongly that the intrinsic worth of individuals cannot be easily measured and that every life
needs to be treated as equal .Especially those of young children .
Like most people I was horrified by the atrocities of the recent attack by Hamas but see the response by Israel as even worse .
There has been already as many innocent children murdered by Israel in their response to this attack than were murdered by Hamas and this is just the beginning of the Revenge .
Many posters calling for the complete destruction of Hamas .
One called for Israel to turn the Gaza strip where 2.5 million people live into a parking lot .
That was hate speech if I have ever heard it !
Do you just think that the huge number of innocent people that will die in that endeavour would just be collateral damage ?
Or do you think that those people don’t count because they were born Palestinians ?
Dehumanising people because of their accident of birth eventually led to arguably the worst crime in human history .
Where will this escalating violence end ?
Will we end up with mushroom clouds over greater Palestine with the land unliveable for anyone ?
At the risk of returning to the topic of the column, an important episode in Australian-Jewish relations not covered is our contribution to the liberation of the Holy Land from the Turks in the First World War. The Battle of Beersheba is the best known event in that campaign and is commemorated by the Be’er Sheva Anzac Memorial Centre,
Semites are a large group of people that date back thousands of years to the lands of the “Fertile Crescent”. The largest group of Semites living today are the Arabs. The term “Anti-Semitic” probably arose in Europe, where it was assumed that the Ashkenazi Jews were descendants of exiled Jews from the Roman province of Palestine. So, it is more accurate to describe an “Anti-Semite” as someone who doesn’t like Arabs!
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Another Richard Harrison: In what sense was the Holy Land “liberated” from the Turks in the First World War? The Arabs who helped the British, Lawrence of Arabia and all that, were bitterly disappointed to find they only replaced one colonial master with two others, the British and French. Particularly so the Palestinians, when they realized what the British had in store for them!
The Holy Land has been “liberated” numerous times in History, Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Greeks, Romans, etc. In the Christian era it was the Arabs that liberated the Holy Land from the Byzantines, and then there were alternating liberations during the Crusades.
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Generally speaking, the Ottomans were probably the best rulers over the middle eastern area.