The Australian Jewish News editorialises on the significance of Australia Day:
"We Jews - whose narrative has so much in common with Aborigines in terms of our associations to land, history and memory - know more than most the meaning of dispossession and, if not stolen generations, then massacre and, yes, genocide. It is here that the proximity to Australia Day of the United Nations-sponsored International Holocaust Remembrance Day resonates loudly, without in any way comparing the tragedies that have befallen both peoples. And while we can be rightly proud of our outstanding achievements Down Under, it is the injustices that continue to prevail that we must urgently redress."
Jews have indeed suffer attempted genocide, discrimination and stereotyping over the centuries and our contribution to Australia has been significant, considering a relatively tiny population. Many have worked tirelessly for Aboriginal rights and the 1992 Mabo case was at least partly due to Jewish legal know-how (and moral certitude.)
The editorial, however, is dangerously selective when discussing "injustice." While ongoing support for the Aboriginal community is vital, equal effort is not being spent attempting to readdress another tragedy within the Jewish state itself. If an Aboriginal person is dispossessed and disadvantaged, which many certainly are, the Palestinian people are also in need of international support and solidarity. Indeed, it was the formation of the Jewish state in 1948 that directly caused the dispossession of untold Palestinians. This injustice is yet to be resolved.
If some Australian Jews care about refugees, Aboriginals and low-income earners, they should not forget about what their silence is condoning in Israel.
"We Jews - whose narrative has so much in common with Aborigines in terms of our associations to land, history and memory - know more than most the meaning of dispossession and, if not stolen generations, then massacre and, yes, genocide. It is here that the proximity to Australia Day of the United Nations-sponsored International Holocaust Remembrance Day resonates loudly, without in any way comparing the tragedies that have befallen both peoples. And while we can be rightly proud of our outstanding achievements Down Under, it is the injustices that continue to prevail that we must urgently redress."
Jews have indeed suffer attempted genocide, discrimination and stereotyping over the centuries and our contribution to Australia has been significant, considering a relatively tiny population. Many have worked tirelessly for Aboriginal rights and the 1992 Mabo case was at least partly due to Jewish legal know-how (and moral certitude.)
The editorial, however, is dangerously selective when discussing "injustice." While ongoing support for the Aboriginal community is vital, equal effort is not being spent attempting to readdress another tragedy within the Jewish state itself. If an Aboriginal person is dispossessed and disadvantaged, which many certainly are, the Palestinian people are also in need of international support and solidarity. Indeed, it was the formation of the Jewish state in 1948 that directly caused the dispossession of untold Palestinians. This injustice is yet to be resolved.
If some Australian Jews care about refugees, Aboriginals and low-income earners, they should not forget about what their silence is condoning in Israel.
3 Comments:
Fabulous point, happyrump.
It's political spin. By emphasising past dispossession.... what was it, a few thousand years ago, and only after those dispossessed, the Jews had dispossessed another nation, the Canaanites .....
And now, conveniently harking back to times so long ago they are not worth remembering .... just about everyone, everywhere, sometime has been dispossessed .... there is this attempt to 'link' Jews with Aborigines when in fact Jews are no longer dispossessed. They have a country. They just have to deal with the fact that they once again dispossessed someone else to get it.
Until Jews and Israelis deal with the fact that the State of Israel was created by committing yet more wrongs of dispossession they will not have true legality in any 'moral' sense.
People accept the Israeli State exists. Most would say only on original borders. Most would say that does not give Israel the right to commit human rights abuses against the people from whom the land was stolen.
Israel either gives back what it occupies and helps Palestinians to create a viable State of their own or Israel does what other colonising nations like Australia have done .... full rights as citizens to everyone living in Israel and Palestine.
Can't have it both ways. The tone of this piece from the Jewish News is yet more of the:'poor us,' look what happened to us, we are victims, feel sorry for us when in reality Israelis and Jews who support what Israel is doing are now the aggressors. It's been more than half a century since Jews were victims anywhere.
In that same time they have created new victims in the Palestinians.
We also conveniently forget that another people, without a land, were also the subject of Hitler's attempts at genocide: the gypsies. They still have no place to call home, they are still persecuted and abused throughout Europe and yet no-one seems to care about their story.
When you want to talk 'poor me' on a percentage basis the Nazis killed more gypsies than they did Jews.
Gypsies however seem to lack the entrenched victim mentality that Jews have.... no doubt because their culture is not sourced in religion ... they also lack the ego ... something else that Judaism encourages with the 'we are special,' chosen people approach .... which means in essence, 'we are better.' It's not the literal teaching from the religion but at the end of the day that's what 'chosen people' has come to mean to many Jews.
Disingenuous is the word that comes to mind when reading the editorial in the Jewish News.
But then the Jewish Holocaust Memorial in Israel doesn't mention gypsies either. It's as if the only people the Nazis targeted were Jews. But it's all part of the Holocaust Industry.
It was interesting to see all the same but would have had more credibility if the Israelis had been able to extricate themselves from their ego-driven mentality and give some wall space to the others who were targeted by the Nazis.
The other interesting thing was pictures from the Warsaw ghetto showing well fed, and obviously wealthy Jews walking past the bodies of starving, dying Jews.
We are all as bad as each other and as good as each other. When we forget that we become the sort of monsters that the Nazis did.
Non-sequitur harryrump.
Anthony points up the odd absence of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, even as an aside, in a Jewish opinion piece comparing the Jewish and Aboriginal experiences of 'dispossession' - a telling omission. It's as if this issue, perhaps the pre-eminent global political problem since WW2, doesn't exist. Unfortunately for the editor, but this studious ignoring of the elephant tends to highlight rather than obscure it.
Australians were guilty of Aboriginal dispossession and genocide and Germans were culpable for the Holocaust of the Jews. It takes chutzpah for a Jewish community organ to draw such comparisons without mentioning the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine.
And it makes nonsense of your attempt to distract and confuse the issue by dragging the Kurds into it. Typical tactic - someone mentions Palestine to a Jew who is using the Holocaust as the central support in a moral argument, and away they go 'why aren't you complaining about Darfur, where's your protest about Myanmar' etc. It's often a successful tack to take, but it's a pretty ignoble one.
A similar strategy is employed by Aaron Lane, who gets all huffy at an adjective in the hope that such confusing minutiae will keep the big game - Israel's illegal behaviour - safe from the threat of a few pointed comparisons.
'you might want to take a walk in the fresh air and ponder on what you've become'
At least he can draw comfort from the fact that, whatever he's become, he's not like you.
Post a Comment
<< Home