Pearls and Irritations

It was almost impossible to listen to Benjamin Netanyahu speak at the United Nations General Assembly without a feeling of despair and disgust.

Israel’s ‘friends’, which include Australia, must change their rhetoric in defence of Israel when they say: “Israel has the right to defend itself”.

No nation has the right to use this slogan to justify its actions if its very existence is hewn out of the wholesale displacement of those who should be its neighbours. A nation only has the right to defend itself, if in its very existence it wishes to live as neighbour with those who surround it. It is a contradiction in terms to seek to be a neighbour to those whom you have been responsible for their pain and anguish. Netanyahu almost certainly disparages anything Christian, but if he is in the slightest bit interested in what is meant by the term ‘neighbour’, he would do well to listen to the parable of the Good Samaritan and be reminded that in this emblematic parable it was a Samaritan, not a Jew who bound up the wounds of the Jew fallen amongst thieves.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in Lebanon. By no means all of them are 1948 Nakba refugees and their descendants, but many are. Those who are Palestinian Christian have been given the right to live and work in Lebanon, a right that does not, and should not, negate their fundamental right to return home to Palestine. Sunni Muslim refugees, however, have no rights in Lebanon. Most Palestinian Muslims are Sunni. These Sunni descendants of the 1948 Nakba have no right to work, no rights to social welfare, no rights to own property, no rights to education. They are considered by the Lebanese government to be temporary residents on their way back to their homes in Palestine. They are utterly dependent upon UNWRA for their survival. Netanyahu is committed to ensuing they never return home.

There can never be peace in this part of the world unless or until underlying grievances are addressed. Peace is not an absence of war. Peace emanates from justice.

I do not support or condone activities of Hamas or Hezbollah which threaten the lives of Israeli citizens. However, the undeniable truth is that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah would exist if it were not for the fact that the people they represent have suffered intolerable injustice.

Netanyahu does his best to demean the United Nations and its agencies, especially UNWRA. However, he needs to be reminded that his nation would not exist if it were not for a resolution of the United Nations in 1947 and its outcome in 1948. In this resolution of partition, it was intended the lands of Palestine be divided almost equally. As a result of the war that followed, causing mass scale destruction of Palestinian homes and communities, Israel has existed on 78% of the land leaving 22% as ‘Palestinian Territories’. In the Oslo accord of the 1990’s Yasser Arafat agreed to accept Palestinian statehood on the 22%. What has happened since has been the Zionist pogrom of gradual destruction and occupation of the 22%. How can any nation, given the original intention of the UN resolution, argue that Israel has the right to defend itself given this context?

What Israel is doing cannot in good conscience be called ‘defending itself’. It is aggressively pursuing its agenda of occupation of ancient Palestine ‘from the River to the Sea’ to the exclusion of those who are not Jewish. In his UN speech Netanyahu said Israel would continue its assault in both Gaza and Lebanon until all its goals are met. What are its goals? Clearly the goal is not ‘defence’. The goal is the elimination of any resistance to its goal of complete control of all land from the river to the sea – preferably with no Palestinians. It must be said often and everywhere, this is not the agenda of thousands of Jewish people, both in Israel and in the diaspora, who utterly deplore these actions and most courageously stand with their Palestinian brothers and sisters.

Netanyahu loves maps. But the maps he uses are his version of history, not history as it occurred. He loves to use a map which totally ignores the West Bank, in his mind it simply does not exist.

Let me remind him of a few facts of history. Israel has never existed in its own right; it has always existed under the threat or with the help of a great power. Jews were slaves under the Egyptians. The State of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians, leaving the small State of Judah as a remnant. Jerusalem and its temple were sacked by the Babylonians. Ironically the power that allowed them some autonomy and return was the Persians – modern day Iran! The Greek, Antiochus Epiphanes erected his own image in the second temple. The Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the second temple. Over many centuries, various waves of Europeans sought control of Jerusalem and its surrounds (notably in the Crusades). In more recent times the whole of the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire.

It is ironic, bizarre and morally wrong that from the late 19th century onwards, waves of Jewish emigrants first from Europe and Russia and more latterly from North America are considered to have automatic right of entry and possession, while those who can trace unbroken ancestry for multiple generations have none. It needs to be pointed out that the great power that now influences Israel’s future is the United States. Without that support, Israel would not have been able to pursue its pogroms and be saved from multiple resolutions of condemnation at the UN Security Council where the US holds the power of veto.

Please Anthony Albanese, do not continue the empty argument that Israel has the right to defend itself. Argue that those who have always lived there, have the right to always live there.

Share and Enjoy !

SHARE TWEET SHARE COPY EMAIL PRINT