Letter

In response to Recognition of Palestine: For and against

Does the ECAJ support Netanyahu’s Gaza ambitions?

Ian Dudgeon sets it out well. I recently provided Alex Ryvchin of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry with a parallel. In 1963, the governor-general, on the advice of the Federal Executive Council, excised 140 square miles of the Gove Peninsula from the Arnhem Land Reserve, the traditional home of the Yolngu, so that French firm Pechiney could mine it.

The Yolngu were not directly consulted and this led to the famous Bark Petitions. Israel has just recently announced that it will build the E1 settlement on Palestinian land, as part of the creeping full takeover of Northeast Palestine, a takeover clearly begun in recent days by Messrs Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir.

So does the pro-semitism that Alex and Jillian Segal wish to encourage involve Australians accepting Gove-like takeovers of traditional Palestinian land without consultation?

— Geoff Taylor from Borlu (Perth)