The recent article by John Menadue recounts how far the Zionist Lobby has managed to exercise the leverage — and it is undeniably powerful leverage — of the malignant scourge of antisemitism to further its geopolitical strategy of creating Eretz Israel and thus grasping the rewards that would flow from it.

The building of empires has always been a mechanism believed to deliver economic and potentially other “benefits” of the investment of national resources into the endeavour. Whether the treasure sought was gold, souls, or “security”, the aim of the conquest has been “the business”: wealth and power, power and wealth.

Moral, ethical or religious purity is often touted as the ostensible reason for imperial conquest. Only fools would accept this as truth.

In the case of the Israeli onslaught on Palestine and adjacent areas, the layered veneers of “security”, Biblical “authority” and reparation for the Holocaust are micron-thin. Netanyahu crusades for political survival that shields him from due legal process that would crucify him, the ultra-Zionists such as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir demand the surrender of all territory of value for “settlements” and even greater economic exploitation, the IDF perpetuates a violent and murderous countenance that validates its existence and political power.

And — due to the international operation of the Zionist Lobby — the rest of the world thrashes around, at best, in impotent verbiage and at worst, in significant material support of the Zionist rampage through the Middle East. In support of the decimation of Palestine by the Israeli government/IDF/settlers troika, the Zionist blitzkrieg continues unabated to trample decency, humanitarian concerns and national and international legal imperatives. Like any cancer, it mutates and multiplies, devouring all that stands before it.

We, and a potential deluge of others internationally, are weary that repudiation of Zionism is not antisemitism with no impact on the perpetrators. Of course, they are treating us with bullying rhetoric: to admit any veracity of our protests would act against their aims of conquest and they have been getting away with it since 1948 and earlier. In many ways, Netanyahu makes Trump look like an amateur in the game of crushing all resistance; the lesser lights of the ultra-Zionist government/IDF in Israel are the capos of a wholly disgraceful cohort.

Our major federal and state political parties have capitulated to the threat of Zionist repercussion, bolstered by an amoral mainstream media and craven genuflection from our educational, local government and other authorities. Into every chink of activity in which Jews may be involved, the Zionist Lobby hammers pitons with which to climb to smother alternative positions. Those “chinks” include any intrusion into the conversation by Jews who seek with humanity and common sense to decry the genocidal and criminal actions of the Zionists, to prevent Israel from being condemned as an international pariah.

The Zionist contention that “all Jews are Zionists” is patently false. A fine example of concerned Jewry is contained in Peter Slezak’s speech to the UTS Sydney Rally of 26 March. We have had the Zionist Lobby blocking a progressive political figure’s address to a public Jewish forum.

The Zionist Lobby has moved strongly into domestic politics, directing preferences in the recent federal election towards the LNP that is vehemently supporting the Zionist agenda. Labor treads the same path only slightly less heavily.

The strategy is to flood the zone with rubbish, while on the ground in Gaza people die by the hundreds every week in situations that are manifestly contrary to the “rules-based order” relating to genocide. The IDF is in contention for a leading rank of organisations identified as war criminals and agents of genocide.

The census 2021 reveals that about 112,000 Australians self-identified as Jewish: less than 0.5% of the population. An additional, perhaps, about 50,000 chose to remain unidentified. The prominence of the Zionist Lobby by use of media manipulated noise, implied threat and industrial-scale public relations is malignantly disproportionate. This is a terrible situation: the contribution of Jews to philanthropy, cultural support and patronage, the advancement of social cohesion and many other valued additions to the fabric of our nation is also disproportionate.

The saturation of high-visibility Zionist-diaspora presence is far more obvious than is the quiet contribution to the advancement of civilisation made by many of Jewish heritage. There is a Jewish Museum in every state of Australia; in Washington DC, there are three.

In Australia, a very few Jewish organisations (such as the Jewish Council of Australia) promote a just and reasonable future for the Middle East as shared ground, while Zionist groups proliferate like blowflies on a cowpat. These Zionist organisations turn on the JCA with the ferocity of pitbulls on a chihuahua – nothing less than their genocidal intentions is in any way acceptable. They do not support peace for their people let alone any others; they do not consider the return of the few Israeli hostages still in Hamas control as any priority, while declaiming the opposite. Conquest and empire is their goal.

The guilt so forcefully projected by the Zionist Lobby harnesses the horror of the Holocaust. But there is a further aspect: once the current Zionist inflicted genocide of the (mostly, but not exclusively, see also the Golan Heights) Palestinian people has been completed, the future commercialisation of the Eretz Israel lands thus achieved will be defended by “why complain now? – you did nothing to stop us in the past”. Which is true.

The objective profit of the Zionist Lobby campaign is the riches of empire: that Trump and Netanyahu are joined at the hip is proof enough. Rentier capitalism run amok is the motive force of these loathsome bedfellows and the PR tirades that we are subjected to daily have the verisimilitude of a hologram. Israel already stands as a nation convicted of the foulest of crimes by every state with any ambition to be seen as decent.

Australia at this time does not count among the morally acceptable.

For the realistic future of Israel, for the ascendancy of humanity above vile profit, for even the smallest of baby steps towards a world generally observant of “the rule of order”, the entire Zionist cohort must be countered. There is no time to lose: every hour, every day, the Zionist onslaught kills hundreds and drives Israel further and further into ignominy.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.