Genocide is the story, not antisemitism |
The Australian government’s response to Gaza, and its handling of President Isaac Herzog’s visit, has blurred the line between antisemitism and criticism of Israel. The result is deeper division, weaker democracy and greater risk to Jewish communities.
Following the state sanctioned violence in Sydney, Anthony Albanese told us that we need to lower the temperature. But it is Anthony Albanese who has raised the temperature with his scant concern for the murder of over 70,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children. He refuses to let the word genocide pass his lips.
Correspondence and analysis in The Lancet magazine suggests that in fact the number murdered at the hands of Israel and the IDF maybe as high as 240,000.
To add to his failure, Albanese then invites President Herzog to Australia. Herzog has, through both omission and commission abetted the Israeli genocide. He has told the world a litany of lies about the IDF protecting civilians and that Israel is obeying international law. He heads an apartheid, genocidal and criminal state that is deliberately killing women and children and breaches numerous international laws and decisions of the UN.
It is just not true – as Israel wants us to believe – that the Hamas attack in October 2023 started the war. Israel has been killing Palestinians and stealing their land for decades. In 1948 Palestinians owned 94 per cent of all land. Then came the Nakba and further occupation and ethnic cleansing. Now Palestinians own only 18 per cent of the land with annexation continuing in the West Bank. Even at the very time Herzog was getting red carpet treatment in Australia, the Israeli Finance Minister said that the moves on the West Bank “will continue to........