Why are demonstrators out in the streets of the West’s great cities, including Australia’s, supporting the evil monsters who meticulously planned and executed the most barbaric, unbearably cruel and ruthless massacre of innocents the world has seen this century?
Rather than being ashamed by their crimes, they recorded them and they boasted about what they had done, even to parents who should have disowned them.
A shocked Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, no Israeli puppet, described the images of a young mother and father sitting down to dinner with their children, who were aged six and eight, when Hamas burst in: ‘The father’s eyes gouged out in front of his kids, the mother’s breast cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, the boy’s fingers cut off before they were all executed. And then their executioners sat down and had a meal.’ Western demonstrators either pretend ignorance of these horrors or more often, justify them by claiming the dispute has a long history and then chanting, mindlessly, the slogan, ‘From the river to the sea’.
Before discussing the genocidal imperative of that slogan, note how even seasoned politicians will accord a moral equivalence to religions.
On one ABC Q&A, Sussan Ley, now the federal Liberal deputy leader, not only claimed Islam is ‘a religion of peace’, she reinforced her assertion. ‘It absolutely is,’ she insisted.
But then another panelist, one whom the ABC may well have regretted calling, internationally respected Canadian expert on comparative religion, Professor John Stackhouse, waited a while, before calmly stating the facts.
‘Islam,’ he said, ‘is not a religion of peace. They’ve tried to trademark that, but it’s just not true.’
That is consistent with what anyone with a minimal understanding of Islam knows.
Noting that while many of his Muslim friends have no interest in the violent prosecution of their faith, he stressed how important it is for all of us to understand that we just cannot make sense of world history, ‘if we suggest that Islam does not have within it the legitimation of violence’.
Now not only demonstrators, but even ministers, have concluded Israel has no right to fight Hamas if this results in civilian deaths and that a ceasefire is imperative.
They seem unaware of the elementary facts that the Allies in the second world war insisted on unconditional surrender and that no world power has ever been more meticulous than Israel in attempting to avoid civilian deaths, often to their own disadvantage.
As to the slogan chanted in demonstrations, ‘from the river to the sea’, the number of demonstrators who could explain which river and which sea is, most likely, minuscule.
Worse, this slogan, as used now by terrorists including Hamas, means no less than the annihilation or at least the removal of the Jews from the land they have occupied from well before the Roman conquest.
It was the Romans who named the land Palaestina long before the Muslim conquest in the seventh century which eventually led to its incorporation in the (Turkish) Ottoman Empire from 1517 to 1917.
Forced so often from their homeland, the Jewish diaspora has long been subject to antisemitism, but with an acceleration and a greater awareness in the nineteenth century, there was an increasing interest in returning to the Jewish homeland.
And when the Ottomans sided with the Central Powers in the first world war, the British, with formidable Australian involvement, occupied Palestine.
They issued, with strong allied support, what became known as the Balfour Declaration stating that, ‘His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people …it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine….’
The terms of the Declaration were incorporated into the League of Nations mandate to Britain who added their Transjordanian protectorate, modern Jordan. All this, including the Jewish homeland, was approved by the victorious allied powers and subsequently confirmed in the UN Charter.
Jewish immigration increased, but as Palestine became economically vibrant, Arab immigration also increased. But with often violent opposition to Jewish immigration, and notwithstanding increasing antisemitism in Europe, the British introduced restrictions on Jewish immigration.
After the second world war, Britain gave notice she would relinquish the mandate with the UN General Assembly proposing a two-state solution with Jerusalem an international city. While Jewish leaders agreed, the Arab leaders and the Arab states strongly rejected this.
Israel declared her independence. She was then attacked by the neighbouring Arab states, with Arab inhabitants advised by the Arab powers to leave pending Israel’s defeat by their superior forces.
But Israel was not defeated.
In the fighting, Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan the West Bank i.e. Judea and Samaria.
The 400,000-odd Arabs who left made up the core of the resulting refugees. They and their descendants have not been assimilated into any Arab country. Worse, they have been indoctrinated into supporting jihadist violence and terrorism.
Meanwhile, the tiny nation of Israel fully absorbed about 500,000 of the 800,000 Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries with their property confiscated.
The Arab states unwisely attacked again in the 1967 Six Day war and as a result Gaza as well as Judea and Samaria fell under Israeli control, something not changed by two more wars.
In 2005, the Israelis unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, while maintaining a sea and land blockade to check for weapons.
Calls for a two-state solution, which would involve creating a small Palestinian state, have proved to be a smokescreen and have surely run their course. Israel’s experience is that it would be run by terrorists.
And in any event, whenever the Jewish leaders have agreed to a two-state solution, their opponents have either backed away or imposed ridiculous conditions.
A real solution would require what is sadly lacking, a strong US president who could provide the rare standard of leadership Donald Trump so successfully did in producing the remarkable Abraham Accords and, in keeping all hostile powers in check while doing what few of his predecessors did, avoiding war.
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