The following letters have been published in The Australian July 7th, 2017
For the record, your feature article (“Carr alarms pro-Israelis”, 6/7) implies extreme language from me out of my recent speech making the case for recognition of Palestine and an end to the occupation.
In my speech I was doing no more than advocating what every former head of Shin Bet and Mossad has advocated, although in more pungent language than mine.
Paragraph four of the article has this dastardly Carr accusing Israel of implementing a “looting bill” and condoning “war crimes”.
Let’s make it clear: this was Carr quoting Labor leader Isaac Herzog and Likud Knesset member Benny Begin. They were not Carr formulations.
Two Israeli prime ministers have used the word “apartheid” — Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. The assassinated Yitzhak Rabin is reported to have used the same language.
“Massacres” in 1948 was a conclusion of Danny Morris, an Israeli historian, who detailed this from Israeli army archives. As I said in an op-ed published in The Australian on November 8, 2014, Morris’s revelations were a tribute to openness in Israeli society. And I began my speech by paying tribute to Jews who opposed the occupation — a number in attendance at the meeting — and said they were the best allies of the cause for Palestinian recognition.
It would have been nice if that had been included.
The excellent article by Shmuel Ben Shmuel (“If only the Palestinians could commit to peace”, 6/7) encapsulates why Australia should continue to encourage peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, not grant unilateral recognition to a Palestinian state.
Australians would never countenance having a hostile neighbour that espoused terrorism, taught hatred in its schools and advocated our genocide. Neither should Israelis be expected to put up with it.
Renouncing terrorism, respecting Israel’s borders and its right to exist are necessary preconditions to fruitful peace negotiations. However, Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and have made it clear over many decades that playing the victim card suits their purposes far more than any possibility of peaceful coexistence, and also garners support from useful idiots in the West.
Wendy Turner (“Justice demands that we push for two states”, 6/7) writes: “It’s time, therefore, to recognise the other state. It is the just thing to do.”
If only it were that simple. The misty-eyed advocacy of the likes of Turner and Bob Carr underlines their ignorance or fudging of the diabolical complexity of the problem, and ignores the ingrained mindset of the Palestinian leadership which filters down to the classroom.
This dictates the violent and total destruction and elimination of the state of Israel.
Turner, Carr and other advocates should proffer solutions to the problems to be solved on the way through rather than going straight to the end goal. Life, doesn’t work that way.
Apart from such advocacy being an exercise in shoring up Labor seats in western Sydney, which Palestinian leadership do they recognise — the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas who controls the West Bank and is into the 12th year of his four-year term, or the internationally recognised terror outfit Hamas, that controls Gaza?
The right thing to do? Only at the right time and that time most definitely is not now.
Israel is only legitimate if one believes that Jews had a covenant with God. As an atheist I obviously disagree.
Nevertheless it is of strategic importance for the West to maintain and supply arms to Israel. Those people who see Israel as a shining light should access media from other countries where they will see the level of brutality exacted by Israeli troops on Palestinian civilians and more than a little evidence of how normal democratic ideals are disregarded to brutalise non-Jews.
On one hand Palestinians harass and attack their occupiers, and on the other, Israel persists with its expansion to ensure that there can never be a two-state solution.
Factions of the Israeli government have frequently expressed the desire to drive the Palestinians into the sea.