In the latest act of rank hypocrisy from Labor, this weekend the NSW and Queensland branches of the Labor Party will consider motions to formally recognise ‘Palestine’ over Israel. This motion comes hot on the heels of a similar motion passed by the Tasmanian Labor Party.
I recently returned from a trip to Israel. While I’ve always been a strong supporter of Israel, there is a vast difference between reading about and watching thing from afar to seeing and meeting people on the ground whose daily lives are impacted and for me, I found that inspiring and transformative.
Take, for example, the township of Sderot, just a kilometre from the Gaza strip – a town which on the face of it appears not unlike many regional Australian towns. The difference is that this town has been battered over the years with literally thousands of rockets coming across from the Gaza Strip with locals getting just 7-13 seconds warning to get into a shelter. We were told that one of the first lessons for a child is to run as fast as possible when a siren sounds and that the majority of children under 13 suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. While the rockets have largely stopped, a new threat has emerged – that of tunnelling under the wall in an effort to kidnap soldiers and local residents. What struck me most was just how crazy this situation is, yet the people that live there discuss it with a sense of normality. To that end, I found their resolve not to be hounded out of their houses by terrorists as inspiring.
Read the full article by Josh Manuatu at The Spectator.