The Elder has published a poster that catches in a single picture the ideology that declares Jews building homes for themselves or even living beyond an imaginary line to be illegal. The picture depicts one of the streets child rapist and arch-terrorist killer Yasser Arafat would have shown Henry Kissinger from a street directory in a Jerusalem restaurant was to be the boundary beyond which Jews, and only Jews, were never to be permitted; in an anecdote fondly recalled by Bob Carr, the Australian Foreign Minister, in The Australian. The Elder's work shows how utterly gormless, self defeating, hypocritical and more than vaguely sinister European and now Australian policy in relation to Israel now is.
This blog wrote to Mr Carr over two weeks ago with a couple of questions about Australia's Middle East foreign policy.
1. What is the Government's attitude to the so called "Palestinian right of return"? Is the Government aware that this is explicit and "unchangeable" policy of even the "moderate" factions and is code for the destruction or "euthanasia" of Israel ?
2 What is the basis of the opinion that Israeli "settlement activity" is illegal and will the Government release any legal opinion it holds in that regard?
Mr Carr is yet to reply. I'm not holding my breath.
None of this is to suggest that the evacuation of Jews from some towns as part of a genuine two state solution or even some kind of shared capital arrangement has never been on the table. They have been. But that is one thing. That is something for the Israelis and in my opinion ultimately the Israelis alone. We need however to be very clear what we are witnessing. This is ethnic cleansing. The parties can negotiate about the extent of it but ethnic cleansing it is. There can be no clearer breach of article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention than what Australian and European policy now expects of Israel as a matter of law.
To expect this of any other nation or people on the planet as a matter of law is unthinkable. I can not think of a single example. But it is not unthinkable for Jews. There are international laws in place to curb and condemn it. But not for Jews.
Australia and Europe have endorsed the essentially racist narrative that Jews living lawfully on property purchased lawfully in parts of Judea and Samaria and even Jerusalem are squatters living unlawfully on other peoples' land. In doing so they have rewarded the violently racist policies of Fatah, Hamas, IJ and the others. They could not have shamed us more if this was 1950's Australia and they were Australian politicians, and there were a few, endorsing segregation and legal oppression of American Blacks in the South.
To put Australian policy at its best intentioned the Jews are to be herded from their homes and onto reserves for their own protection as a matter of law as if they were Native Americans or Australians in the road of European settlement as indeed they are in the way of Islamic imperialism. There is nothing enlightened about this policy.
Given the unique role that brave Australians played in the liberation of Jerusalem and the land that was declared to be the place of a Jewish homeland as a matter of international law, Australia's position is especially egregious. The last of the old diggers from the First World War who once marched in the streets of every town and city in their thousands has now passed. It is only their memory and sacrifice for the hope of a better world that have been cynically cast aside.
Beyond the legalities, though, is the reality that the poster above means to show: the world is targeting Jews, and only Jews. See this great post by Yaacov Lozowick on Beit Safafa for examples of Arab Israelis who moved to the other side of the Green Line and are never considered "settlers".
Indeed.
Riga Latvia 1941
cross posted Geoffff's Joint
