Facts, Grief, and hatred are not all equal

Post Bondi:

All facts are not equally acceptable, all grief is not equally hurtful, all hate is not equally damaging

What has made homo sapiens so successful has been our capacity to migrate and adapt.  Had we not migrated, we would have been a species that sought to thrive or perish on the African continent alone. Our early migration was probably driven by the need to discover new food and other more complex resources. The outcome was the colonisation of new territory, often at the expense of other ancient species.  Over the last 2000 years migration has been similarly driven, but the resulting colonisation has resulted in the strong taking what has belonged to other people less able to defend themselves, often with violence and in some case even removing their right to exist.

Conquest by the strong has not simply been about taking physical resources, it has been about the right to create and tell a new, acceptable, contemporary narrative upon which expectations of conformity are then built.

This Australia day we hung the Australian flag over our deck, but I must confess to considerable ambivalence, given flying the flag seems to have been hijacked by those claiming a narrative of superior patriotism. A few days ago, I was in the main street of our town when a Ute went through, flying six very large Australian flags. Behaving like an entitled thug; at considerable speed the driver wove between traffic and seemed to find the traffic lights an imposition which needed no observance from him.

The one who controls the narrative, holds the power.

What the Bondi massacre and subsequent debate about hate speech has reminded us, is that, depending upon the dominant narrative, all grief is not considered equally painful, all truth is not equally acceptable, all experiences of hate do not cause equal hurt.

When the National Museum of Australia was opened on 11 March 2001, I was present and invited to offer a prayer of blessing. The then director, Dr Dawn Casey, was to quickly discover that a narrative displaying First Nations dispossession, amongst numerous other exhibits, was totally unacceptable to the then government and its Prime Minister who labelled it a ‘black armband’ view of history.  This narrative and its consequences remain unacceptable to a significant and very vocal stream within Australian society, and to the contemporary populist right wing of politics.

Recognising that pain is experienced intergenerationally is generally an unacceptable narrative, except in very rare circumstance, of which the holocaust is one.  It is not that the holocaust should not be forever remembered, it should, but so should the massacre of first nations people in Australia and the Nakba of Palestinian people in their homeland of Palestine. Each is as horrendous for its people as the other. Each has produced huge and perhaps indelible, scars.

Since Bondi there has been an almost exclusive emphasis on dangers inherent in hatred emanating from Islamic extremism.  Such an emphasis is important, given the role that ISIS apparently had in the Bondi massacre, and the role it has played in many parts of the world, including Syria.

However, exclusive emphasis creates distortion.  The most immediate is the effect this emphasis has had on mainstream Islam in Australia.  The hatred now being experienced, by Australian Muslims, especially women who wear the hijab, is barely acknowledged in politics or the press. Apparently, the hatred they experience does not warrant the same attention.

But equally seriously, a distorted emphasis on extreme Islam hides hatreds emanating from the other two Abrahamic religions.  A significant and quite vocal portion of the worldwide Christian community insists the whole of Palestine was given to ‘Israel’ more than 3000 years ago and therefore Palestinians are living on land which is not theirs.  To go into the reasons why this is theologically, historically and culturally nonsense would take up a lot of space, but suffice to say, such language is hateful to Palestinians for it is a denial of their right to exist, their right to enjoy the freedoms and connections to land and home as experienced by most others on the planet.

This single emphasis is also to deny the hatred of Palestinians inherent in Zionism, so clearly manifest in the daily outrageous behaviour of illegal settlers on the West Bank and the catastrophic hatred exhibited to the whole Gazan population following the October 7 massacre.  Through his words and actions, the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, who supposedly has been invited to Australia next month has exhibited this hatred, most glaringly by personally signing missiles sent to kill Gazans.  Given the seriousness of hate speech, why does his invitation still stand?

Will the stating of demonstrable facts be considered hate speech.   I will continue to use the word apartheid to describe Israel, for that is what it is, an aggressively and violently apartheid state.  Will this be considered hate speech? I will continue to use the word genocide to describe what is and has been systematically done to Palestinians, for this is what it is.  Is this hate speech?

What we are clearly not allowed to say is that growth in antisemitism, wrongly and shamefully directed against Australian Jews, is connected to unaddressed grief experienced because of the treatment of Palestinians by Israel. Not facing this fact does nothing to address the problem.

It is worth noting that any critical statements of Israel I might make are measured, compared with the statements made daily by the Hebrew paper Haaretz. It is beyond my capacity to understand why strong critique of the Israeli government made by Haaretz is largely unacceptable and ignored by the Australian media and political elite, while the Netanyahu narrative, implemented with brutality by the likes of Ben Gvir and Smotrich is acceptable.

The prevailing narrative is instrumental in defining hate speech.

Vladimir Putin is not going to stop his war in the Ukraine until his narrative of ownership is accepted.
Netanyahu will not stop his annexation of the whole of Palestine while the narrative “God gave it to us” prevails.

Hatred towards the LGBTQI prevailed while a narrative of perversion or abnormality, shamefully and frequently emanating from Christian mouths, prevailed.

Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister is one of the few to seriously challenge the Trump narrative.

Populism is developing a narrative which is tribal at its heart.  Tribalism is the enemy of consensus, inclusion, tolerance and harmony.   Will his narrative gain a majority foothold in Australia? We can only pray not.
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The Christianity I serve is a narrative that excludes tribalism, embraces justice, and understands truth through the discovery of wisdom that became incarnate in Jesus.