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Mundine Article Fin Review 6 march

10/3/2017

39 Comments

 
​On the 6th March an article appeared in the Australian Financial Review purporting to have been written by the high profile indigenous leader, Warren Mundine.

Read more: http://www.afr.com/opinion/columnists/jews-are-the-first-peoples-of-israel--with-a-right-to-exist-20170306-gurkqg#ixzz4ag0n6lro
 
The article is either written with an appalling knowledge of Israel Palestine, the history and culture of its peoples’ or it is written with the explicit intention of promulgating a ‘fake narrative’, a perspective linking the struggles of the indigenous peoples of Australia with the ‘struggles’ of the Jews; whom the article would have us believe have the right to claim they are the ‘indigenous’  peoples of Palestine, to the exclusion of others. The article is so appalling that I cannot believe that Mr Mundine wrote it. I assume it was written by a person from within the powerful Israeli lobby who sought the ‘imprimatur’ of a respected indigenous Australian.
 
The indigenous people of Palestine are Semites, those who speak a Semitic language, and have an unbroken link with the land over many generations.  Some Jewish families are indeed in this category. However with the benefit of census data in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century we know the majority of these people, Muslim and Christian, are Arabs.  Many of these people trace their ancestry back to groups such as the Phoenicians and Philistines who occupied this land prior to recorded Israelite history and whose current descendants have never lived anywhere else.  Those who are definitely not indigenous are middle class Jewish illegal Settlers who have taken up villas in settlements across the West Bank and who have come from places like Sydney, Melbourne and Manhattan. These settlers and their ancestors have long lived in other, often western, nations throughout the world.
 
To link Jewish settlers with Australian indigenous people is awful from another perspective.  In Australia we still have a long way to go to address the wrongs of the past and achieve appropriate acknowledgment, recognition and reconciliation.  However we are on the road.  On the other hand Israel’s behaviour towards the indigenous Palestinian population can be likened to the behaviour of white settlers towards the Australian Aboriginal people in the 19th century. Land is summarily confiscated without redress, olive orchards are bulldozed and livelihoods destroyed. Those who protest such privation are thrown into gaol.  Yes Mr Mundine, there are acts of violence from Palestinians towards Israelis, as there were from Aboriginals towards the white settlers; violence that cannot be condoned. But the violence done to Palestinians, including Palestinian children goes mostly without censure, as it does in your article.
 
Whoever wrote this article for Mr Mundine should I suppose be congratulated for their cunning, but Mr Mundine should have been far more astute before allowing his name to be used in this way – presuming this is what happened.  If Mr Mundine did author the piece himself, one might ask what his motivation was; and would he now accept an invitation from the Palestinian community to live with them in Palestine for 10 days or so to gain an understanding of their plight, who is responsible, and what responsible action from the international community might look like.
 
The article is mischievously misleading in other ways. Let me touch on one more – the recognition of Israel. It is true that the military wing of Hamas does not and will not recognise Israel’s right to exist, in the same way that a significant percentage of senior Knesset members are on record as saying Israel will never allow one inch of historic Palestine to become a Palestinian state. However all the peace talks since the Oslo accords of the 1990’s assume the existence of Israel and the recognition of its right to exist by Palestinian authorities.
 
What the Mundine article mischievously ignores is that Israel no longer simply demands recognition of its territorial rights, but that it is recognised as Jewish State.  This new demand is obviously difficult to accede to for those non Jews who live in its boundaries, let alone for the Arab population of greater Palestine. Israeli citizens of Arab descent already have 40+ restrictions upon them that do not apply to Jewish residents. There is no single Israeli passport, travel papers, such as they exist for non-Jews, do not protect the traveller in the same way or even provide the same right of return.
 
England may well be for the English or France for the French, as Netanyahu argues to support his case, but no citizen of either country is discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity; under law all have the same rights.  Israel cannot expect to be treated as a modern liberal democracy while it insists on the right to implement discrimination on the basis of race, nor can it expect respect as a civilised country when its actions against the Palestinians show all the signs of an apartheid strategy.
 
 
 
 
39 Comments
Narelle Friar
10/3/2017 09:16:47 pm

Wow!!!!!

Thank you so much for this insightful article.

I got caught up for 22 hours 'debating' with 2 very opinionated facebookers on this very article shared to Warren Mundine's page.

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John Salisbury
10/3/2017 11:35:57 pm

Excellent rebuttal of Warren Mundine's strange piece.

There is no correlation between indigenous Aboriginals in Australia and European settlers in Palestine

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Shuki Holtsman
12/3/2017 05:56:08 pm

There is no correlation between indigenous Aboriginals in Australia and European settlers in Australia

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R.Ross
23/5/2017 05:06:16 pm

Correct. There is no correlation. The British sought to preserve the Aboriginal race and Israeli colonists seek to exterminate the Palestinians.

Marilyn Shepherd
11/3/2017 01:15:48 am

During the holocaust many Australian aborigines were caught up in the lie that Jews were indigenous to somewhere and just like the aborigines, it seems some like Warren have never learnt the facts.

Palestinians would be kin to Mundine, not some Polish Jew who migrated to Palestine in 1945 and then stole the country.

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Shuki Holtsman
12/3/2017 06:01:10 pm

Australian were caught up in the lie that Christians were indigenous to somewhere and just like the aborigines, it seems some like you have never learnt the facts.

Aborigines would be kin to Christians, not some British Christians who migrated to Australia in 1870 and then stole the country.

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R.Ross
23/5/2017 05:11:06 pm

Here is the real analogy. If the British and then later Australian Governments had set out to exterminate the Aborigines then there would be correlations with Israel and the Palestinians.

You don't provide guns, rations, canoes, fishing and agricultural equipment, medicine and food to people you want to remove, as happened with the Aborigines.

Also, if Australia did today to its indigenous people what Israel does in UN Mandated Israel and Occupied Palestine there would be outrage.

For example, Australia does not have a third of Aborigines imprisoned in a concentration camp like Gaza.

It does not have the country dissected with roads for non-indigenous leading to settlements for non-indigenous as Israel has with its Jew-only roads and Jew-only settlements. Neither does it put all Indigenous under house arrest as Israel does for Jewish holy days so Jews can travel on their Jew-only roads to their Jew-only illegal settlements.

More salient, Australia has given full and equal rights to its indigenous people, more rights in fact, and said sorry, and sought to make redress.

Israel has done none of this and instead has set up and Apartheid theocratic state in the name of religious bigotry.

There is no comparison whatsoever.

Paul RETI
12/3/2017 08:20:19 pm

The Peoplehood and its related folklore and traditions and languages of BOTH Australia's 'First' People and that of The Jewish People evolved on and are based on what they consider to be their Traditional Lands. Those who claim otherwise are just plain wrong.

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Larry Stillman link
11/3/2017 03:00:59 am

Please get rid of or denounce Marilyn Shephers's clear slur against 1) Poles 2) Jews. We should stick to the point that injustice was done to Palestinians, rather than a general ethnic slur against another group . I suspect in fact that many traumatized Jewish refugees did not have the slightest clue what was going on at the time to Palestinian people, which makes the outcome, including the manipulation of their trauma even more tragic.

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Otto Waldmann
12/3/2017 08:04:44 am

Very smart, Larry, not bad at all....Your half empty Jewish identity coupled with the other half , geshmatte advocacy ... identifies at once your single standard of transparent fallacies. You should be proud that we, your ab originae tribal mates, isn't that dumb, as to fall for your farcical pro-palestinian diatribes.
As a respected historian, how can you stoop that low as to infest your academic reputation with worthless political agendas !!
Your interjection of pretend defence of the Jewish victims of criminal prejudice is, in fact, an act of offence of multiple facets against those heroic Jews who knew bloody well why and what they had to do to survive in OUR Eretz against the vile Jew hatred which has been dominating and driving the ACTUAL illegal dwellers in OUR LAND, the vicious arabs you seem so passionate about.
YOU MAY NOT PRETEND, ASSUME THAT YOU REPRESENT THE VOICE OF THOSE JEWS WHO FAUGHT FOR THEIR RIGHT TO BE IN THEIR OWN HISTORIC JEWISH HOME !!! By now, after decades of siding with the enemies of the Jewish people you must have understood that you are not welcome within the Jewish fold. Massive numbers of objections to your stands in the matter of Israel over the years surely must have meant something to you. If not, then it is very, very sad even though you may be quite happy with yourself....................Don't take it personally, just ad hominem.

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Michael
13/3/2017 06:46:16 pm

Ignore Otto's deranged commentary Larry. He's obviously demented.

R.Ross
23/5/2017 05:12:11 pm

There is no Jewish homeland because religions don't get land rights or homelands. Why would they? If they did all religions would have the same rights.

Shuki Holtsman
12/3/2017 06:07:25 pm

We should stick to the point that injustice was done to indigenous Aboriginals, rather than a general ethnic slur against another group . I suspect in fact that many European Christians did not have the slightest clue what was going on at the time to Aboriginals people, which makes the outcome, including the manipulation of their trauma even more tragic.

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Father Dave link
11/3/2017 07:28:21 pm

Great response to a very odd piece!

Most Indigenous persons I know identify with the Palestinians in this struggle, seeing them as victims of persecution from a powerful white minority who are dispossessing them of their land.

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Susan Thomas
11/3/2017 08:33:35 pm

Your link to the Mundine article is to a subscribers only section of the website. Do you know anywhere where it can be accessed for free?
Excellent article and I can work out from this what the original article was saying. Thank you.

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Narelle Friar
12/3/2017 04:30:57 am

Try this - but you may have to sign in to Financial Review.
http://www.israellycool.com/2017/03/07/indigenous-australian-jews-are-the-first-peoples-of-israel-with-a-right-to-exist/

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Bassam
12/3/2017 07:34:05 pm

You can read the AFR article here:
https://www.jewishnews.net.au/israel-first-peoples-jews-not-problem/60082

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R.Ross
23/5/2017 09:57:33 pm

I bet you can read it on Jewish News. They probably wrote it for Mundine. Or he carried it home from a Zionist bunker in Tel Aviv.

Paul RETI
12/3/2017 01:26:47 am

This response to Warren Mundine proves the ignorance and arrogance and bigotry of the author, and nothing else. I find it difficult to accept that a person purporting to represent Christianity would so patronisingly suggest that Warren Mundine is not his own man and cannot and does think for himself.

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Paul RETI
12/3/2017 04:38:23 am

Like Australia's First People, we Jews have unique traditions and culture and language and customs that evolved on and are based on what we consider to be our traditional lands. Some of our People have been there for over 3000 years. Christian and Muslim holy texts also attest to that.
==> Genes are (almost) NEVER INDIGENOUS. Peoplehoods often are!

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David
12/3/2017 09:00:59 pm

A one-state outcome sounds like the most sensible way forward. A democratic state for all equally. Oh wait, the Zionist agenda of never ending expansion would never allow

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Paul RETI
13/3/2017 12:17:23 am

One state sounds ideal. But just consider the 'confessional' Lebanon.

R.Ross
23/5/2017 05:16:03 pm

Christians have been in Africa and India for thousands of years so you are saying they have rights to land there?

Judaism was founded in what is now Iraq. If religions got rights to land, which they do not, Jews would have rights to a bit of Iraq and the Christians would have dibs on Palestine.

All religions have unique traditions but that does not give them the right to steal someone else's country.

What your religious writings say is irrelevant to the world at large and meaningless in a court of law. Even Orthodox Jews knew that which is why they opposed the delusion of setting up a literal State of Israel and how right they were - what a disaster of injustice and cruel bigotry which gives Jews and Judaism a bad name.

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Narelle Friar
23/5/2017 10:53:46 pm

Loving your comments Roslyn.
You are a very literate and educated person.

Sam
12/3/2017 07:46:05 pm

As a Palestinian immigrant to Australia I quickly developed affinity to and solidarity with the Australian aborigines. I felt that the British colonial project was executed in Palestine and in Australia.
Those who attempt to propagate mis-information and falsehood think they can win the debate by using deceit and propaganda to justify the unjustifiable. Thank you Bishop Browning for speaking the truth and refuting those attempts to rewrite history.

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Paul RETI
13/3/2017 12:22:29 am

While the superficial comparison of Today's Palestinian People with Australia's First People is appealing, that comparison blatantly ignores the 2500 year old unbroken presence of The Jewish People on the Land the Romans called Palestine.

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R.Ross
23/5/2017 05:19:32 pm

So, a few Jews remained in Palestine after wandering in as colonisers, like many others thousands of years earlier? So what?

Christians founded Istanbul and Christians have remained in that city for aeons, but it doesn't give them rights to it.

And it most certainly does not give them the right to an apartheid state based on religious bigotry and maintaining one of the most murderous and brutal occupations in modern history. The worst by any State laughingly calling itself a democracy for sure.

p.s. the ancient Egyptians called it Palestia, after Pales, the Canaanite God. Got that wrong too.

Danny
12/3/2017 11:18:44 pm

A brilliant and well reasoned article to an absurd piece.

One need wonder what favours Mundine expects from the Israel lobby for such a disturbing piece.

Little wonder "his" people wallow in such misery when their "leaders" are so easily manipulated to espouse such fallacies...

Shame on you Uncle Tom!

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Narelle Friar
23/5/2017 04:37:43 pm

Brillliant response Danny.

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Olwen
13/3/2017 08:26:49 pm

Thank you for this constructive response to this deplorable article presented by Mr Mundine.

Today thankfully technology affords us access to and the ability to share information.

On the issue of Israel and Palestine this means we are no longer captive to whatever the 'Israeli Hasbara' machine and it's puppets churn out in so many forms world wide.

Thank you Bishop Browning.

TRUTH will win out in the end.

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Meyer Mussry
14/3/2017 03:55:21 pm

Bishop Browning's comments are so flawed, I can't believe that a representative of the Church would say those things. Why?

1) His claim that the Arabs have an unbroken link with the land over several generations undermines the Old Testament and even the New Testament. Jesus himself was Jewish in the days when the Jews had 2 nations covering the territory and the Phoenicians and Philistines were no longer resident.

2) The existence of Israel as a Jewish state: The Bishop acknowledges that Hamas does not recognise Israel. He claims that it is unreasonable to ask the PA, however, to recognise Israel as a Jewish state. Now, if of all the people in the world, only the Jews are denied their rights to national self-determination, in a land that their religion so explicitly says is theirs, where their kingdoms and states existed centuries before Mohammed was born, where their temples were built, and where they prayed to return to multiple times a day every single day of their dispersion, and where there is a demonstrated unbroken Jewish presence, wouldn't this be explicit bias against Jews, and therefore be anti-Semitism? Of course it would, and it falls under the definitions of anti-Semitism of the US State Department and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (which has just been adopted by the UK and other governments as their official definition). So, we have a clear instance of the Bishop being anti-Semitic, according to world accepted definitions.

3) That the demand to recognise Israel's Jewish character is "obviously difficult to accede to for those non Jews who live in its boundaries". If this is the case, then why are so many Moslems streaming to Germany, with its German character? To France, with its French character? Why is it that of the Arabs who stayed after 1948, they and their descendants enjoy more freedom and opportunity than in any other Arab land, and in fact are joining the IDF in increasing numbers as a way of saying thank you to their country? They are now doctors, dentists, scientists, judges, lawyers, teachers policemen and women and members of Parliament. contrast this with the PA's insistence that any state of theirs has to be Judenrein! This is another instance of false logic on the Bishop's part, driven by his racist ideology. Israel is definitely NOT an apartheid state. It is the only fully functioning democracy in the middle east, ruled by law. Shame on the Bishop for even insinuating that apartheid exists in Israel. It doesn't.

4) Last but not least, the Bishop's capitulation is so complete that he is discriminating against the only state in the whole region where the numbers of Christians is increasing, where they don't face persecution and limits on church building.

Let me now make some other statements about the things that Bishop Browning has wilfully ignored in his pursuit of the Jews in their state:
a) Israel does not teach hatred to its children. In PA controlled areas, hatred of Jews is in their schoolbooks, their TV, radio, in their naming of districts and monuments after murderous terrorists and in so many other ways. This is wrong on many levels, and is child abuse which the Bishop as a so-called 'man of compassion" ignores;
b) Israel has many times offered generous land concessions in return for peace, and received in return flat rejections and intifadas;
c) The biggest oppressors of Arabs in the West Bank and in the camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria are the PA, Hamas, and Arab governments, who have refused to integrate their brethren into their societies for over 70 years in order to use them as a tool against Israel. The PA and Hamas are corrupt to the core, and they use Jew hatred as a means of diverting the attention of their subjects from their own failings and blaming Jews for all their problems. Meanshile, they profit and get rich from the hundreds of millions of dollars they receive each year from the EU, USA and other Arab countries. They are the ones who should be criticised by Bishop Browning, if he really was a champion of the oppressed - but he's not. He's a sycophant, a turncoat and wilfully blind, using false arguments to promote his mistaken agenda.

For my money, Mundine is right on the button and sees things very clearly. Bishop Browning is discredited and should resign. He does not serve his religion or his Christian brethren, and is incapable of searching for and seeing truth and applying it logically.

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George Browning
14/3/2017 05:27:32 pm

Dear Meyer,

At last, someone who is opposed to my blog has responded with 'arguments'!

1. "Jesus was Jewish in the days when Jews had two nations ...."

Israel as a nation fell to the Assyrians in 721 BC and Judah fell to the Babylonians in 586 BC.

2. Israel as a Jewish State. I am not sure why you are missing my point that Jews or Muslims or anyone else in France or England who become citizens have exactly the same rights as other citizens. You know as well as I do that this is not the case in Israel.

3. Anti-Semitic. I am a defender of the right of Israel to exist, but within its own borders and according to international law. I find it very strange that speaking for the rights of Palestinians is 'anti Israel' unless one assumes that being in favour of Israel automatically means oppressing the Palestinians.

4. If I am so wrong, come with me to the West Bank or Gaza for a week or ten days and explain how I am wrong?

Thanks for your response



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Meyer Mussry
14/3/2017 07:56:12 pm

Dear Bishop Browning,

Thank you for your response.

1) OK, so Jesus was around after the 2 states fell. That does not change the fact that Jews had their kingdoms and states established hundreds of years earlier, and were still native to the area at the time of Jesus. In fact your correction of the dates undermines your claim of the Arab connection to the Phoenicians and Philistines even more.

2) I actually dispute your claim that Arabs in Israel don't have the same rights as any other citizens, unless of course they are or have engaged in subversive activity or are suspected of being so engaged. Then they are subject to security laws, which even Australia has. Have you criticised publicly Abbas's call for his intended Palestinian state to be free of Jews, or do you hold a double standard?

3) You stand accused as being anti-Semitic because you choose to deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. Abbas has stated he recognises that Israel exists, but denies its fundamental Jewish character, and hopes to flood Israel with Arabs so it will eventually lose its Jewish character. Again, if anyone denies the Jews out of all the people of the world their right to national self determination in their historic homeland, then that is anti-Semitic. Do you support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state or are you anti-Semitic?

4) As a Jew who wears a kippah, I doubt that you would be able to guarantee my safety were I to go to the West Bank with you. What I would do, however, is ask you to answer the substantive things I have stated in my response above:
- about the corruption of the PA and Hamas;
- Their promotion of hatred in their schools and media;
- Their refusal to integrate their brethren in the camps for over 70 years simply to use them to pressure Israel;
- The fact that only in Israel is the population of Christians increasing in the Middle East;
- Only in Israel are Christians not persecuted and discriminated against in the Middle East (Lebanon is a place where this may be debated)
- That Israeli Arabs have no intention of being citizens of any Arab state instead, including any future Palestinian state because of their rights, opportunities and freedoms in Israel?

One expression of anti-Semitism in both definitions I quoted is to expect more of Israel and its citizens than is expected of its enemies. This is another way in which you fail the anti-Semitism test, by ignoring the far worse human rights abuses of the PA and Hamas and focusing on Israel exclusively for criticism. Your pronouncements will have credibility when you criticise those abuses with the degree of condemnation they deserve, before directing your attention to Israel.

While we are at it, you might also want to criticise their incarceration, torture and murder of gays, female genital mutilation, honour killings and violent suppression of internal dissent. Where has your voice been in all these cases as well? Does your conscience not trouble you that you have swept all the abuses above under the carpet?

R.Ross
23/5/2017 05:25:43 pm

First of all, State and Nation are modern concepts with no relevance whatsoever to tribal kingdoms thousands of years in the past.

Even Israeli historians admit that most of the claims made about Israel in religious writings are fantasies.

However, even if they were not, just because a tribe camped somewhere for a bit it does not give them rights to that land for eternity.

Religious writings are religious writings. No more, no less and relevant only to followers with no credence in any court of law.

What Jews want to think about Palestine is irrelevant. What they are doing to the Palestinians matters to any human being of conscience, decency and integrity and that is why it will be ended and a one-state solution brought into being where indigenous and coloniser share equally, free of religious bigotry.

Reply
R.Ross
23/5/2017 06:31:46 pm

Dear Meyer,

Just to address some more of your claims:

2) I actually dispute your claim that Arabs in Israel don't have the same rights as any other citizens ...

I would direct you to Israeli human rights groups, B'Tselem for a start, where you can find out how non-Jews (nothing to do with Arabs, a cultural definition, unless you want to call Jewish Israelis, Europeans) are second-class citizens.

For example, non-Jewish Israelis:

1. cannot work outside of Israel and return.
2. cannot bring spouses, children or parents to live with them.
3. cannot build onto their homes - requests are consistently denied.

And they have inferior health and education services because they are non-Jews.

There is more but you will find it as you research.


3) You stand accused as being anti-Semitic because you choose to deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

Israel can be a Jewish State as Saudi Arabia is a Muslim State, i.e. a theocracy. But that means it is not a democracy and it is an apartheid state since nearly a quarter of Israelis are not Jews.

However, even many so-called Israeli Jews are not Jews because they are atheists. Zionism is not Judaism but Atheism. Judaism is a religion - Zionism is a political movement like Fascism.

Israel does not represent Jews or Judaism so why would it want to be a Jewish State?

You said: Abbas has stated he recognises that Israel exists, but denies its fundamental Jewish character,

I realise there is a lot of delusion in Israel and its supporters but anyone who spends time there knows that the character of Israel is Middle Eastern, if not Arab and the European influence left long ago.

What you call Jewish character is not Jewish.

Abbas doesn't want to flood you with Arabs, he just wants right of return for the indigenous people you drove out which is fair enough.

I mean, you think you have a right to live there because of what your religion says but surely people with keys to home in what is now called Israel, where family lived for seven centuries before being driven out have a far, far greater right.

Sorry mate, religions don't get self-determination. Jews are no more a people than are Christians, Muslims, or Rastafarians. Jews comprise all races and hundreds of nationalities. They are a religion, not a people.

Israel has a right to exist but not as an apartheid State. And Israel represents Zionism not Judaism so criticising Israel cannot be anti-semitic.

4) As a Jew who wears a kippah, I doubt that you would be able to guarantee my safety were I to go to the West Bank with you.

West Bank is a Zionist euphemism for Occupied Palestine. There is UN Mandated Israel and everything else is Occupied Palestine.

I doubt a Nazi wearing his uniform would be guaranteed safety wandering around land he occupies so why should you feel safe in Occupied Palestine.

All of your questions are meaningless because they seek to justify a brutal and murderous military occupation of Palestine.

You seem to be saying, oh, we get some things right so that makes our war crimes and human rights atrocities against the Palestinians okay.

How far do you think the Japanese and Germans in the Second World War would have gotten with that argument? About as far as it gets Israelis. Nowhere.

End the occupation and do what every other coloniser has done - one state with equal rights for all.

George Browning
14/3/2017 08:18:09 pm

Dear Meyer,

One more try.

You clearly have little knowledge of the rights of Arabs in Israel. Born and grown up in Israel, do they have the right to a non-discriminatory Israeli passport? No they don't. Just one example of about out 40 I could give.

I was In Israel recently and spoke with the Armenian Patriarch, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, the Lutheran Bishop and the Anglican Archbishop. They strongly dispute your claims about the status of Christianity in Israel and your comparison with its freedom on the West Bank, or Lebanon, or Jordan or even in Iraq where until relatively recently Christianity has been a free and strong minority.

I do not accuse you of anything, you make very strong accusations about me which might make you feel superior,m but which really severely diminish you if the only way to argue a case is to use insult, invective and unpleasantness.


best wishes

George

Reply
R.Ross
23/5/2017 05:03:18 pm

This is a good rebuttal but I would just make the point that it is impossible to compare the treatment of Aborigines in the 19th century, by the British, with Israel's consistent treatment of the Palestinians since 1947.

For one thing, the British, and it is all a matter of record, sought to preserve the Aboriginal race and people, and had laws in place to that end. They gave them guns, fishing equipment, canoes, food, agricultural tools, medical services and more, in a bid to ensure their survival.

I realise that is not what most people believe but Aboriginal history has been rewritten and fabricated for some decades now and it is necessary to trawl through original records to gain the required information.

Voices from the Past, by Joe Lane and Alistair Crooks, is a compilation of these records, bringing the words and actions of the Aboriginal Protector's into the frame. It is worth reading.

Israel has only ever sought the destruction of the entire Palestinian people from the beginning.

What no-one ever explains, including Mr Mundine, is how a religion can turn followers into a people as we would understand indigenous people to be.

If this has happened to Judaism then surely it must have happened to all other religions so why are they not all a 'people' entitled to homelands, States and self-determination, despite the fact, that, like Judaism, they comprise all races and hundreds of nationalities.

Anyone can grasp the concept of people as religious metaphor but that applies to every religion.

The fantasy that Hebrews/Jews, wandering around Canaan/Palestine, thousands of years ago, like many other tribes, as colonisers since they originated in what is now modern-day Iraq, somehow derive rights to that land from their nomadic colonial moments is quickly destroyed with a modicum of reason and common sense.

Reply
Bulan
26/12/2017 10:30:49 pm

I am no fan of Zionism, but this idea that "Judaism is just a religion" is false. Jews have definitely seen themselves as - and been treated - as a distinct ethnic group for a long time. They were, and still are, flat out called foreigners and outsiders in places like Poland and Ukraine. I do not approve of much of what Israel does, but deny that at the very least European Jews are a people, is simply cruel.

Reply
R.Ross
26/12/2017 11:05:31 pm

The fact that Judaism teaches followers are a people is not particular to that religion. Many have done it but it does not make it true.

Jews take converts and always have done, forcibly in earlier times like all religions and that is why Jews, like most religions now comprise all races and hundreds of nationalities. They are not a people or ethnicity beyond religious metaphor.

Christians and Muslims and even Hindus are the same.

European Jews are not a people. If they were then Sephardim (Spanish/Middle Eastern) and Ashkenazi (northern Europe) would not hate each other. Ashkenazi discriminate against Sephardim even in Israel.

If followers of Judaism were a people they would all share the same racial/cultural links. They do not.

My Jewish ancestors were blonde-blue-eyed Dutch/English with no links at all to the Middle East or Spain.

Jews are a people only as religious metaphor but that applies to all religions.

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    ​Author

    ​Bishop George Browning. 
    ​Anglican Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn 1993 - 2008.

    ​Inaugural chair Anglican Communion Environment Network

    ​PhD Thesis: Sabbath and the Common Good: An Anglican response to the Environmental Crisis.

    D.Litt. Honoris Causa for contribution to Education

    Centenary Medal 2000 for Service to cmmunity

    ​Patron: Australia Palestine Advocacy Network

    Patron: Palestinian Christians in Australia

    Patron: Sabeel

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