no other land

“No other land”

I write this blog in quite a distressed state.

Yesterday I watched the award-winning documentary film – “No Other Land”.  It was shot through the partnership of a courageous Israeli journalist and a young Palestinian on the West Bank.  It documents the relentless push of Israeli bulldozers and the violence of illegal settlers to force Palestinians off their land. The filming concluded less than two years ago. This is the story most Israelis are not permitted to hear.

There was nothing in the film that I did not know.  The brutality I knew.  The gracious resilience of Palestinians I knew. Children and women standing outside their homes and schools having to watch the bulldozers demolish everything they had known and then pick through to find a pot here, or a toy there, I knew.

The shooting of Palestinians who object to the bulldozers I also knew. The film showed the shooting of a man at short range.  He did not die immediately but became a quadriplegic.  Because his house had been bulldozed his mother had to look after him on the earthen floor of a cave. That this happened I also knew. That the IDF soldiers, members of the most ‘moral army in the world’ did not care, even found it funny, I also knew.

Now multiply this one thousandfold and we begin to comprehend today’s Gaza where citizens are shot seeking food and children with amputated legs scream through the night from gangrene, the result of no available medication.

What I was not ready for was the encounter between these wonderful Palestinian women and Israeli soldiers. “Are you not ashamed”? “How will you explain your actions to your mothers”?   Their response was: “it is the law, why should we be ashamed”?

It is not the law.   It is not Jewish moral law. It is not torah. It is not humanitarian law. It is not international law. No country has the right to enact such a law.  This land upon which crazed settlers are running wild and Netanyahu is committing genocide is occupied land. Under international law the occupier is legally and morally bound to care for its occupied citizens.  Israel, through its IDF, and the illegal settlers it protects, are doing the opposite.

Now, here is the rub.  Why does the international community let them get away with it?

After the film was over, (btw there was a huge spill-over crowd in the little town of Moruya), I was billed to lead the Q and A. The first question: “why is the Zionist lobby so strong”? I answered very poorly.  So, I want to answer it now.

The facts of the matter are that the one who controls the narrative holds the power. All the strong and powerful people in our contemporary world know that and are where they are because they control the narrative.  The most obvious example is the US and the machine known as MAGA.  In relation to Israel and Palestine, Zionists control, have controlled, and seek to continue to hold, the public narrative in western media.  The narrative is that Israel is the victim, and all its actions are in defence of itself. This narrative is ruthlessly run in all News Corp outlets, even the ABC the BBC and other ‘respectable’ outlets are cowered into shutting down any voice that might challenge this narrative.  The latest example has been the treatment of Antoinette Lattouf by the ABC who, the court has revealed, acted for her termination out of pressure from the Zionist lobby. The mindless action of pouring petrol on the door of a synagogue and setting it alight feeds this narrative, as we have heard in recent days from the excessive noise of politicians and even the grotesque intervention of Netanyahu.  No Palestinian will have lauded this action, only the Zionists will have done so behind the sham of their antisemitic protest.

There is no truth in this narrative.  In the first half of the 20th century Jews in Europe were victims of cruelty and genocide in the most horrendous fashion.  Since 1948, Israel, through its Zionist dream and aspiration, has made victims of others.  Some of their own rabbis who opposed the creation of Israel forecast unremitting violence. There is no vacant land on planet earth (terra nullius in Australia was a lie too). Creating an ethnically pure land necessitates violence in its creation, and violence in its maintenance and defence. The rabbis who opposed Israel’s creation also predicted the Jewish diaspora would suffer approbation as a consequence.

The 1947 UN partition envisaged two states, originally roughly a 50/50 split. After the 1948/49 war it became Israel 78%, Palestine 22%.  In the 1990’s Palestinians agreed to settle on the 22% at the Camp David accord.  However, 78% has not been enough for Netanyahu and his zealots – hence annexation by stealth, the settlement programme.  

The international community, including Australia, is culpable.  When the first illegal settlement was built on the West Bank, against international law, Israel should have been punished with sanctions and boycotts.  This did not happen, has not happened, as a consequence Israel has become emboldened.  The suffering inflicted upon Palestinian people is horrendous, the international community could have stopped it, but it has not.

Just before Anthony Albanese became Prime Minister, I went to see him to plead that Palestinians be given the same access to his office that is granted to Zionist delegations.  It did not happen.  I also asked that he use the language of genocide and apartheid.  He refused and was adamant I was wrong in wanting to use this language. Recounting this anecdote against Albanese, we need to be reminded that compared with the Coalition, Labour is Palestine’s best friend.

The Zionist narrative prevails - Israel is the victim. NO IT IS NOT.

Australians need to know that every parliamentarian in Australia, State and Federal, is invited to Israel to become imbued with this false narrative.  Most accept.  More Australian politicians have visited Israel than any other country on the planet.
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Thank you, producers of No other land. Although deeply distressed by it, I needed to see it and to be shamefully reminded that I live in a country where those in power continue to protect a narrative, a false narrative, which excuses and permits the tortuous suffering of a very resilient, resourceful, highly educated, culturally rich, people - the Palestinians. Netanyahu, please ask Ahed Tamimi or her father Basem Tamimi, whom you have imprisoned and tortured, if, even now, they would live in harmony with neighbouring Jews.   They will answer Yes.   It is you and your acolytes who refuse to be neighbours to and with them.