Mundine: Ignorance the Basis for Poisonous Prejudice
By Nyunggai Warren Mundine
Mundine is a former National President of the Australian Labour Party
Hamas’s savagery on October 7 knew no bounds. From babies to the elderly, pregnant women, festival-goers and peace activists; the victims were killed, butchered and violated with unspeakable cruelty.
The attackers’ main target was Jews, but their victims included Christians, Muslims and Buddhists; Palestinians, Bedouins and foreign nationals from every continent including Thai farm workers and Tanzanian agricultural students. The barbarians laughed and celebrated their crimes; filmed their atrocities and posted evidence of them on the internet.
The blood was barely dry before demonstrations sprang up globally advocating genocide against Jews, including at the supposedly elite universities. The chant, “from the river to the sea” means the destruction of Israel and elimination of the Jews. At times this subtlety was abandoned with express calls to kill Jews and for jihad against Jews, including in Australia.
Many of these bigots, especially in the universities, are champions of inclusivity and diversity and hold particular regard for indigenous peoples – other than the Jews. They see Nazis everywhere – except when they join demonstrations with Nazi ideologies on full display.
Australia’s character as a successful multicultural, multifaith, multiracial nation where everyone is equal is under threat, with anti-Semitic incidents up by over 700 per cent. Australian Jews are living in fear.
How does a Middle Eastern conflict cause threats against fellow Australians? The answer is blatant anti-Semitism supported by lies and gaslighting that would make Goebbels blush.
These bigots claim Israel is a colonial state; the Jews are settlers who’ve stolen Palestinian land and refuse a Palestinian state. The opposite is true.
Jews are indigenous people of Israel and have lived there since before recorded history. In 700 to 600BC, their kingdoms were conquered; their homelands subject to repeated conquest and colonisation thereafter, including by the Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Ottoman Empire.
The creation of the modern state of Israel was an act of decolonisation. Palestinians with unbroken ancestry in the region who identify as Arabs, do so because they’ve adopted the identity, language and, in many cases, religion of colonisers from the Arabian Peninsula more than 1000 miles away.
When their kingdoms fell, some Jews were forced into Europe, the wider Middle East and North Africa. This diaspora experienced ongoing persecution. Jews had lived in Algeria since around the 1st century AD, over 600 years before Algeria’s conquest by the Arabs. When it secured independence from France in 1962, one colonial power made way for another and Algeria again became an Arab state. But only Algerians with Muslim fathers or paternal grandfathers were granted citizenship, so its 140,000 Jews were forced out within a decade.
Around 900,000 Jews were driven out of countries across the Middle East and North Africa where they’d lived for millennia. None claim a right of return.
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Jews’ traditional lands, by then known as Palestine, were administered by Britain. In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration endorsing Palestine becoming a nation for Jews. In the face of Arab opposition, this promise wasn’t honoured for 30 years, by which time the plan had changed to partitioning Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Jews accepted this. Palestinians did not and the West Bank was annexed by Jordan, Gaza by Egypt.
On its creation in 1948, Israel was immediately invaded by Arab states. Those Palestinians who fled did so not as a precondition to Israel’s creation, but during that war. While there were a range of reasons some Palestinians left Israel, these reasons included getting out of the way of attacking Arab armies and being urged to leave by Arab leaders who believed Israel would be quickly defeated. It wasn’t.
During this and later wars, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt. Both rejected Israel’s offers to return captured territory in return for peace agreements. When Egypt later agreed to recognise Israel and enter a peace treaty, Israel handed it back the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt didn’t want Gaza back.
Arab states have gradually moved towards normalised relations with Israel. But Palestinian leaders remain defiant, refusing multiple offers of a Palestinian state. Because they oppose a two-state solution. They want one state, not being Israel.
Israel hasn’t occupied Gaza for nearly 20 years. Hamas has been in control, ruling through violence, fear and the indoctrination of children. Billions in aid has been spent, not on building prosperity or creating opportunities, but on weapons, tunnel construction and enriching Hamas’s leaders.
Hamas wants Israel destroyed. This isn’t a secret. It’s clearly stated in Hamas’s 1988 covenant and 2017 charter; manifestos riddled with anti-Semitic tropes, conspiracy theories and historical falsehoods. The covenant states: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” And: “Palestine is an Islamic Waqf (an endowment or Holy possession) land consecrated for Muslim generations until Judgment Day … This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Muslims consecrated these lands to Muslim generations till the Day of Judgment.”
If you can’t imagine how people could commit the horrors of October 7, read those documents and find out.
We’ve seen the savagery humans are capable of in Rwanda, in the former Yugoslavia, during the Holocaust. Also a decade ago under the ISIS caliphate, with videos of people being beheaded and burned alive in cages, women and girls sold into sexual slavery and gay men thrown off rooftops.
October 7 wasn’t only an attack on Israel. It was also an attack on the civilised world. As with ISIS, the battle against Hamas isn’t a battle against Palestinians or Muslims but a battle between modernity and medieval brutality; between civilisation and barbarism.
All reasonable people, including Israel’s government and military, are concerned about the impact of this battle on Gazan civilians. History indicates it’s impossible to avoid civilian casualties when fighting monstrous regimes with no regard for human life.
An estimated 600,000 German civilians (including 76,000 children) died in Allied bombings during World War II. No one really knows how many civilians died in the defeat of ISIS. Up to 11,000 civilians, 10 times the official estimate, are believed killed in the battle for Mosul alone, but it’s hard to know how many were buried under the eight million tonnes of rubble. That’s just one city.
We don’t know the true number of Gazan civilian casualties because the figures are provided by Hamas, prolific liars who don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. We do know casualties would be massively reduced if Hamas didn’t conduct itself from schools and hospitals or use Gazans as human shields.
We also know Israeli military action could be ended if Hamas returns the hostages and delivers up the October 7 attackers to face justice. But only Hamas has this within its power.
Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO DUniv (Hon. Causa) is director, Indigenous Forum, Centre for Independent Studies.
This article was first publsihed in The Australian