Topic: Gaza/Palestine/Israel
Let’s get the rant over with
Honestly, the whole Palestine/Israel thing is even more a total mare’s nest than ever. Fact is the creation of the State of Israel in the first place was very ill thought out — thanks, UN, and our very own H V Evatt who chaired the committee that came up with the “solution”. And yes there has been war and terrorism on all sides ever since, and in the 1945-8 period preceding. Carving two new states out of one that already existed was never going to happen wthout profound injustice and disruption to somebody. Such things happen — think of the contemporaneous goings on when India was divided between India and Pakistan, and we are still living with the fallout from that.
And true believers went from the start way beyond what the UN had outlined. Eretz Israel using borders suggested in Genesis 15:18 — “On that day Hashem made a covenant with Avram, saying, “To your offspring I assign this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” — The Israel Bible translation — uncomfortably corresponds rather to “from the river to the sea,” though in that case the river presumably is the Jordan. I doubt many Zionists would literally be eyeing the Euphrates as a western boundary these days, but we have there the crux of a major sticking point for a “one state solution” though — they claim pretty much the same patch, and Hamas basically thinks that patch is Palestine and there really should be no Israel.
It is possible to imagine a good “one state” which is both Israel and Palestine, but everyone would have to agree it is a secular state, but hopefully one guaranteeing the rights of all.
For some time the two state solution has been the one on the table, and there have been times it did seem achievable. It is the official stance of Australia — still is — and that was bipartisan. A variation on that was all that Penny Wong had to offer today.
Me? I have the horrible feeling it has all gone too far and that the two state solution is pretty much dead. But I could of course be wrong, probably am. So secretly I really think the one state I have already described as being secular and multicultural is the only way to peace in the end.
The ruin that Gaza has become — that area so densely populated and yet half the size of Illawarra — will not lead to the end of Hamas or the ideas Hamas has promulgated. Has everyone forgotten the phoenix? That is what Israel is creating. The thirst for justice and the desire to reverse 76 years of dispossession will not die, indeed cannot be killed, no matter how many children are killed. The remaining children will grow up and they will remember. Boy, will they ever remember, and boy will they ever hate! Can you blame them?
As I said — what a mare’s nest! Sorry I can’t be more cheerful. At the same time I really can’t play goodies and baddies about this either. There are great people with great hearts on both sides — tragically, perhaps…. I try here to allow their voices when they come my way, but I do not try to give a blow by blow commentary. I am not the BBC. I am just an old guy in The Gong.
Meanwhile, quite a good opinion piece just now in The Politics by Rachel Withers. I can’t link as these days it just comes in my email and has no way to view online. But here is the first paragraph.
“Foreign Minister Penny Wong appears to be choosing her words very carefully. A two-state solution is “the only hope” for peace in the Middle East, Wong told a conference last night, noting that “the international community is now considering the question of Palestinian statehood” and there is “widespread frustration” at the lack of progress since the 1990s Oslo accords. Wong made clear that Hamas could not play a role in a future Palestinian state, and pushed back on the idea that statehood would be “rewarding an enemy”, arguing that both sides would benefit. She did not, however, announce any change in Australia’s position. The minister’s cautious opening of the debate has been welcomed in many corners, including by the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, which says Israel’s “policy of apartheid” is depriving Palestinians of basic rights. Others wish she would have gone further. But no amount of care could stop the Coalition from turning Wong’s moderate speech into something “downright dangerous”, claiming that Wong’s comments, which reflect growing international thinking, were about “chasing Green votes”. Does the Coalition support a two-state solution, or does it not?….”
AFTERTHOUGHT
We shouldn’t be too hard on Doc Evatt and his crew. They did not have the gift of second sight, or the benefit of the postcolonial studies that emerged 20 or so years later, and they were dealing with a world in chaos in the aftermath of WW2. The Holocaust too was very raw in people’s minds. The world was seething with displaced people. But the same milieu gave us the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Court of Justice, the definition of genocide and so much more.
That sent me searching for an amazing person
Repost — the amazing American Jew who was a prosecuter at Nuremberg and an ardent champion of the International Court of Justice. Also a founding figure in the definition of genocide.
What would he think today I wonder? Here he is 10 September 2016:
“I have witnessed holocausts and I cannot stop trying to deter future genocides. After Nuremberg I laid out my life plan on how you go about saving the world. People concluded ‘that man is crazy!’ But I wanted to change the way people think. You cannot kill an entrenched ideology with a gun,” said Ferencz….
“You have to teach compassion and tolerance at a young age. The rule of law must be applied universally to protect humankind universally. It’s a long-range problem, and ‘Law, not war’ is my slogan,” he said.
It has been Ferencz’s mandate ever since at the age of 27 he secured the convictions of 22 defendants, all high-ranking SS officers, in the Einsatzgruppen Case. At the time, the Associated Press called it “the biggest murder trial in history.” Thirteen of the defendants were sentenced to death for their role in murdering more than one million people…..
See After seven decades fighting genocide, this 96-year-old prosecutor is still hard at work — Times of Israel. 16 September 2016.
Repost from 2023 — this was on our ABC very recently. The amazing man who was the Prosecutor at Nuremberg, probably the first person ever to use the word “genocide”, and a champion of the International Court of Justice where in his 90s he was given the honour of summing up the very first prosecution case. Do not miss this.
A Jew born in Odessa. 1920 – 2023!
And so inspiring and instructive is all this that I won’t say more….
At 99. He passed away last April at the age of 103. A witness of so much. A true inspiration.
Neil's Commonplace Book 
That area has been in turmoil for centuries. There’s no settling a religious war.