Published: 4 February 2026
Last updated: 4 February 2026
President Herzog’s visit might be useful if he could be persuaded to ponder the lessons Australia might offer.
When the six Australian states joined together in 1901 to become a new nation, there was no doubt that they conceived of Australia as a white country. First Nations Peoples were denied citizenship, and the centrepiece of immigration policy was the White Australia Policy.
Today, other than a few activists on the far right, that vision of Australia is rejected. In over a century our national identity has moved from a loyal outpost of Anglo Britain to a multicultural society, still struggling to find justice for its Indigenous peoples.
Nations evolve, and if they fail to adjust, they decline. Perhaps the Australian experience suggests that Zionism, conceived as creating a Jewish homeland, also needs to evolve.
Currently the lands of Israel/Palestine are occupied by roughly equal numbers of Jews and Palestinians, over whom Israel is determined to maintain total control. Australia, like many other countries has recognised Palestine, but it is increasingly apparent that Israel will not allow this and is using the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank to make it less and less viable.
Just as we abandoned our national self-image of White Australia, any genuine solution requires Israeli Jews to abandon their idea of permanent supremacy
It is claimed that calls for freeing Palestine “from the river to the sea” are antisemitic because they imply wiping out the state of Israel. But it is equally problematic that there are many Israelis, including senior cabinet ministers, who echo this call in their claim to ‘Judea and Samaria’ (the West Bank) and even Gaza. They too want everything from Mediterranean to the Jordan, namely the entire area now controlled by Israel.
Comments4
Corinne11 February at 12:24 am
One of the differences here is that since the early 1900s, Arabs in Palestine have not ceased wabting to kill Jews. Aboriginal people dont express their hatred of whites in that way. Their intentions are to share the land. Hardly the situation with Islamic fundamentalists. And yes, Israel has absolutely never looked after those under occupation in any meaningful way. Citizenship won’t happen purely because Israel must retain its Jewish sovereignty for all the reasons we all know.
Dennis Altman7 February at 03:13 am
Michael is right that I don’t have a solution. But I would point out that President Herzog has also said fresh ideas are needed
Jo Thomson6 February at 05:34 am
Denis Altman poses this challenge for Zionists. Another 80 years of efforts to eliminate/subjugate Palestinians in the Jewish State is not an option.
If anyone still holds out hope for a separate Palestinian state, where do they think it would it be?
Michael Gawenda5 February at 07:22 am
I am not sure that the analogy with Australian holds but in any case, people like Denis Altman never spell out just what his proposal is. One state from the river to the sea? Created how? How much support is there for this idea among Israelis and Palestinians? How does he propose to convince them, after decades of and decades of conflict and hatred and death of innocents that goes back decades before the state was established, to live together? In a secular state called Palestine? How would the state that exists now be dismantled? By whom? I am a two stater which I hope would one day end up in a sort of confederation. Why does Altman does dismiss the two states in less than a sentence? It is far less of a fantasy that his, a fantasy that ha not worked nowhere else in the world. And most certainly not in the Middle East.