Published: 20 August 2024
Last updated: 20 August 2024
The evidence that we live in a polarised world assails us on a daily basis. In Australia, one form of polarisation has manifested itself in the bitter communal divisions which have emerged in consequence of the atrocities of October 7 and Israel’s war in Gaza.
For the most part two competing narratives are presented in Manichaean terms: each sees the war and its tragic precursors as a conflict between darkness and light.
One person’s genocide is another’s necessary self-defence against a brutal terrorist organisation bent itself on perpetrating genocide. One person’s exercise of freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate is another’s detestable hate speech. One person’s Naqba is another’s heroic fight to preserve a tiny nascent state created by the authority of the United Nations from destruction by five hostile armies. One person’s respect for international humanitarian law, as interpreted by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, is another’s confirmation of the irremediable anti-Israel bias of international organisations.
To suggest that all Jews and Zionists support all the actions of Israel and the IDF in Gaza is to attribute a characteristic to all members of a group regardless of the differences among them
The polarisation evident in the competing narratives obscures a very important point, entirely lost on most if not all ‘anti-Zionists’. The current terrible conflict has exposed, if it was not clear beforehand, the many varieties of Zionism within the Australian Jewish community.
It has also exposed the link between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Comments3
Keith Oderberg20 August at 10:05 am
A learned commentary from a very clever and well informed educator and intellectual. Shame that he finds it necessary to use language which would not be understood by the vast majority of likely readers. Manichaean could have been replaced with duality/ black and white opinions. Why do some clever people find it necessary to impose their cleverness with obscure language?
Wesley Parish20 August at 09:27 am
Just some comments on some assumptions of Ronald Sackville:
“One person’s Naqba is another’s heroic fight to preserve a tiny nascent state created by the authority of the United Nations from destruction by five hostile armies.”
A brief glance at the timeline suggest that the Naqba was well under way before May 14 1948. Even Menachem Begin in his memoir The Revolt suggests that was the case, mentioning that the attack and massacre at Deir Yassin, 9 April 1948, had demoralized enough Palestinians that the three-pronged attack of Haganah, ETzL and LeHI was made easier. The refugees would’ve been on the tongues of everybody in the Arab Street well before the Arab League leaders bestirred themselves.
“One person’s genocide is another’s necessary self-defence against a brutal terrorist organisation bent itself on perpetrating genocide.”
I suggest Ronald Sackville read the Genocide Convention for himself. Routinely destroying hospitals and killing medical staff, and destroying the civil infrastructure, so that disease runs rampant, fits well the definition of “(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;”
and since Hamas has no such power over Israel while Israel has demonstrated such power since 2014, one might be accused of closing one’s mind to the facts if one accuses Hamas of committing genocide. Reality is not sympathetic to those denying reality.
“One person’s respect for international humanitarian law, as interpreted by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, is another’s confirmation of the irremediable anti-Israel bias of international organisations.”
In this we see that Zionists in general, mire themselves in self-contradiction – Israel was “created” by the UN General Assembly Partition Resolution, so it’s legit; but the UN shows its irremediable anti-Israel bias by its demands that Israel live up to the same laws it demands from others.
“people who proclaim their (often newly discovered) Jewishness solely for the purpose of lending force to their virulent criticism of Israel.”
I’m wondering how many find themselves proclaiming a “newly discovered Jewishness” that others – most often Jewish themselves – have insisted they have? I had a decade of wondering why Jewish people I met, insisted on regarding me as Jewish. Then I discovered some of my Dad’s ancestors were indeed Jewish, Polish Ashkenazi; whether my Mum’s family has Jewish ancestors amongst the British, is still uncertain, though if some were, they’d be Spanish-Dutch-British Sephardim. It can be quite disconcerting to suddenly be “included” in a group you don’t feel any connection to. Particularly when some of that “inclusion” happens to be censorious, because you don’t fit all the criteria.