Daphne Anson: "Right Now, Israel Does Not Have A Realistic Or Practical Partner In Peace": Aussie State Politician

Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East. (From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Sunday, 17 February 2013

"Right Now, Israel Does Not Have A Realistic Or Practical Partner In Peace": Aussie State Politician

Canadian-born New South Wales Labor MLC and state shadow minister for water Walt Secord, who's chair of the NSW ALP International Relations (Foreign Affairs) Committee, deputy chair of Parliamentary Friends of Israel, and deputy co-chair, Parliamentary Friends of Armenia, has just returned from an inter-party study visit to Israel organised by the state Jewish Board of Deputies.

He's reported on this, his second visit to Israel in two years:

"Too often, study tours want you to listen to a long line of speakers on the same subject – but there was no repetition in this tour and there was a genuine attempt to present different perspectives – including speakers from the Left side of Israeli politics. But we also acknowledge the difficulty in getting politicians for the tour as we were at the height of the Israeli general election – but the quality of speakers was outstanding.

I also acknowledge the effort to provide Palestinian and Israeli Arab perspectives, such as meeting the Governor of Bethlehem and the Abu Gosh Israeli Arab education officials....

My previous study tour in 2011-2012 started in Armenia as I wanted to learn more about the first genocide of the 20th anniversary and to visit their national genocide museum in Yerevan....
After Armenia, I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland and then flew directly to Israel and toured Yad Vashem. I then visited Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan to see a contemporary context of genocide. Halabja was where Saddam Hussein in March 1988 unleashed chemical gas attacks on the Kurds killing 5,000 people.

As a person who has studied the Shoah, I believe that, as Nobel Prize winner and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi said: “Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.”

So while visits such as these are often challenging, they are vital to promoting that which must never be forgotten.

This year – 2012-2013 – on my personal study, I visited the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Armenia, Georgia; Israel and the Palestinian Territories, including Bethlehem and the Aida refugee camp and the ancient ruins of Western Armenia; Turkey, Istanbul, Anzac Cove at Gallipoli and finally, Cairo, Egypt. Let me say that Israel was the centrepiece to my study tour.

But before I speak to that let me briefly discuss why I visited Turkey and Egypt. I visited Turkey for two reasons: Firstly, I wanted to continue my exploration of the Armenian Genocide. I visited ancient Armenian sites in Western Armenia – Kars, Van and Ani.

And secondly, I also wanted to see Turkey within in the context of what the late-Harvard University Professor Samuel Huntington has described as the “Clash of Civilisations”. That is the interaction and conflict between Islam and the West.

I think Turkey is interesting in light of the recent activity of the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in regard to Israel and the Flotilla and the struggle in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and the rural areas between political Islam embodied by the debate on the “scarf” against the backdrop of Turkey’s secular tradition.

Incidentally, I was in Istanbul on the sixth anniversary of the assassination of Hrant Dink –the Armenian editor murdered by a Turkish nationalist because of his outspoken views on the Armenian Genocide and Turkey’s failure to recognise its past.

I have to admit to complex views on Turkey. Turkey must face the Armenian Genocide and unreservedly acknowledge it, but we in the West have an interest in supporting democratic, secular Islamic States like Turkey and Indonesia.

I would like to take this opportunity to note and express my support for Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council’s efforts to encourage Asian journalists in the region to visit Israel.
As for Egypt, I have to admit that my visit was for what I describe as almost selfish reasons.

It was a depressing visit. I hope I am wrong, but I fear that it will be very difficult to travel there in about a year. I also fear for its Christian community there and for their future. If events continue to worsen there, I believe that there is a case for Australia to consider giving Coptic Christians in Egypt recognition as refugees.

On my tour to the Jewish and Christian sites in Cairo, I asked how many people usually take the tour and the guide said about 60 people a tour. There were only two of us on that one tour.

Tourism is the third largest contributor to the national economy there. The current events and unrest are having an important impact on Egypt, which will only worsen the situation. I was there two days before the second anniversary of the events of Tahrir Square.

Some brief thoughts on Egypt. If Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi loses the next election, he must willingly hand over power to a new Government. I believe that the true test of a post-conflict society is the secondelection; the second government or the changing of administrations.I also visited Coptic Christian sites and Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo. I was excited to visit Ben Ezra Synagogue as it was where the famous Rabbi Moses Maimonides worshipped when he lived in Cairo –which leads us happily back to the subject of Israel. Many moments will stay with me for life.The light plane flight to the Israel-Lebanon border was one. You see the security concerns and geography in stark terms: Israel at its narrowest. I think it is about 14 kilometres at one point.

The emotional meeting with former Melbourne resident, Arnold Roth – the father of a victim of terrorism was unsettling, but worthwhile. It put a face to terror and its impact, but also showed someone rebuilding their lives – after unbelievable tragedy. There were personal highlights too, such as taking my parliamentary colleague Luke Foley, who is a proud Catholic to his first Shabbat meal....

As a general observation, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies tour added more layers of appreciation to the complexities of the region. The Erez Checkpoint operated by the IDF between Israel and Gaza showed the complexities of balancing security concerns of Israel. One thousand trucks a day go through the facility. They balance the day-to-day operational needs of Gaza residents and business people such as medical support, including transferring people to Israeli hospitals for cancer treatment.

As well as the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies portion, I added on several days to explore Israel myself. Last year, I visited the Gadot Observation Point near the Golan, Masada, Tiberias, Sderot, Gush Etzion, the Dead Sea, Ramallah, Nazareth, Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Eilat and Jordan.

This year, I visited the Baha’i Temple in Haifa and travelled to Kibbutz Kadarim and got taken on to the Sea of Galilee by motorboat.

To get a real first-hand experience, I caught an Egged bus from the roadside at Kibbutz Kadarim to Akko and then Tel Aviv. I sat with IDF soldiers going home for Shabbat. They helped me when I got to Akko. They were puzzled by why a Sydney man with a Canadian accent would bother to take public transport rather than get a driver. But, as I said, some things should be experienced first-hand.

It can really shift your view on matters. I guess this raises the question of whether this trip has shifted my view on any matters in relation to Israel.

Well, I still wholeheartedly support a two-State solution for Israelis and the Palestinians. But I am a realist. Right now, Israel does not have a realistic or practical partner in peace.

Fatah in the West Bank is struggling and its leadership are unable to even go to Gaza.

Hamas in Gaza does not recognise Israel’s right to exist.

Egypt is in internal conflict and is sending mixed messages. It still has shaky peace with Israel, but it is a “negative” or cold war type of peace. Syria is in crisis and is a failed State. This affects Israel and the whole region.

So this calls for realism, and for clear support of Israel’s right to defend herself.

But I hope for many things. I hope I am proven wrong about my urgency to see Egypt. For example, who would have imagined that Sadat would have ever made peace with Israell?

And for the record, you do not make peace with your friends; you make peace with your enemies. I hope that shifts in Palestinian leadership allow a two-State solution to once again be a real, not theoretical, ambition...."

Read Walt Secord's entire speech here

2 comments:

Shirl in Oz19 February 2013 at 08:01
I've spoken with Walt Secord on a few occasions and he is an amazing man and an even more amazing friend and supporter of Israel.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'
Rod Liddle (2018)

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.
Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.
[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.
Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968)

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...
The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...
friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

DISCLAIMER

Commenters are kindly requested to avoid posting material which violates or infringes the rights of others (including their privacy and publicity rights, or which is unlawful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, invasive of privacy, vulgar, obscene, profane or which may harass or cause distress or inconvenience to, or incite hatred of, any person.
The opinions expressed by posters of comments on the Daphne Anson blog are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Daphne Anson. Daphne Anson is not responsible for the content of the comments.
This blog's posts sometimes include links to other websites. Such linked websites will have their own terms and conditions of use and commenters are advised to familiarise themselves with them.
The Daphne Anson blog
* does not sponsor, endorse or necessarily approve of any material posted on this website or on websites linked from or to this website;
* does not make any warranties or representations regarding the quality, accuracy, merchantability or fitness for purpose of any material on websites linked from or to this website;
* does not make any warranties or representations that material on other websites to which this website is linked does not infringe the intellectual property rights of any person anywhere in the world;
* does not authorise the infringement of any intellectual property rights contained in material in other websites by linking this website to those other websites.