Australian Family Party

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Israel

Lessons from Lausanne

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hamas-israelThe story is told of a divine messenger who appeared to a peasant farmer.

“You have been chosen”, said the messenger. “Whatever you wish for, it will be granted.”

The farmer was shocked but beamed with anticipation.

“There is only one condition,” the messenger added. “Whatever you wish for, your neighbour will be granted double.”

The farmer’s smile disappeared, for he despised his neighbour.

“So, if I ask for a ton of gold, my neighbour will get two tons?”

“That is correct,” said the messenger.

“And if I ask for an extra 1,000 acres of land, my neighbour will get 2,000?”

“You understand well,” the messenger added.

The farmer thought in silence for quite some time, as he could not bear the thought of his neighbour prospering in any way.

Suddenly, his face brightened. “I’ve got it!”, he exclaimed.

“Put out one of my eyes.”

As the war between Israel and Hamas rages, I thought about this story.

Hamas and its Palestinian supporters are the peasant farmer. They despise Israel so much that they would rather sacrifice their own future than see Israel prosper in any way.

As has been observed many times, whilst the Israelis (and we here in the West) love life, Hamas and its supporters love death.

So, how does one reconcile such diametrically opposed positions?

In short, you can’t.

In January 1923, the League of Nations ‘Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations’ was signed in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The agreement stated that all Christians living in the newly established Republic of Turkey were to be re-located to Greece, and all of Greece’s Muslims were to move to Turkey.

The agreement specified that the populations being transferred would lose their original nationality – along with any right of return – and instead would become citizens of their new homeland.

The population transfers, which affected about one-and-a-half million people, imposed enormous pain on their respective populations, but was generally viewed as a success. Relations between Turkey and Greece improved immensely following the transfers.

Around that same time, the British came up with what might be called a ‘Two–State Solution’ to the Arab-Jew problem it had inherited in British Mandate Palestine. In an attempt to resolve the problem, the British allocated approximately 80,000 sq km of land to the Arab population in an area to be known as Trans-Jordan (now simply called Jordan), and 20,000 sq km to the Jews. In 1948, the Jews declared independence over their portion of land and the state of Israel was born.

Following the creation of Trans-Jordan in 1921, during the next 40 years, and despite being surrounded by numerous wealthy Arab states, those Palestinians who had not re-located to Jordan but had remained in what were known as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were kept in abject poverty. They were effectively stateless. Egypt controlled Gaza and Jordan controlled the West Bank. Neither state showed any interest in improving the lives of the Palestinians under their control, and certainly showed no interest in creating a separate state for them.

Following its spectacular victory in the 1967 war – which Egypt, Syria and Jordan had started (overwhelmingly supported by the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank) – in what must surely be the biggest missed opportunity since its founding, Israel should have done what the League of Nations did in 1923 and relocated the remaining Palestinian populations of Gaza and the West Bank to Jordan. Jordan was, after all, overwhelmingly Palestinian.

But as Israel has been doing since biblical times, it ignored calls to remove its enemies and prevent them from attacking it in the future.

The Lausanne Convention endorsed the practice of relocating ethnic and religious populations and established the legal right of states to re-locate large populations on the grounds of what they called ‘otherness’.

Another example was the partition of India in 1947 which saw millions of Muslims relocated to the newly established state of Pakistan and millions of Hindus relocated to India.

Speaking at the Lausanne Convention, French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré said, “the mixture of populations of different races and religions has been the main cause of troubles and of war and that this un-mixing of peoples would remove one of the greatest obstacles to peace”.

As the Bible states, “This is an hard saying, who can hear it?” (John 6:60 KJV).

As with many of the world’s most intractable problems, we often end up being faced with two options – a bad option, and a worse option. There are no ‘good’ options.

In Israel’s case, the bad option – it would attract a great deal of international criticism – would be to do what the Greeks and Turks did in the 1920s and relocate the Palestinians.

A worse option would be to allow them to remain.

Allowing them to remain would require either the Americans, the Europeans or the United Nations – none of which is likely to do it – or the Israeli military, to occupy Gaza indefinitely.

Under any of these circumstances, Hamas would re-form and re-build.

That can’t be allowed to happen.

Relocation of the Palestinian population by absorbing them into other Arab countries is the least worst option.

Thank you for your support.

Never Again?

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never-againIt’s been said that whatever is done to the Jews, is done for the Jews.

In other words, when they come out of this current crisis, they will be stronger than before.

Or to paraphrase an old Randy Pike quote, ‘Throughout history, many have tried to bury the Jewish people, but after every episode they keep surviving, outliving all the pallbearers’.

History is repeating itself before our eyes.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born, Dutch-American activist and former politician spoke recently about how, “a story is also a moment when you are forced to make choices.

“I think we find ourselves today, right now, in a moment where we have to make a moral choice”.

“I sit here today and say I support Israel. No ifs. No buts. Unequivocal.”

What Ali is invoking here is ‘The exception that proves the rule’.

And that rule is, ‘There are two sides to every story’.

The rightness of Israel’s position in this conflict is the exception that proves the rule.

There is only one side to take.

No ifs. No buts.

As we know, the easiest position in any conflict is to ‘both sides’ the problem – the moral equivalence game.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, plays this game.

He is unable to condemn the horrific violence perpetrated by Hamas without in the same breath criticising Israel.

“I make no apologies for standing up against anti-Semitism”, he told parliament.

But then quickly added, “But I also have a track record of standing up for the rights of and justice for Palestinian people.”

There’s no doubt which side he is on.

As commentator Chris Kenny stated, “That might have been an acceptable line if Israel had sent its soldiers into Gaza to slaughter children, rape and murder the women, torture and murder the men and take a few hundred hostages.

“That might have been an acceptable equivalence if Israel had spent years firing rockets indiscriminately into Gaza trying to kill civilians.”

Which of course, they haven’t.

As US commentator Kayleigh McEnany has said, “This is a spiritual and moral catastrophe that has to be addressed”.

This is a clash of civilisations, a clash of cultures. A war between the civilised and the uncivilised, and only one can be allowed to win.

In Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, the Palestinian Authority has cancelled this year’s Nativity Scene, ‘In honour of Hamas martyrs’.

On October 9 – two days after the slaughter of over a thousand Jews, and before there was any response from the Israelis, hundreds of ‘Free Palestiners’ gathered in front of the Sydney Opera House and chanted “gas the Jews, gas the Jews”.

This is clearly not about Gaza.

No, what we are seeing on our TV screens around the world is plain-old Jew-hatred masquerading as ‘Free Palestine’.

And while it may be true that a number of young people in these crowds might be equally at home at a Black Lives Matter march or Just Stop Oil action, that is not the point.

In their case, as Mark Twain once said, ‘No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.’

It was former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke who once declared that Israel was ‘an inspiration, a small lone democracy in the Middle East’.

“If the bell tolls for Israel, it won’t just toll for Israel, it will toll for all mankind”, he said.

There is no doubt the overwhelming majority of Australians are on the side of Israel in this conflict, but it is also a reality that Jewish Australians are very fearful at present.

And for good reason.

In a chilling commentary, author Ramesh Thakur writes, “The solemn pledge of ‘Never Again’ (referring to the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust) has now given way to ‘Here we go again’.

“78 years after the Holocaust, the threat of Jewish extermination is back.

“Calls go out for Jews to be gassed, and taunts that the army of Mohammed that massacred them in the seventh century will return.

“The terrorists have been valorised, Israel vilified, Jews attacked and threatened, and posters of the missing hostages torn down.”

I’m with Kayleigh McEnany, “This is a spiritual and moral catastrophe that has to be addressed”.

No ifs. No buts.

Israel

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jerusalemFrom 1946 to 1948, my father served as a medic in the British Army in what was then known as British Mandate Palestine.

Enacted by the League of Nations in 1919, the mandate was assigned to Britain at the end of World War 1 following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The objective of the mandate over the Ottoman Empire’s former territories was to provide, ‘Administrative advice and assistance until such time as territories are able to stand alone’. The mandate also required Britain to put into effect the 1917 Balfour Declaration which endorsed ‘a national home for the Jewish people’.

Stationed in Jerusalem, it was there my father learned much about the Jewish people.

But that wasn’t his first encounter.

Attending primary school in the 1930s, my father told me the story of returning to school after the Christmas holidays one year and the teacher asking all the students in the class what each of them had received for Christmas. One by one, and with great delight, the children described the wonderful presents they had received.

Until, that is, it came to my dad’s friend Maurice.

“And what did you get for Christmas, Maurice?”, asked the teacher.

“I didn’t receive anything Miss”, Maurice replied solemnly.

“What, nothing?”, quizzed the teacher gently. “So, what did you do over Christmas?”, she asked.

“Well Miss, my family is Jewish, and my father has a toy shop, so every Christmas Day we go down to the shop and hold hands and look up at all the empty shelves and sing ‘What A Friend We Have in Jesus’.”

Thus began my father’s admiration of the Jewish people. Their creativity, their intelligence, their courage, and of course their sense of humour.

In the 75 years since the end of the British mandate and Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence, the Jewish people have created a modern state that has become a global technological and entrepreneurial powerhouse.

With few exceptions, all adults in Israel – both men and women – take part in compulsory military service immediately after leaving high school.

After their military service, Israelis then take these experiences with them into the private sector – first with their university studies, and then into business. Many highly successful start-up companies in Israel were founded by those who served together in the military.

It was recently reported that one of the world’s biggest investors, Warren Buffett, has only ever invested in one country outside of the United States, and that is Israel. When announcing that his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, had paid $2 billion for 20 per cent of Israeli toolmaker Iscar, Buffet said, “Israel reminds me of the United States after its birth. The determination, motivation, intelligence and initiative of its people are remarkable and extraordinary.”

All of this achieved while being surrounded by hostile countries which have declared war on Israel numerous times, with many to this day committed to ‘wiping Israel off the map’.

One of those countries committed to Israel’s destruction is Iran, which continues to pour billions of dollars’ worth of weapons into terrorist organisations who are supported by local Palestinians.

Enter Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declaring earlier this month that parts of Israel are ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’ and that Israeli settlements are ­‘illegal’.

Not helpful, Prime Minister.

Not only is this factually wrong, but it also puts Australia completely out of sync with our closest ally, the ­United States, and aligns us much more closely with the policies of the European Union, a perpetual critic of Israel.

The Labor Left, of which Anthony Albanese is a long-time member, hates Israel.

No surprises there.

Along with support for the centralised control of everything, climate paranoia, open borders, transgenderism, euthanasia, abortion right up to the point of birth, and all manner of other anti-family, anti-faith, anti-freedom ideology, it’s what the Left does.

But back to Israel. Instead of fracturing the relationship, Australia should instead be supporting Israel’s ground-breaking initiatives through the Abraham Accords.

Named after Abraham, considered the patriarch of both the Jews (through his son Isaac) and the Arabs (through his son Ishmael), the Abraham Accords are a set of treaties with Arab countries in the region which have included Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco. Great progress has also been made towards a treaty with one of the regions key players, Saudi Arabia.

Australia and Israel have a great deal in common. Anthony Albanese and his Labor Left can try all they like, but they won’t win this one.