Gareth Smith has more outlandish claims in his letter to The Echo last week (28 May).
He has had all but a free pass in all of these years to say what he wants, and it is known that hardly anyone will ever fact-check him.
If any intimidation towards anti-Israel protesters has indeed taken place, I am against it, but what is very clear is that the pro-Israel and pro-peace community has suffered an immeasurable torrent of ongoing attacks from children being harassed in schools, relentless graffiti attacks all over the shire, people being confronted and abused in the streets in broad daylight, the quiet boycotting of local businesses and so on, and so forth.
It is a fact that Israel WAS forced to attack Hamas in Gaza after the incredibly successful deception by Hamas, conducted over the two prior years: that they were not seeking war with Israel – only to launch the hugely successful surprise attack on Israel on 7 October.
Palestinians are sick of Hamas and are protesting in the streets of Gaza against them as we speak. Be pro-Palestinian and support the right of good Palestinians to get rid of the Hamas death cult.
Forgot to mention the right wing settler death cults Danny, running through Jerusalem shouting death to Arabs, spitting on women and the continued attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank with the support of police and the idf. Just as bad as Hamas.
Yes the right wing settler death cults are just as bad as Hamas , do you agree that both of their campaigns need to be stopped?
Yes but considering the considerable efforts the current Israeli government put in to ensure Hamas was the dominate grouping in Gaza to decease the influence of the Palestinian authority makes me wonder what can be achieved?
Acknowledged. I look at the example of Vietnam where ausies who fought there went back and hugged their previous enemy, and perhaps Turkey after Galipoli where their president said to the ANZAC countries ‘ your men that died here we considder our sons’
Deception !!!???
No Danny, the guff you come out with are just straight lies
“The pro-Israel and pro-peace community” is a contradiction in terms.
Israel has been on a war-footing since it’s inception.
Israel’s Genocide of the Palestinians , Lebanese, Syrians and their hoped for Proxy war with Iran, speaks Nothing of peace. This fascist country deserves every bit of animosity directed at it !
Today they attack a peaceful attempt to provide just a morsel of food to over two million starving Gazans, this in it’s self demonstrates that this country is a stain on humanity, and certainly has no right to exist.
Sincerely, G”)
“The pro-Israel and pro-peace community” is a contradiction in terms.” – no its not, there are numerous Isreali and joint Isreali/palestinian ongoing peace initiatives. I.E. – last week the Palestine Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel posted on their official Boycott Divest & Sanction Israel website last week, a call for its followers to boycott Standing Together (Omdim B’Yachad in Hebrew), a leftist joint Israeli-Palestinian organization that has called for a permanent cease-fire in the war in Gaza and a return of all Israeli hostages, one of the groups within Israel that is speaking up for peace and for the Gazans under bombardment. The group has both Jewish and Arab Israeli members, and is co-directed by a Jewish Israeli and a Palestinian Israeli, Alon-Lee Green and Rula Daood.
“attack a peaceful attempt to provide just a morsel of food” – Greta and her crew did a succesful action to highlight the situation, with a token food delivery knowing that the international court has judged that isreals blockade is legal – Isreals capture of the boat is hardly “a stain on humanity” . “Isreal certainly has no right to exist” – Isreal exists under a lawful decolonisation process that granted the jews that lived there sovereignty over about 1/3 of their original country, and would have handed soverignty to the arabs with half of the UN’s new border of the 1948 Isreal in the new borders of the entire British and French colonised region, where the Arabs could be presently sitting on a legitimate 77 year old Palestinian State, but the arabs rejected it and went to war to destroy and take over the jewish half. Isreal is a legitimate sovereign nation, its not like Australia that was colonised illegally by British settlers, and is yet to be decolonised.
You dare to use the words pro Israel and pro peace in the same sentence. Shame on you. Cut through to reality, it is different. In reality the government is pushing a policy of extermination, genocide, etc.
(The pro peace people are at The Hague, not in N’s cabinet.)
And just FYI – The Aliance for Middle East Peace ( ALLMEP) has just put out a statement: “Following last week’s announcement about the Paris Call for the Two-State Solution, Peace, and Regional Security, This week, from June 12-14, a summit will bring together Israeli, Palestinian, and international peacebuilders for deep dialogue, policy work, and the co-creation of recommendations that will feed directly into the diplomatic summit hosted by France and Saudi Arabia at the UN the following week. ALLMEP has taken on a critical role in the Steering Committee, helping design and program all aspects of this three day conference with a view to transform words into action, building the momentum and bottom-up energies fused with top-down diplomacy to end this terrible war and return the hostages, and then finally shape a lasting peace between both peoples. ” The peace builders are out there, working together, while anti Isreal bigots just throw their brickbats
If you look objectively at the evidence, it is overwhelmingly the pro-Palestinian voices entitled to feel threatened and intimidated. For instance, if you dare speak up for Palestine and against the actions of Israel, you are likely:
• To be ‘sacked’, even from the ALP or the ABC;
• Your grant money is withdrawn;
• Awards you have received are taken from you;
• You are subject to false claims of antisemitism.
Day by day, the list lengthens. Much of this is a result of an unrelenting campaign of intimidation against the Palestinian voices by pro-Israel lobby groups (e.g., ‘Lawyers for Israel’) including major media outlets.
The intimidation of pro-Israel supporters seems to be restricted to mostly verbal taunts. Even the so-called graffiti attacks have been found to be largely as a result of criminal activity and not reflecting antisemitism.
Brian, I think that you are “objectively looking at the evidence” very selectively indeed, there is no doubt that pro-Palestinian groups, (supported by the Greens), took part in those violent demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne where ALP MP’s offices were vandalised and Labor MP’s abused and intimidated. If those four unsupported claims of victimization buy you were proven to be true, maybe you would have a case, but they are only allegations. And if pro-Palestinian people voicing their strong opinions against Israel feel threatened and intimidated by accusations of “antisemitism”, maybe it’s because they are being antisemitic.