There is what is called a ‘war’ in the Middle East. Israel is one party. The legal status of its opponents has not been identified to me. Nor have I seen any ‘rules’ for a war between one nation and people who are identified merely by their occupying a neighbouring territory.
In fact, the hostility between Jewish people and Muslims in the area in and around what used to be called the Holy Land has been going on for many centuries. One war last century led to Gaza becoming occupied territory. I do not know what legal standing it has.
What we do know is that a group known as Hamas, which claims to represent the people of Gaza, launched a brutal attack on Israel, and that Israel, as was both expected and intended by Hamas, responded. The war is still going more than twelve months on. There is now another front in Lebanon, and Iran has felt obliged to surface openly in the conflict.
Some, including some high in the government of Israel, say that Israel started a war without knowing how to finish it. That appears to be mandatory in that part of the world. And we all know about a ‘war on terror’ or a war on a nation holding ‘weapons of mass destruction.’
Most outsiders would say that Hamas is a ‘terrorist’ group. But you may wish to draw the line at saying that any people who employ terror to achieve rights on land occupied by others are ‘terrorists’. That would catch the founders of the United States, the Commonwealth of Australia, and the nation of Israel. (And of course England for about eight hundred years in Ireland.) You can make up your own mind about those called the ‘settlers’.
It is certainly the case that Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel. But it also looks to be the case that Israel has prevented the nation of Palestine being born – with, it must be said, a lot of help from those claiming to represent the people of Palestine. They may be more fractious than those claiming to stand for the people of Israel. (And that is a very large statement.)
People in Australia will take sides if they are connected by blood or faith to the combatants in this war overseas. And their inclination or bias will be quickly apparent, and almost certainly not throw any light or warmth on what is on any view a colossal human tragedy.
Most of the rest of us just want to keep our mouths shut and do what we can to stay neutral. What we certainly want to avoid is bringing conflict into Australia that arises from conflict on the other side of the world with which we as a nation have no apparent connection.
I am not sure how the numbers between Jews and Muslims add up here now, but the war in Lebanon will have consequences. But there is no doubt about the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country. And their apparent capacity to influence the local Establishment does not command universal assent.
Prejudiced commentators show bias in deciding how far back we should go in order to understand this war. Some start at the most recent attack by Hamas. Some with the birth of Israel. In truth, this whole area has been a hot spot since the time of Moses.
In my view, the only place to start is with the first books of the bible – that each of the three main faiths gives some heed to.
Those books stand for the following propositions. There is only one God. But there are many tribes or peoples. Those tribes or peoples are all different and in no way equal. God has a favourite tribe. It is therefore in order for some people to be better off than others, just because Providence has raised their tribe above others. God has promised land to his favourite tribe or people. And authorised them to kill women and children who get in the way. One example of that authority is set out below. People outside of God’s protection – beyond the Pale, if you prefer – could choose between forced labour and death. Then there is one example of the exercise of that authority. According to the Bible, with the help of God, the Israelites killed 12,000 men, women and children in one day at the town of Ai – because they had chosen to live on the Promised Land.
Ever since then, that land has seen similar acts of brutality. They have seen the worst kind of wars – those where each side is convinced, or at least persuaded, that it has God on its side. Warriors claiming to be Muslims sought conquest by the sword. So did Crusaders claiming to be Christians. They got prepared to massacre Muslims by massacring Jews on their way to the Holy Sepulchre.
Many people never know how savage was the blasphemy of the Crusaders because they have not read Gibbon.
A bloody sacrifice was offered by his [Tancred’s] mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke, but neither age nor sex could mollify, their implacable rage: they indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre; and the infection of the dead bodies produced an epidemical disease. After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of captives whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare.….The Holy Sepulchre was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to accomplish their vow. Bare-headed and bare foot, with contrite hearts and in a humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption. This union of the fiercest and most tender passions has been variously considered by two philosophers: by the one, as easy and natural; by the other, as absurd and critical.
Here is another instance of history repeating itself in the desecration of religion in a way that leads people like me never wanting to go near a house of God – any God – again. Here is Gibbon on the Israelite conquests.
When the posterity of Abraham had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, declared himself the proper and, as it were, the national God of Israel; and with the most jealous care, separated his most favourite people from the rest of mankind. The conquest of the land of Canaan with so many wonderful and so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were left in a state of irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbours. They had been commanded to extirpate some of the most idolatrous tribes, and the execution of the Divine will had seldom been retarded by the weakness of humanity.
The views of Gibbon on Islam were referred to in my book about historians (from which these quotes are taken)
‘How did our brothers and sisters of Asia fare? Gibbon said that for all his powers of eloquence, Mohammed was an illiterate barbarian, although he says that the ‘base and plebeian origin of Mohammed is an unskilful calumny of the Christians.’ (How did they class the origin of Jesus of Nazareth?) Gibbon does of course praise Mohammed for dispensing with priests, sacrifices, and monks, but he rejects the doctrine of damnation by which ‘the greater part of mankind has been condemned for their opinions.’ Gibbon was, like most people, fascinated by sex. He had this comment on Paradise.
Seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility, will be created for the use of the meanest believer; a moment of pleasure will be prolonged to a thousand years, and his faculties will be increased a hundredfold to render him worthy of the felicity …. This image of carnal paradise has provoked the indignation, perhaps the envy of the monks….’
To complete the levelling up, here is Gibbon on the followers of Jesus of Nazareth.
But the primitive church, whose faith was of a much firmer consistence, delivered over, without hesitation, to eternal torture, the far greater part of the human species. A charitable hope might perhaps be indulged in favour of Socrates, or some other sages of antiquity, who had consulted the light of reason before that of the Gospel had arisen. But it was unanimously affirmed that those who, since the birth or the death of Christ, had obstinately persisted in the worship of the daemons, neither deserved nor could expect a pardon from the irritated justice of the Deity. These rigid sentiments, which had been unknown to the ancient world, appear to have infused a spirit of bitterness into a system of love and harmony.
To return to the present, the current casualty rate in the war is running at about twenty to one. There are tens of thousands of Australians who have an interest in the conflict on either side. Anyone claiming that one side is blameless is blind. Anyone claiming the right to give an objective judgment is deluded.
So, the only course for our government is one of neutrality. That is, I think, the course followed by the relevant minister, who is so much ahead of her colleagues, it is embarrassing.
But it is not the course followed by the Leader of the Opposition. He puts votes before principle and the national interest. He has done this before. He did it to our First Nations peoples. It is ironic that he supports the claims on one side in the Middle East that go back a few thousand years, but he wiped off like a dirty bum the claims of peoples here that go back sixty thousand years.
Peter Dutton should be ashamed of himself. But the sometime copper from Queensland does not know how to say ‘sorry’. We know that, too.
Texts on the Promised Land
Deuteronomy 20:
10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.
Joshua 8
8 And it shall be, when ye have taken the city, that ye shall set the city on fire: according to the commandment of the Lord shall ye do. See, I have commanded you.
9 Joshua therefore sent them forth: and they went to lie in ambush, and abode between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai: but Joshua lodged that night among the people.
10 And Joshua rose up early in the morning, and numbered the people, and went up, he and the elders of Israel, before the people to Ai.
11 And all the people, even the people of war that were with him, went up, and drew nigh, and came before the city, and pitched on the north side of Ai: now there was a valley between them and Ai.
12 And he took about five thousand men, and set them to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city.
13 And when they had set the people, even all the host that was on the north of the city, and their liers in wait on the west of the city, Joshua went that night into the midst of the valley.
14 And it came to pass, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hasted and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at a time appointed, before the plain; but he wist not that there were liers in ambush against him behind the city.
15 And Joshua and all Israel made as if they were beaten before them, and fled by the way of the wilderness.
16 And all the people that were in Ai were called together to pursue after them: and they pursued after Joshua, and were drawn away from the city.
17 And there was not a man left in Ai or Bethel, that went not out after Israel: and they left the city open, and pursued after Israel.
18 And the Lord said unto Joshua, Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand toward Ai; for I will give it into thine hand. And Joshua stretched out the spear that he had in his hand toward the city.
19 And the ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand: and they entered into the city, and took it, and hasted and set the city on fire.
20 And when the men of Ai looked behind them, they saw, and, behold, the smoke of the city ascended up to heaven, and they had no power to flee this way or that way: and the people that fled to the wilderness turned back upon the pursuers.
21 And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.
22 And the other issued out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.
23 And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.
24 And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.
25 And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.
26 For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.
27 Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which he commanded Joshua.
28 And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day.
With Compliments 