gaza

The War in the Middle East

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

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 very 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 the land called Gaza, launched a brutal attack on Israel, and that Israel, as was both expected and intended by Hamas, responded.  The war is still going after nearly two years.  There is now another front in Lebanon, and Iran 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 – for whatever that threat may be worth in fact.  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.  (A friend of mine says that the leaders of Palestine never miss a chance to miss a chance.)  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 a 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, and the war in Gaza will have consequences.  But there is no doubt about the power of the Israeli lobby in this country.  And their apparent capacity to commandeer the local Establishment, at least with the parties of the Coalition, 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.  Jonathan Sumption disposed of the first fallacy as follows.

One is the idea that this story began with the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023; the other is that any attack on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is anti-Semitic.  A fortnight after the attack, António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, pointed out in the Security Council that it “did not happen in a vacuum”.  It followed 56 years in which the Palestinians in Gaza had suffered “suffocating occupation… their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence, their economy stifled, their people displaced and their homes demolished.”  He was expressing the self-evident truth that if you persistently treat people like that, hatred, violence and terrorism will eventually be the response.  The Israeli ambassador objected to his attempt to “understand” terrorism and demanded his resignation on the ground that his words were an anti-Semitic blood libel.  This neatly encapsulated both falsehoods.

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.  Such has been the horror and destruction wrought in the name of religion in the Holy Land.

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 was not the course followed by the Opposition.  It looks to have put votes before principle and the national interest.  It has done this before.  It is ironic that the Opposition supports the claims on one side in the Middle East that go back a few thousand years, but wiped off like a dirty bum the claims of peoples here that go back sixty thousand years.

I have no idea what the answer may be.  But it seems clear that decent people on both sides will bear the scars of this tragedy for ever. 

The various emanations of God behind this vast human tragedy are, we are told by people on all sides, omnipotent and eternal.

The War in the Middle East

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 very 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 the land called Gaza, launched a brutal attack on Israel, and that Israel, as was both expected and intended by Hamas, responded.  The war is still going after nearly two years.  There is now another front in Lebanon, and Iran 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 – for whatever that threat may be worth in fact.  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.  (A friend of mine says that the leaders of Palestine never miss a chance to miss a chance.)  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 a 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, and the war in Gaza will have consequences.  But there is no doubt about the power of the Israeli lobby in this country.  And their apparent capacity to commandeer the local Establishment, at least with the parties of the Coalition, 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.  Jonathan Sumption disposed of the first fallacy as follows.

One is the idea that this story began with the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023; the other is that any attack on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is anti-Semitic.  A fortnight after the attack, António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, pointed out in the Security Council that it “did not happen in a vacuum”.  It followed 56 years in which the Palestinians in Gaza had suffered “suffocating occupation… their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence, their economy stifled, their people displaced and their homes demolished.”  He was expressing the self-evident truth that if you persistently treat people like that, hatred, violence and terrorism will eventually be the response.  The Israeli ambassador objected to his attempt to “understand” terrorism and demanded his resignation on the ground that his words were an anti-Semitic blood libel.  This neatly encapsulated both falsehoods.

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.  Such has been the horror and destruction wrought in the name of religion in the Holy Land.

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 was not the course followed by the Opposition.  It looks to have put votes before principle and the national interest.  It has done this before.  It is ironic that the Opposition supports the claims on one side in the Middle East that go back a few thousand years, but wiped off like a dirty bum the claims of peoples here that go back sixty thousand years.

I have no idea what the answer may be.  But it seems clear that decent people on both sides will bear the scars of this tragedy for ever. 

The various emanations of God behind this vast human tragedy are, we are told by people on all sides, omnipotent and eternal.

Dealing with nobody

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

If you study philosophy at university, you will soon come to Descartes – Cogito, ergo sum.  I think, therefore I am.  It may take some time for you to grapple with this.  (A Japanese T-shirt maker has come up with a variant: ‘I do not think.  Therefore, I do not exist.’  That appeals to me greatly.  As it should to a lot of our politicians.) 

You will have even more trouble with the Ontological Argument for the existence of God, and Kant’s celebrated refutation of it – ‘existence is not a predicate’. 

But you will not have to worry about any of this if someone asks you to deal with someone who does not exist.  They must be mad.

As I understand it, Russia by Putin denies the right of Ukraine to exist as a separate nation.  The Russians have invaded the territory called Ukraine on the footing that the nation of Ukraine is a fiction.  How can they negotiate with an entity that does not in their eyes exist?  More, how can the US ask Russia to negotiate with something that does not exist?

And more again, how can the US purport to negotiate with Russia behind the back of Ukraine – by denying the right of Ukraine to be present at the negotiation?

Are we at the position where there may be a vacancy at either end of the table?

Gaza does not exist as a separate nation according to international law.  Hamas claims to represent its people by means beyond my understanding.  But Hamas denies the right of the State of Israel to exist.  Those factors obviously constrain Israel in any dealings with Hamas.  Israel is certainly right to say that Gaza has no standing as a national polity.

Imagine the following.  The U S tells Netanyahu that Israel must negotiate with Hamas about Gaza.  And then tells him that if he does not bend to their will, they will negotiate with Hamas, and Israel will not be a party to the negotiations.

There is a song from my childhood that keeps coming back to me.  ‘A wise man builds his house upon the rock.’  The others are fools – at best.

Comparative grievances

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

Donald Trump may be the most aggrieved person in the world – although you may think that is par for the course for a spoiled child and lousy golfer who cannot get his way.  Trump thinks Putin is another victim – Vladimir, he says, went through hell, too.  It is curious that two of the most powerful and loathed people on the planet are so insecure.

Take two sorts of person who have been reviled down the centuries – gays and gypsies (who all came under notice with the Nazis).  Which has suffered more?  The question is absurd and unanswerable.  You may as well ask whether Bradman was as good as Babe Ruth, or whether Carlton is as strong a football club as Collingwood.  Even God might draw the line at answering that question.

Yet, a very fine article by Waleed Aly in The Age says some people prominent in our public life, such as it is, are happy to compare the suffering of Jews with that of Muslims arising from racism.

Liberal senator Dave Sharma in December: “Any time any senior minister mentioned antisemitism in the last 12 months, they also mentioned a fictitious Islamophobia which was not going on.”  Lest that be dismissed as an isolated stance, here’s his colleague, Sarah Henderson: “Frankly, there is no issue with Islamophobia”, before adding later, “I really reject any argument that there is some sort of equivalence between antisemitism and any other form of racism, including Islamophobia, at the moment on Australian university campuses, because that is simply not the case.”  This as Muslim and Palestinian students were reporting instances of verbal and physical assault to the Register.  Or here’s Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie: “[The government] seem[s] to think there’s a moral equivalence between Islamophobia and antisemitism [but] there absolutely isn’t. And it needs to be called out.”

The result according to Aly is:

The consequence is the conviction, now deeply entrenched in Muslim Australia, that the country simply doesn’t care about anything that happens to them. That Australia recognises them only as perpetrators, but never as victims.

If Aly is correct in this, those involved, in government or opposition, who have led to this should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

And the frightful irony of their fault is that it shares the vice that is at the bottom of this malady of racism that has marred the earth since the time of the origin of man.  That vice is that it is in order to treat every member of a group that is said to be distinct by breed or faith as marked by a common attribute merely because of events in their shared history.  People are like branded cattle.  This dogma calls to mind that ghastly exceptionalism of the Americans.  ‘My country right or wrong.’

It is a flat denial of the principle of humanity – that each of us has our own worth or dignity arising merely from the fact that we are human.  And you do not have to resort to faith in the supernatural to build a moral code on that principle.

It is trite to say that Australia is a migrant country – our First Nations people would see all white and Asian people here as migrants, and very recent ones at that.  But we have Australians who have connections on both sides of the war in Gaza. 

The tension is not helped by a singular imbalance of political and social clout between them here.  Sir Isaac Isaacs was made Governor-General of Australia in 1931.  We are a long way from seeing a Muslim Australian head of state.  (Of course, under the English constitution, neither could be appointed as the Crown.  At least in that sense they are equal.)

People on both sides are prone to dismiss pleas from those against them as propaganda or, worse, bigotry.  (They might bear in mind that in that infamous Oval Office brawl, Vance accused Zelensky of taking people on ‘propaganda’ tours – of the victims of Putin’ s war crimes.)  Insular vision of imported conflict is a problem for the rest of us.  Two one-eyed people do not make one whole person. 

Most Australians do not care about which God is the more saleable, or which tribal history is the more pathetic.  But we may remind the warriors of the true faith or blood on either side that the more they go to war against each other, the more they court the venom and disease of which they justly complain.

The fog of war

/ Geoffrey Gibson / 1 Comment

Correspondence about the conflict in Gaza prompts the following.

What is the legal basis of this war?  As I follow it, there is no nation or entity of Gaza.  In what sense is its government recognised, either as being authorised to speak for the people of Gaza, or otherwise recognised as an identifiable entity?  In other words, what people are identifiable as the respondents to the declaration of war and the invasion?  Who has what authority to speak for the government or people of Gaza?

The commentary on either side is partisan.  The main reproach of one side for the other is that it is partisan.  This is predictable and funny in discussing a football match.  It is neither in this tragic and lethal context.  The main complaint is that the other side does not concede enough about its fault, or the suffering it has caused.  This follows necessarily from partisanship, and failing to agree at what point in history you set the clock running for past events to be counted for or against either party.

One side says the other wants to annihilate it.  The other says its enemy has stopped it being born.

This is a form of guerrilla war.  The rules of war are hard to apply.  How do you tell ‘civilians’ from those who are not?  At what ratio of casualties does defence cease to be proportionate?

On both sides ‘freedom of speech’ becomes illusory.  It is at best odd to suggest that people should not be partisan – by talking about their case rather than that of their enemy.

If truth is the first casualty of war, sense and fairness are fast in line.

As it happens, while writing the above my eye fell on what Macaulay said about religious fanatics.  The English were not sorry to see the end of the Puritans.  Their mark on the U S is indelible.  Fortunately, they missed us.  Under Cromwell, they wanted to shut the pubs.

While the majority of the Anglican clergy quitted, in one direction, the position which they had originally occupied, the majority of the Puritan body departed, in a direction diametrically opposite, from the principles and practices of their fathers. The persecution which the separatists had undergone had been severe enough to irritate, but not severe enough to destroy. They had been, not tamed into submission, but baited into savageness and stubbornness. After the fashion of oppressed sects, they mistook their own vindictive feelings for emotions of piety, encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation, a disposition to brood over their wrongs, and, when they had worked themselves up into hating their enemies, imagined that they were only hating the enemies of heaven. In the New Testament there was little indeed which, even when perverted by the most disingenuous exposition, could seem to countenance the indulgence of malevolent passions. But the Old Testament contained the history of a race selected by God to be witnesses of his unity and ministers of his vengeance, and specially commanded by him to do many things which, if done without his special command, would have been atrocious crimes. In such a history it was not difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit their wishes. The extreme Puritans therefore began to feel for the Old Testament a preference, which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avow even to themselves; but which showed itself in all their sentiments and habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which they refused to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the epistles of Paul have come down to us. They baptized their children by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. In defiance of the express and reiterated declarations of Luther and Calvin, they turned the weekly festival by which the Church had, from the primitive times, commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into a Jewish Sabbath. They sought for principles of jurisprudence in the Mosaic law, and for precedents to guide their ordinary conduct in the books of Judges and Kings. Their thoughts and discourse ran much on acts which were assuredly not recorded as examples for our imitation. The prophet who hewed in pieces a captive king, the rebel general who gave the blood of a queen to the dogs, the matron who, in defiance of plighted faith, and of the laws of eastern hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of the fugitive ally who had just fed at her board, and who was sleeping under the shadow of her tent, were proposed as models to Christians suffering under the tyranny of princes and prelates. Morals and manners were subjected to a code resembling that of the synagogue, when the synagogue was in its worst state. The dress, the deportment, the language, the studies, the amusements of the rigid sect were regulated on principles not unlike those of the Pharisees who, proud of their washed hands and broad phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbath-breaker and a winebibber. It was a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink a friend’s health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at chess, to wear love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would have appeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, and contemptible to the serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingli, threw over all life a more than monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence by which the great Reformers had been eminently distinguished, and to which they had been, in no small measure, indebted for their success, were regarded by the new school of Protestants with suspicion, if not with aversion. Some precisians had scruples about teaching the Latin grammar, because the names of Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo occurred in it. The fine arts were all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ was superstitious. The light music of Ben Jonson’s masques was dissolute. Half the fine paintings in England were idolatrous, and the other half indecent. The extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the upturned white of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all, by his peculiar dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the imagery and style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced into the English language, and metaphors borrowed from the boldest lyric poetry of a remote age and country, and applied to the common concerns of English life, were the most striking peculiarities of this cant, which moved, not without cause, the derision both of Prelatists and libertines.

Thus the political and religious schism which had originated in the sixteenth century was, during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, constantly widening. Theories tending to Turkish despotism were in fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending to republicanism were in favour with a large portion of the House of Commons. The violent Prelatists who were, to a man, zealous for prerogative, and the violent Puritans who were, to a man, zealous for the privileges of Parliament, regarded each other with animosity more intense than that which, in the preceding generation, had existed between Catholics and Protestants.