Well stated

IN the letters section of the December 21 Herald, Gerard MacGill says “Arabs and Jews can both justly claim thousands of years of history in the land now called Palestine” and Alan Greenwood says the Israeli state has an “historical right to continue its occupation of territory it occupied several decades before the Arab people”.

Both of them seem to lack the self-awareness of the fact they have presented the argument for a democratic, secular Palestine, from the river to the sea to replace the current Israeli state structure.

Surely after all these decades it is obvious that is the only viable solution.

Thank goodness Janet Parker of Jews for Palestine is in the Thinking Allowed section of the same edition.

Her final words about the peace movement are absolutely right: “we need to build the most powerful and sustained movement this country has seen since the Vietnam war.”

Barry Healy
White Gum Valley

Drowned

DROWNED as we are in a veritable tsunami of the most appalling anti-semitism, it is gratifying indeed to read the letters from Gerard MacGill and Alan Greenwood in the Herald’s Letters.

Brave little Israel, the lone liberal democracy in the Middle East, surrounded as it is on all sides by Islamic nations sworn to its annihilation, needs all the friends it can get.

Mr Greenwood observes that virtue-signalling Palestine supporters “never let the truth get in the way of a good story”.

Never was this better illustrated than in Janet Parker’s anti-semitic rant in the very same edition in the Herald’s Thinking Allowed.

Her claim that Israel has dropped more ordnance on Gaza in 14 months than was dropped on English and German cities in the six years of WWII is simply breathtaking, not only in its stupidity, but in its gross inaccuracy.

Where did she get such rubbish from – the fairies at the bottom of her garden?

She claims 45,000 deaths in Gaza.

It’s probably half that; Hamas, too, has form in never letting the truth get in the way of a good story when fabricating their casualties.

Civilian deaths in England during the blitz were 70,000.

Civilian deaths in German cities from allied bombing are estimated at up to half a million.

The tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza by Israel is probably only one or two per cent of that dropped in Europe in the course of WWII by the Luftwaffe, the Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force.

To even begin to pretend otherwise is either lunacy, chicanery, or both.

John McClane
Leeming

The Ed says: The Herald also found the claim about bombing rates in Gaza v Europe surprising, so independently verified the claim. Bear in mind the improvement in ordinance technology and size between 1945 and 2023/24, while the bombing raids over the three cities mentioned (yes, just three cities, not all Europe) were quite short in duration and came with a lot more collateral damage for the British and American air forces than Israel now faces, making it more difficult for a sustained campaign. In terms of the death rates, they can of course be exaggerated by Gaza’s authorities, but Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself put the estimate at 30,000 in May, with about half “militants”.

A will?

THOUGH I agree this situation is extremely complex, I’m concerned about the fatalism expressed in recent letters about the war in Palestine: “There’s not a thing we in Fremantle, nor indeed in Australia, can do to bring about peace in Palestine”. 

I don’t believe this is true, although it won’t be achieved by chanting slogans.

If Australia’s leaders were to lead from the front instead of merely wringing their hands, selling arms and sheltering behind the Americans, Australia could lead international negotiations towards a formula where Palestinians receive a unified permanent nation and infrastructure, in exchange for some of the Palestinian areas, and peace.

Not an ideal solution but one which would work.  Where there’s a will….

John Bird
Candidate for the Citizens
Party Fremantle
PS  Is there a will?

Reality

THANK you Janet Parker for “Thinking Allowed” (Herald, December 21).

It is a tough read, albeit not as tough as facing the reality that you write about in Gaza. 

It is timely given Alan Greenwood (Letters, December 21) focussing on: “A barbaric and genocidal Hamas leadership (which) fight behind a human shield of hostages and their own people.”

Such a statement has merit, but blindly ignores the devastation and, arguably, genocide, exacted by Israel’s leadership on innocent Gazans as outlined in Janet Parker’s article. 

What particularly concerns me is that Israel argues that ‘identifiable’ Hamas leaders are hiding in shelters containing non-Hamas children, women and men. 

If Israel knows the individual Hamas members, why do they have to blow everyone up?

Continuing this devastation is only creating new enemies – those who have lost family and friends and want to exact revenge. 

Enough is enough and peaceful pressure on all our politician to take considered pressure on both Israel and Hamas can only benefit Israel, Palestine and Australia’s own residents of those ethnicities and faith.

Jim Meckelburg
Murdoch

Peace possible

GERARD MacGILL’S letter (“Not Stoked,” Herald Letters, December 28) argues that there is nothing we can do to bring about peace in Palestine and that “stoking animosity towards Israel” only contributes to “dire consequences for Jewish Australians.”

Two well-worn tropes are employed here to make us all feel powerless in the face of Israel’s Gaza genocide.

One is that there had been a conflict for thousands of years between Arabs and Jews in Palestine.

The other is that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Both are false. 

Israel became a state in 1948 after a campaign of ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians by European colonisers.

While these colonisers claimed to be creating a homeland for Jews, the majority of Jews around the world have never lived in Israel nor claimed Israeli citizenship.

Indeed many prominent Jews outside of Israel have joined a global solidarity movement opposing Israel’s crimes.

There is much we can do to end Israel’s genocide. 

Firstly, Labor could tear up its $917 million defence contract with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, and cease the export of parts for F-35 fighter jets being used in bombing Gaza.

Secondly, Labor could expel the Israeli ambassador from Canberra and recall Australia’s ambassador.

Thirdly, Labor could impose trade sanctions on the State of Israel.

It is for all of these reasons that Fremantle residents rallied for peace in Palestine on December 7.

Nick Everett
Chair, Friends of Palestine WA