Thank you Nick. This is what we need now in this disgraceful pile-on. Further, a RC would drag on for years, fuelling an anti-Muslim agenda that would destroy social cohesion. It is not just Israeli Australians who have lost family in this war and the massacre - there are Lebanese, Syrian and of course, Palestinian diaspora members. A Lebanese family in Melbourne's inner north lost 14 members from a strike on their farm over lunch.
Even from a security viewpoint, the authorities depend entirely on the Muslim and Levantine Christian communities' co-operation for intelligence.
You are too hard on Albo, however. This has been the minefield of all minefields. Whatever he does, it will be 'not enough' for some and there are factional conflicts within the ALP, especially in Victoria, which are dangerous. Sure I am one of the many who would have liked more robust stands against the Gaza Genocide, and AUKUS, but we are living an a desperately dangerous world and we have already had a Labor govt destroyed by the US, and subsequent ones sabotaged. Today Venezuela. tomorrow who knows.... We are NOT free and sovereign.
Albos' gift for endorsing a Palestinian State. albeit after the cursory and pro forma, "Israel has a right to defend itself"
A slight reprise on the Bourke street False Flag of 2017...a 10 year old Jewish girl victim there ....and a 10 year old Jewish girl victim at Bondi.
A stirring report by Banjo the photographer and we'll all go waltzing Matildas' coffin out the front door of the Synagogue and onto the public street for the compliant, gutless, Australian media.
This comment is seriously amiss yet it has got so many "likes". It is just the soft-headed left-wing fantasies about evil doings of the USA that is only now coming true. It is a different USA now. If only we could have the old one back.
Australia is perfectly free and sovereign, what we do with that is another thing. If we have a timid government, mostly lacking principles except to keep itself in place, we will not do much. Most Australian governments are low-profile like this. Our current prime minister has little to say to the Australian people or to the world on our behalf. Not on climate change, the descent of the USA into atavism, the Voice or on the present issue. So Ms M sticks up for Albanese. It makes no sense.
I am one who does not believe the story (libel) that Australia is anti-semitic. I am yet to hear any jew complain of being abused in their life and I have asked around. Robert Manne, Michael Gawenda, Deborah Conway and private acquaintances. I would think a lot better of Albanese if he could make up his mind what he thinks on this question and say so. If we can put the notion of Australian anti-semitism to bed than we can have calm consideration of what Australia's diplomatic position with regard to Israel/Palestine should be.
Also it is rather lame to say that we should not have a royal commission, into whether we or even arabs should be able to criticise Israel, because it would supposedly destroy social cohesion.
Truth comes first. If some commission turns up true facts then we should be in a better position to deal with whatever social tensions we might have.
Superb piece. The Murdoch media and the conservative side of politics have used the dog whistle at every opportunity, against asylum seekers, Muslims, Africans and sundry others, without realising that this opens the way for all bigotry, not just against their target du jour. https://blotreport.com/2025/12/18/little-sir-echo/
This an appalling comment, using the work of an appalling anti-semite as justification. Was the girl who was murdered a 'Judeo-Nazi'. No. Much as Chabad's right wing politics are deplorable, there is no need to call them Nazis. They are a complex, controversial religious groups, a mix of good and awful. https://www.webstylus.net/p/a-vile-antisemite-is-mr-chun. Chun has digraced himself so much that he has turned off comments to his vile piece.
🥱 don't think I can be bothered to properly respond to someone who defends Zionists, conflates criticism of Zionist and Zionism with Jews and Judaism, deliberately mischaracterizes other peoples work and refers to anti-zionist/anti-genocide people on the left as nutjobs (yes I had a quick look at your profile)
No, not all antizionists are nutjobs, but there ARE people who cross the line and Chun is definitely one of those. On the other hand, Zionists is a huge spectrum of opinion ranging from a-territorial religious and cultural love and identity with the Land, to outright racist fascism.
If you actually look at what I have written in recent years in particular -- and given evidence to parliamentary committee -- is to oppose those who view all antizionism as antisemitism. That's garbage. That is why I oppose IHRA. IHRA also threatens people like me who oppose the Israeli control regime (assuming you know what is IHRA ).
It's also NOT up to you to make bald statements about what Jewish identity is and it is certainly not a binary with Zionism- would you tell a Muslim what she was? Jewish life, like Muslim life for many people, has gone through profound changes in the past 150 years in response to historical circumstances and theological developments. "Zion" is in the liturgy, and the crisis in Jewish life, particularly in Europe lead to the idea of the national home again, historically distant as it was, though Jews had always been there. The meaning of Zionism has has long been a controversial issue.
Not least of these real circumstances was the need to flee and seek shelter. What I can't excuse is that this flight became ethno-nationalist.
Thus Zionism is also something that just can't be explained by settler colonial theory as a movement with racism and exclusion at the core.
Jews were on the verge of, and became refugees especially from the late 19th until the 1950s. Pogroms of the late 19th century and after are still part of folk-memory. Jews were excluded from almost everywhere, in the 20s and 30s, including Australia but for a limited number. Perhaps if Jews had been able to enter the US in particular after the 1920s, things might have been different. But they were not. The tragedy is that the refugee aspect in Palestine was taken over by ethno-nationalists when it was possible that a peaceful constitutional solution could have been found to the problem caused by refugee flows (which of course, are familiar all around the world).
Now I spend a considerable amount of my time criticising the Israel state, Zionism and local supporters of genocide in all sorts of advocacy, some of what you won't see because it is within the Jewish community. I've been doing this for over 30 years and copped huge shit, threats, and exclusion. However, I just don't abide antisemitism that is out there as an undercurrent in elements of the left or simplistic definitions of who and what people are in the same way I don't abide Islamophobia.
It is all very complex. To show that it is dangerous to work with a stereotype, I suggest looking at Rabbis for Human Rights to get one viewpoint of one form of Zionism that is religious but very rooted in land and restorative justice. https://www.rhr.org.il/en/ .
However, I am also very much post-Zionist. At a personal level it is bereft of practical application because of what it has done for Palestinians- summed up as he Naqba It has outlived whatever usefulness it was meant to have as a means of saving Jewry. It is too compromised. We need to get out of that space. My basic concern is now getting two peoples to live together without violence. Remember, most Israel Jew are born in that place. I don't think we wish to expel them for past or current sins? Nor should they fear for their safety in future arrangements.
Human rights principles and restitution for Palestinians and mutual safety are what matters. Israeli Jews for all their faults are real, and like any people, they have national rights. I But we don't usually expel groups(the Yugoslav wars being a dreadful exception).
How do we solve this?
I always go back to Rashid Khalid, the great Palestinian advocate and intellectual, in his book, the 100 year war. Read all this below carefully. I can't add more He recognizes that now, for whatever happened in the past, there are two existent communities.
"... uprooting the systemic inequality inherent in Zionism is crucial to creating a better future for both peoples, Palestinians and Israelis. Any formula advanced as a resolution of the conflict will necessarily and inevitably fail if it is not squarely based on the principle of equality. Absolute equality of human, personal, civil, political, and national rights must be enshrined in whatever future scheme is ultimately accepted by the two societies. ...
"This leaves the thorny issue of how to wean Israelis from their attachment to inequality, which is often coded as and justified by a need for security. This perceived need is to a large extent rooted in a real history of insecurity and persecution, but in response to this past trauma, generations have now been brought up on a reflexive dogma of aggressive nationalism whose tenacious hold will be hard to break. Thus the Jewish citizens of a regional superpower that cows its neighbors (and has bombed the capitals of seven of them with impunity.suffer from a deep insecurity rooted in part in this history, and perhaps in part from an unspoken concern that the carefully constructed and justified colonial reality they live in might suddenly unravel. The syndrome that drives this imperative to dominate and discriminate can probably only be addressed by those within Israeli society (or close to it) who understand the grim direction of the country’s current course, and who can challenge the distortions of history, ethics, and Judaism that this ideology constitutes. ...
Palestinians, too, need weaning from a pernicious delusion—rooted in the colonial nature of their encounter with Zionism and in its denial of Palestinian peoplehood—that Jewish Israelis are not a “real” people and that they do not have national rights. While it is true that Zionism has transmuted the Jewish religion and the historic peoplehood of the Jews into something quite different—a modern nationalism—this does not erase the fact that Israeli Jews today consider themselves a people with a sense of national belonging in Palestine, what they think of as the Land of Israel, no matter how this transmutation came about. Palestinians, too, today consider themselves a people with national links to what is indeed their ancestral homeland, for reasons that are as arbitrary and as conjunctural as those that led to Zionism, as arbitrary as any of the reasons that led to the emergence of scores of modern national movements. ...
The irony is that, like all peoples, Palestinians assume that their nationalism is pure and historically rooted while denying the same of Israeli Jews. There is of course a difference between the two: most Palestinians are descended from people who have lived in what they naturally see as their country for a very long time, for many centuries if not many millennia. Most Israeli Jews came from Europe and the Arab countries relatively recently as part of a colonial process sanctioned and brokered by the great powers. The former are indigenous, the latter settlers or descendants of settlers, although many have been there for generations now, and have a deeply felt and ancient religious connection to the country, albeit one quite different from the ancient rootedness in the country of the indigenous Palestinians. Because this is a colonial conflict, this difference matters enormously. However, no one today would deny that fully developed national entities exist in settler states like the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, despite their origins in colonial wars of extermination. Moreover, to those intoxicated by nationalism, such distinctions between settlers and indigenous peoples do not matter. ...
While the fundamentally colonial nature of the Palestinian-Israel encounter must be acknowledged, there are now two peoples in Palestine, irrespective of how they came into being, and the conflict between them cannot be resolved as long as the national existence of each is denied by the other. Their mutual acceptance can only be based on complete equality of rights, including national rights, notwithstanding the crucial historical differences between the two. There is no other possible sustainable solution, barring the unthinkable notion of one people’s extermination or expulsion by the other. ...
😂 again, not worth spending my time properly responding to that. I will say that polls in Israel have repeatedly shown that the vast majority of Israeli jews are very much in favour of the genocide, of the mass murder of children. No shortage of evidence of the IDF shooting little children for fun, and the latest estimates for Gaza put the number of children dead under 5 years old at close to 400,000. Chabad has a long history of arguing that every child in Gaza killed by Israel is a human shield, their deaths are 'tragic inevitabilities' and Israel can't be held responsible (see second Q on the website below)
Larry, thank you for the nuanced exposition, especially that there are different strands to Zionism which can accommodate support as well as criticism. Although not Jewish, I too am a Zionist simply because, as Golda Meir said, “We have nowhere else to go.” It is tragic that the Zionist dream has been corrupted into religious ethnic nationalism. We look around the world and everywhere we see peoples immiserated under evil leaders they seem powerless to remove, and Netanyahu and Trump stand at the head of a long line (Putin; Maduro and his accomplices; Ortega; Orban). I can take issue whether Israel is committing war crimes or genocide in Gaza (the former is reckless disregard, while the latter requires intent) but with over 60,000 dead (& counting) it is a distinction without a difference. Bibi refuses to allow an independent inquiry into the circumstances leading up to the October 7 atrocity, and remarkably no one in Israel seems able to force one. You allude briefly to the Jews’ and the Palestinians’ claims. I think this is the nub of the problem and it’s about “Palestine” (or eretz Israel for the Jewish hardliners): two tribes want it, each has a legitimate claim, and extremists on both sides want all of it to the exclusion of the other. But I would be interested in your comment on a foundational conundrum at the heart of the Jewish state: the extraordinarily privileged position of the ultra orthodox (Haredim) in Israeli state and society. It seems to me that the only chance of a just outcome (as you said, of equality) is if moderate arabs and Jews (not just Israelis and Palestinians) force a confrontation with their own extremists, and say to them and to the world: “THIS is what we want. If you continue to sabotage it, we will suppress you.”
How can you explain your idea of being a non-jewish Zionist on the grounds that Golda Meir says that jews have nowhere else to go? She was living in the USA and had no need to go anywhere. If someone has nowhere to go I guess they stay put. Else emigrate to the USA, Australia etc with a bit of luck.
Back in 1948 or whenever it was, Australia went with the flow to allow European jewish pirates keep what they had stolen. We took it that Europeans have more rights than arabs, what else can explain it? But we do not think that any more. (I think piracy would be the right term. It was an act of privateers rather than some state in which case it would qualify as colonisation.)
It just seems to me you have not updated your thinking. There is something for you to clarify here.
The problem of the insular separatist ultra orthodox has been there since the beginning of the state. Historically, there was never a large class of religious scholars. They were a small elite group. But in Israel, this is a result of political manipulation since 1948 when 400 yeshivah (seminary) students were granted an exemption from military service because the ranks of religious scholars had been so depleted by the holocaust. Since then, and because of bloc voting power, the numbers have exploded. It was never meant to be the outcome of a decision by the secular Ben Gurion. In the US, ultra-orthodox men by and large work. In Israel, a large number don't and have low levels of skills. They are dependent on welfare and chairty. There have been increasing (violent) confrontations with them over the years. The interesting thing is that in a 'one state' their extreme social conservatism would align well conservative Muslim groups. Oren Yiftachel has written about them as a conservative block in his book 'Ethnocracy ' which came out in 2006. He was years ahead of his time in modelling different forms of bi-nationalism and transitions. I know of others but his name sticks in my head. See if you can find an electronic copy. It can be found online.
But the Haredim can't survive separate from the secular state either. I have no easy answer of what to do. It is a classic confrontation between Church and State so to speak, on top of the general domination of family and related law by orthodox Jewish law as well as canon and Shariah law. And of course, there is an incredibly fragmented education system with all sorts of streams -- some resolutely antisecular - within the Jewish communities. All these things are highly gendered and don't match the expectations of secular people in all communities. It is the old Ottoman model that left a certain about of self-government to communities, in the hands of the secular and religious elite. They will fight like hell not to give up their legal privilege over all sorts of family law matters (not to speak of deciding who and who is not a Jew). And its inheritance lives on. The left pays no attention to such matters of course, but they are real and difficult issues when talking about a 'secular' state based on universal human rights principles We can't just click our fingers. .
It does not seem that Mr Stillman agrees that the ultra-orthodox faction is calling the shots, ie is the obstacle to peace. More likely, being irrational as they seem, they are useful to the hard-heads who care about narrowly imagined jewish interests and not much else. I am putting this as a question not a statement.
This is perfectly reasonable. You would like to save Israel from itself.
I would like to ask about Australia - would you say we have anti-semitism here or not? I think not; I have not come across it and we do not have the economic conditions that went with it.
If this is not the right place or you have already covered it elsewhere please provide a link.
Interpolating between your comment and Mr Stillman's reply, the common ground is that the gathering that was fired on was not just any group of jews but jews with an agenda. I don't know what their agenda is but it may well be relevant, certainly if the more militant views of Australian moslem arabs are considered relevant. So even though the two contributors seem to be opposed their joint contribution is of some value.
I don't think that the murderers were particularly conscious of any agenda in those present other than they were Jews. I very much doubt they knew about Chabad.. But are you saying the girl who was murdered had an agenda and that justified the action?
It is all in your first sentence, the second part of it - motive. What we all surely understand is that the shooting was a crime of revenge against jews for what they have done in Palestine. Whereas there is the propaganda that would have us believe there is a virus similar to rabies that caused both the Nazis and the dispossessed of Palestine to attack any and all jews. This is the fallacy of "anti-semitism". If we are deceived into thinking that the PLO are the same as Nazis we might eventually come to think that the Nazis had some excuses.
You probably do not mean that.
In all that has been written I had not noticed any profile of the sect whose people were fired. You and Mr l'Ons has given us reason to think that the behaviour of this sect could be relevant to motive.
What is in the background is the principle that migrants to Australia generally understand, not to bring their national quarrels with them to a new country. This should apply equally well to jews, but they are striving to keep Australia's diplomatic stance aligned with Israel's interests. Better if we were neutral.
I think I follow you. But people here and by and large not responsible for what goes on in Gaza. Likewise for Palestinians. I did link to something about Chabad. Please look at my posts.
There are members of the israeli government who routinely tell us that there is no distinction between the children of gaza and hamas.
I do not mean my comment as an endorsement of Mr Chun's views entirely, i think he probably goes too far to be honest. I think you both raise valid points, and I respect that you are not aligned with the worst voices we hear out of israel and its lobby groups.
Polls in Israel have repeatedly shown that the vast majority of Israeli jews are very much in favour of the genocide, of the mass murder of children. No shortage of evidence of the IDF shooting little children for fun, and the latest estimates for Gaza put the number of children dead under 5 years old at close to 400,000. Chabad has a long history of arguing that every child in Gaza killed by Israel is a human shield, their deaths are 'tragic inevitabilities' and Israel can't be held responsible (see second Q on the website below)
Excellent & sensible article, Nick - and why isn't Albanese pointing out the likelihood that an RC would compromise any forthcoming trial of the surviving perpetrator? That's clearly his most robust reason for resisting an RC - yet I haven't heard him say it. Everything about what's happened after Bondi (the media/Zionist/business lobbying, and Albanese's pallid response) is very, very odd.
We hear at lot about the devaluing of expertise so who should we trust here. An “independent” blogger who googled an old article which suggests the issues raised by concurrent trial/royal commissions are complex or the list of incredibly senior figures from the bar, bench and legal profession who advocated for a royal commission. This is, of course, completely seperate from the question of whether we should have RC, which is obviously here, and tbf almost everywhere, a political question.
Assess comment not who you trust - but btw 'Demonboy' is not a very trust-inspiring handle. Re your hypothesis that a 10 yr old article was so old as to be wrong and clearly a royal commission would never prejudice a trial, the Guardian now says that the Law Council of Australia "warned: “the timing, conduct and terms of reference of any Royal Commission should be structured so as not to interfere with ongoing criminal proceedings” into the Bondi attack" - point taken?
It is better if someone gives their real name if they want us to trust their testimony but in this case the writer has made a point of logic that stands on its own. We can see it is right or point out a fallacy if we think it is wrong.
I didn’t say anything of the sort tho. I said we should be wary of politically inspired non expert musings where they contradict expert opinion. I also implied fishing around through old legal articles isn’t sound practice. The law council is saying we can have a royal commission just like all the other experts
I don't get how substack works yet but it seems to be a very good platform for a national dialogue. Of course a US social media company had to set it up for us - we could never have done that by ourselves. I just wanted to point out that there is another substack thread discussing Mr Fiek's article - here https://substack.com/profile/89269347-alan-b/note/c-195557077 . This has what is lacking in the present discussion, a voice from the pro-Israel side. That writer fiercely denies that Israel is committing genocide. Nick Feik wrote in passing that there is considerable evidence for it.
I side with Adam Carr ( https://www.facebook.com/adam.j.carr ) and the rest of the Labor Right in hard-boiled pragmatism and dislike of the far left who populate the western academy - who embrace a variety of nasty third world regimes and insurgencies. My parent's generation ranted about peace and then abandonded the civilians of Indo-China to the past five decades of horror.
One, to establish the facts about prejudicial speech acts and other prejudicial actions towards community groups, Jewish, Islamic and other.
Two. To assess causality. Events in the Middle East, including the Gaza genocide? Local support for events in the Middle East?
The RC may find that "reported events" tell us more about the persons reporting than actual events.
The possible gap between actual events and the speeches and reporting in the mainstream media might suggest that there is a serious facts problem with the media, both the Murdochcracy and the echoes via the ABC and the Nine media.
A significant contribution to this discussion was made by Larry Stillman. Here is a piece from him on a related topic: https://substack.com/home/post/p-183980367 . It exemplifies a problem that I have asked about here, without getting an answer - the tendentious use of the word 'anti-semitism'.
I find it unaccountable that he and other honest writers use the term anti-semitism in connection with the Israel/Palestine conflict. When I hear it I take as propaganda, from someone propagating a false concept or someone who has thoughtlessly swallowed it.
Surely we all understand the rightful meaning: where jews were generally disliked in communities where they had made a way of life as a minority tribe. It is history mostly; it comes across today as if the locals had some resentment against jews simply as being foreigners in their midst. There must be knowable economic and social causes; at any rate these have not become common knowledge.
There is a long history of anti-semitism. Shakespeare wrote a relevant play. As to the misnomer, for some reason semite was adopted as euphemism for jew when, with no arabs living in Europe, it did not cause confusion. We all know also the extremes that anti-semitism reached in the second world war such that all good-thinking people wish to have no part in it since.
This has nothing to do with Palestine in which European jews were the agressor rather than the victim. Nor should one should suppose without evidence that there were any traditional conflicts involving jews and any other tribes in the Middle East. Anti-semitism was a European thing. The European jews who set up the state of Israel did so in an act of piracy, as I would understand the term, and ruined about a million lives in doing so. Of course this resulted in hostility, but it is not as though arabs displaced from their homeland disliked jews simply because they were different to them. Anyone familiar with the concept of justice can understand that there is a well-founded grievance here.
Israel wants diplomatic acceptability and its advocates make use of various so-called 'tropes' (including "anti-semitic tropes"). To conflate the oppression of jews in Europe with the resistance to jewish oppression in Palestine is just such a device. It is dishonest and devoid of logic. Unfortunately, many Australians including political leaders, journalists etc have been unthinking enough to swallow it.
I have by now gone over some basics that are so obvious that it would not have been necessary but for the crude use of tendentious language that is "anti-semitism" for any complaint tending against jews whether true or false. I am not intending to be provocative. I do not know why Mr Stillman uses these words as I do not take him for a blatant propagandist. On the contrary, I think he can be a great help to us to understand the jewish way of thinking, and I expect he knows the normal Australian attitudes equally well.
Newscorp’s bellicose role in this has been beyond disgraceful. Nine papers are following suit. Thank God for some reasoned discussion, which will sadly be read by too few.
Still it falls short. It is rather one-sided here. We do not hear from the other side, the Australian right who favour Israel without explaining why. Without that we do not have much chance to get to a conclusion. I do not believe we try hard enough to answer their arguments just as they ignore ours.
Thank you Nick. This is what we need now in this disgraceful pile-on. Further, a RC would drag on for years, fuelling an anti-Muslim agenda that would destroy social cohesion. It is not just Israeli Australians who have lost family in this war and the massacre - there are Lebanese, Syrian and of course, Palestinian diaspora members. A Lebanese family in Melbourne's inner north lost 14 members from a strike on their farm over lunch.
Even from a security viewpoint, the authorities depend entirely on the Muslim and Levantine Christian communities' co-operation for intelligence.
You are too hard on Albo, however. This has been the minefield of all minefields. Whatever he does, it will be 'not enough' for some and there are factional conflicts within the ALP, especially in Victoria, which are dangerous. Sure I am one of the many who would have liked more robust stands against the Gaza Genocide, and AUKUS, but we are living an a desperately dangerous world and we have already had a Labor govt destroyed by the US, and subsequent ones sabotaged. Today Venezuela. tomorrow who knows.... We are NOT free and sovereign.
The Bondi Beach, False Flag, Chabad Staged Event.
Albos' gift for endorsing a Palestinian State. albeit after the cursory and pro forma, "Israel has a right to defend itself"
A slight reprise on the Bourke street False Flag of 2017...a 10 year old Jewish girl victim there ....and a 10 year old Jewish girl victim at Bondi.
A stirring report by Banjo the photographer and we'll all go waltzing Matildas' coffin out the front door of the Synagogue and onto the public street for the compliant, gutless, Australian media.
WAKE THE FUCK UP AUSTRALIA.
This comment is seriously amiss yet it has got so many "likes". It is just the soft-headed left-wing fantasies about evil doings of the USA that is only now coming true. It is a different USA now. If only we could have the old one back.
Australia is perfectly free and sovereign, what we do with that is another thing. If we have a timid government, mostly lacking principles except to keep itself in place, we will not do much. Most Australian governments are low-profile like this. Our current prime minister has little to say to the Australian people or to the world on our behalf. Not on climate change, the descent of the USA into atavism, the Voice or on the present issue. So Ms M sticks up for Albanese. It makes no sense.
I am one who does not believe the story (libel) that Australia is anti-semitic. I am yet to hear any jew complain of being abused in their life and I have asked around. Robert Manne, Michael Gawenda, Deborah Conway and private acquaintances. I would think a lot better of Albanese if he could make up his mind what he thinks on this question and say so. If we can put the notion of Australian anti-semitism to bed than we can have calm consideration of what Australia's diplomatic position with regard to Israel/Palestine should be.
Also it is rather lame to say that we should not have a royal commission, into whether we or even arabs should be able to criticise Israel, because it would supposedly destroy social cohesion.
Truth comes first. If some commission turns up true facts then we should be in a better position to deal with whatever social tensions we might have.
A clear sighted piece Nick/ Thankyou - I hope it is circulated widely.
Superb piece. The Murdoch media and the conservative side of politics have used the dog whistle at every opportunity, against asylum seekers, Muslims, Africans and sundry others, without realising that this opens the way for all bigotry, not just against their target du jour. https://blotreport.com/2025/12/18/little-sir-echo/
Why don't you mention that Chabad are a community of Judeo-Nazi Zionists who are active participants in the genocide, in the mass murder of children?
https://open.substack.com/pub/mattchun/p/we-dont-mourn-fascists?
This an appalling comment, using the work of an appalling anti-semite as justification. Was the girl who was murdered a 'Judeo-Nazi'. No. Much as Chabad's right wing politics are deplorable, there is no need to call them Nazis. They are a complex, controversial religious groups, a mix of good and awful. https://www.webstylus.net/p/a-vile-antisemite-is-mr-chun. Chun has digraced himself so much that he has turned off comments to his vile piece.
🥱 don't think I can be bothered to properly respond to someone who defends Zionists, conflates criticism of Zionist and Zionism with Jews and Judaism, deliberately mischaracterizes other peoples work and refers to anti-zionist/anti-genocide people on the left as nutjobs (yes I had a quick look at your profile)
No, not all antizionists are nutjobs, but there ARE people who cross the line and Chun is definitely one of those. On the other hand, Zionists is a huge spectrum of opinion ranging from a-territorial religious and cultural love and identity with the Land, to outright racist fascism.
If you actually look at what I have written in recent years in particular -- and given evidence to parliamentary committee -- is to oppose those who view all antizionism as antisemitism. That's garbage. That is why I oppose IHRA. IHRA also threatens people like me who oppose the Israeli control regime (assuming you know what is IHRA ).
It's also NOT up to you to make bald statements about what Jewish identity is and it is certainly not a binary with Zionism- would you tell a Muslim what she was? Jewish life, like Muslim life for many people, has gone through profound changes in the past 150 years in response to historical circumstances and theological developments. "Zion" is in the liturgy, and the crisis in Jewish life, particularly in Europe lead to the idea of the national home again, historically distant as it was, though Jews had always been there. The meaning of Zionism has has long been a controversial issue.
Not least of these real circumstances was the need to flee and seek shelter. What I can't excuse is that this flight became ethno-nationalist.
Thus Zionism is also something that just can't be explained by settler colonial theory as a movement with racism and exclusion at the core.
Jews were on the verge of, and became refugees especially from the late 19th until the 1950s. Pogroms of the late 19th century and after are still part of folk-memory. Jews were excluded from almost everywhere, in the 20s and 30s, including Australia but for a limited number. Perhaps if Jews had been able to enter the US in particular after the 1920s, things might have been different. But they were not. The tragedy is that the refugee aspect in Palestine was taken over by ethno-nationalists when it was possible that a peaceful constitutional solution could have been found to the problem caused by refugee flows (which of course, are familiar all around the world).
Now I spend a considerable amount of my time criticising the Israel state, Zionism and local supporters of genocide in all sorts of advocacy, some of what you won't see because it is within the Jewish community. I've been doing this for over 30 years and copped huge shit, threats, and exclusion. However, I just don't abide antisemitism that is out there as an undercurrent in elements of the left or simplistic definitions of who and what people are in the same way I don't abide Islamophobia.
It is all very complex. To show that it is dangerous to work with a stereotype, I suggest looking at Rabbis for Human Rights to get one viewpoint of one form of Zionism that is religious but very rooted in land and restorative justice. https://www.rhr.org.il/en/ .
However, I am also very much post-Zionist. At a personal level it is bereft of practical application because of what it has done for Palestinians- summed up as he Naqba It has outlived whatever usefulness it was meant to have as a means of saving Jewry. It is too compromised. We need to get out of that space. My basic concern is now getting two peoples to live together without violence. Remember, most Israel Jew are born in that place. I don't think we wish to expel them for past or current sins? Nor should they fear for their safety in future arrangements.
Human rights principles and restitution for Palestinians and mutual safety are what matters. Israeli Jews for all their faults are real, and like any people, they have national rights. I But we don't usually expel groups(the Yugoslav wars being a dreadful exception).
How do we solve this?
I always go back to Rashid Khalid, the great Palestinian advocate and intellectual, in his book, the 100 year war. Read all this below carefully. I can't add more He recognizes that now, for whatever happened in the past, there are two existent communities.
"... uprooting the systemic inequality inherent in Zionism is crucial to creating a better future for both peoples, Palestinians and Israelis. Any formula advanced as a resolution of the conflict will necessarily and inevitably fail if it is not squarely based on the principle of equality. Absolute equality of human, personal, civil, political, and national rights must be enshrined in whatever future scheme is ultimately accepted by the two societies. ...
"This leaves the thorny issue of how to wean Israelis from their attachment to inequality, which is often coded as and justified by a need for security. This perceived need is to a large extent rooted in a real history of insecurity and persecution, but in response to this past trauma, generations have now been brought up on a reflexive dogma of aggressive nationalism whose tenacious hold will be hard to break. Thus the Jewish citizens of a regional superpower that cows its neighbors (and has bombed the capitals of seven of them with impunity.suffer from a deep insecurity rooted in part in this history, and perhaps in part from an unspoken concern that the carefully constructed and justified colonial reality they live in might suddenly unravel. The syndrome that drives this imperative to dominate and discriminate can probably only be addressed by those within Israeli society (or close to it) who understand the grim direction of the country’s current course, and who can challenge the distortions of history, ethics, and Judaism that this ideology constitutes. ...
Palestinians, too, need weaning from a pernicious delusion—rooted in the colonial nature of their encounter with Zionism and in its denial of Palestinian peoplehood—that Jewish Israelis are not a “real” people and that they do not have national rights. While it is true that Zionism has transmuted the Jewish religion and the historic peoplehood of the Jews into something quite different—a modern nationalism—this does not erase the fact that Israeli Jews today consider themselves a people with a sense of national belonging in Palestine, what they think of as the Land of Israel, no matter how this transmutation came about. Palestinians, too, today consider themselves a people with national links to what is indeed their ancestral homeland, for reasons that are as arbitrary and as conjunctural as those that led to Zionism, as arbitrary as any of the reasons that led to the emergence of scores of modern national movements. ...
The irony is that, like all peoples, Palestinians assume that their nationalism is pure and historically rooted while denying the same of Israeli Jews. There is of course a difference between the two: most Palestinians are descended from people who have lived in what they naturally see as their country for a very long time, for many centuries if not many millennia. Most Israeli Jews came from Europe and the Arab countries relatively recently as part of a colonial process sanctioned and brokered by the great powers. The former are indigenous, the latter settlers or descendants of settlers, although many have been there for generations now, and have a deeply felt and ancient religious connection to the country, albeit one quite different from the ancient rootedness in the country of the indigenous Palestinians. Because this is a colonial conflict, this difference matters enormously. However, no one today would deny that fully developed national entities exist in settler states like the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, despite their origins in colonial wars of extermination. Moreover, to those intoxicated by nationalism, such distinctions between settlers and indigenous peoples do not matter. ...
While the fundamentally colonial nature of the Palestinian-Israel encounter must be acknowledged, there are now two peoples in Palestine, irrespective of how they came into being, and the conflict between them cannot be resolved as long as the national existence of each is denied by the other. Their mutual acceptance can only be based on complete equality of rights, including national rights, notwithstanding the crucial historical differences between the two. There is no other possible sustainable solution, barring the unthinkable notion of one people’s extermination or expulsion by the other. ...
😂 again, not worth spending my time properly responding to that. I will say that polls in Israel have repeatedly shown that the vast majority of Israeli jews are very much in favour of the genocide, of the mass murder of children. No shortage of evidence of the IDF shooting little children for fun, and the latest estimates for Gaza put the number of children dead under 5 years old at close to 400,000. Chabad has a long history of arguing that every child in Gaza killed by Israel is a human shield, their deaths are 'tragic inevitabilities' and Israel can't be held responsible (see second Q on the website below)
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/804034 /jewish/How-Do-I-Explain-Israels-Actions.htm
It is very reasonable and I think he probably knows a lot about it.
Larry, thank you for the nuanced exposition, especially that there are different strands to Zionism which can accommodate support as well as criticism. Although not Jewish, I too am a Zionist simply because, as Golda Meir said, “We have nowhere else to go.” It is tragic that the Zionist dream has been corrupted into religious ethnic nationalism. We look around the world and everywhere we see peoples immiserated under evil leaders they seem powerless to remove, and Netanyahu and Trump stand at the head of a long line (Putin; Maduro and his accomplices; Ortega; Orban). I can take issue whether Israel is committing war crimes or genocide in Gaza (the former is reckless disregard, while the latter requires intent) but with over 60,000 dead (& counting) it is a distinction without a difference. Bibi refuses to allow an independent inquiry into the circumstances leading up to the October 7 atrocity, and remarkably no one in Israel seems able to force one. You allude briefly to the Jews’ and the Palestinians’ claims. I think this is the nub of the problem and it’s about “Palestine” (or eretz Israel for the Jewish hardliners): two tribes want it, each has a legitimate claim, and extremists on both sides want all of it to the exclusion of the other. But I would be interested in your comment on a foundational conundrum at the heart of the Jewish state: the extraordinarily privileged position of the ultra orthodox (Haredim) in Israeli state and society. It seems to me that the only chance of a just outcome (as you said, of equality) is if moderate arabs and Jews (not just Israelis and Palestinians) force a confrontation with their own extremists, and say to them and to the world: “THIS is what we want. If you continue to sabotage it, we will suppress you.”
How can you explain your idea of being a non-jewish Zionist on the grounds that Golda Meir says that jews have nowhere else to go? She was living in the USA and had no need to go anywhere. If someone has nowhere to go I guess they stay put. Else emigrate to the USA, Australia etc with a bit of luck.
Back in 1948 or whenever it was, Australia went with the flow to allow European jewish pirates keep what they had stolen. We took it that Europeans have more rights than arabs, what else can explain it? But we do not think that any more. (I think piracy would be the right term. It was an act of privateers rather than some state in which case it would qualify as colonisation.)
It just seems to me you have not updated your thinking. There is something for you to clarify here.
And now a 14-year old Haredi kid run over by a bus at an conscription demo. A social-political disaster. https://www.timesofisrael.com/teenager-killed-others-injured-after-bus-runs-over-haredi-protesters-in-jerusalem
The problem of the insular separatist ultra orthodox has been there since the beginning of the state. Historically, there was never a large class of religious scholars. They were a small elite group. But in Israel, this is a result of political manipulation since 1948 when 400 yeshivah (seminary) students were granted an exemption from military service because the ranks of religious scholars had been so depleted by the holocaust. Since then, and because of bloc voting power, the numbers have exploded. It was never meant to be the outcome of a decision by the secular Ben Gurion. In the US, ultra-orthodox men by and large work. In Israel, a large number don't and have low levels of skills. They are dependent on welfare and chairty. There have been increasing (violent) confrontations with them over the years. The interesting thing is that in a 'one state' their extreme social conservatism would align well conservative Muslim groups. Oren Yiftachel has written about them as a conservative block in his book 'Ethnocracy ' which came out in 2006. He was years ahead of his time in modelling different forms of bi-nationalism and transitions. I know of others but his name sticks in my head. See if you can find an electronic copy. It can be found online.
But the Haredim can't survive separate from the secular state either. I have no easy answer of what to do. It is a classic confrontation between Church and State so to speak, on top of the general domination of family and related law by orthodox Jewish law as well as canon and Shariah law. And of course, there is an incredibly fragmented education system with all sorts of streams -- some resolutely antisecular - within the Jewish communities. All these things are highly gendered and don't match the expectations of secular people in all communities. It is the old Ottoman model that left a certain about of self-government to communities, in the hands of the secular and religious elite. They will fight like hell not to give up their legal privilege over all sorts of family law matters (not to speak of deciding who and who is not a Jew). And its inheritance lives on. The left pays no attention to such matters of course, but they are real and difficult issues when talking about a 'secular' state based on universal human rights principles We can't just click our fingers. .
It does not seem that Mr Stillman agrees that the ultra-orthodox faction is calling the shots, ie is the obstacle to peace. More likely, being irrational as they seem, they are useful to the hard-heads who care about narrowly imagined jewish interests and not much else. I am putting this as a question not a statement.
This is perfectly reasonable. You would like to save Israel from itself.
I would like to ask about Australia - would you say we have anti-semitism here or not? I think not; I have not come across it and we do not have the economic conditions that went with it.
If this is not the right place or you have already covered it elsewhere please provide a link.
Zionism is Judaism is Zionism.
Why do you think the "antisemitic" trope is used to excuse Zionism.
Zionism and Judaism .....the perfect crime.
The Bondi shtick was a false flag, staged event in case you haven't twigged.
Go away on a permanent basis please.
Go fuck yourself sideways baby killer .
Is that it? Is that what it comes to, a generalized slur. You defeat your purpose. Or you fulfil it, which is to spread hate.
Interpolating between your comment and Mr Stillman's reply, the common ground is that the gathering that was fired on was not just any group of jews but jews with an agenda. I don't know what their agenda is but it may well be relevant, certainly if the more militant views of Australian moslem arabs are considered relevant. So even though the two contributors seem to be opposed their joint contribution is of some value.
I don't think that the murderers were particularly conscious of any agenda in those present other than they were Jews. I very much doubt they knew about Chabad.. But are you saying the girl who was murdered had an agenda and that justified the action?
No, the child did not.
It is all in your first sentence, the second part of it - motive. What we all surely understand is that the shooting was a crime of revenge against jews for what they have done in Palestine. Whereas there is the propaganda that would have us believe there is a virus similar to rabies that caused both the Nazis and the dispossessed of Palestine to attack any and all jews. This is the fallacy of "anti-semitism". If we are deceived into thinking that the PLO are the same as Nazis we might eventually come to think that the Nazis had some excuses.
You probably do not mean that.
In all that has been written I had not noticed any profile of the sect whose people were fired. You and Mr l'Ons has given us reason to think that the behaviour of this sect could be relevant to motive.
What is in the background is the principle that migrants to Australia generally understand, not to bring their national quarrels with them to a new country. This should apply equally well to jews, but they are striving to keep Australia's diplomatic stance aligned with Israel's interests. Better if we were neutral.
I think I follow you. But people here and by and large not responsible for what goes on in Gaza. Likewise for Palestinians. I did link to something about Chabad. Please look at my posts.
The whole thing was a Chabad Staged Event.
With no imagination either as they reprised the 10-year-old victim from the earlier staged event at Bourke Street in 2017.
Piss off, anonymous troll/bot.
Eat shit and die baby-killer.
There are members of the israeli government who routinely tell us that there is no distinction between the children of gaza and hamas.
I do not mean my comment as an endorsement of Mr Chun's views entirely, i think he probably goes too far to be honest. I think you both raise valid points, and I respect that you are not aligned with the worst voices we hear out of israel and its lobby groups.
Polls in Israel have repeatedly shown that the vast majority of Israeli jews are very much in favour of the genocide, of the mass murder of children. No shortage of evidence of the IDF shooting little children for fun, and the latest estimates for Gaza put the number of children dead under 5 years old at close to 400,000. Chabad has a long history of arguing that every child in Gaza killed by Israel is a human shield, their deaths are 'tragic inevitabilities' and Israel can't be held responsible (see second Q on the website below)
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/804034 /jewish/How-Do-I-Explain-Israels-Actions.htm
Thank you for this excellent analysis
Excellent & sensible article, Nick - and why isn't Albanese pointing out the likelihood that an RC would compromise any forthcoming trial of the surviving perpetrator? That's clearly his most robust reason for resisting an RC - yet I haven't heard him say it. Everything about what's happened after Bondi (the media/Zionist/business lobbying, and Albanese's pallid response) is very, very odd.
We may well ask , what can have been the threats against him if he dares to speak out with any more than hollow platitudes ?
Naomi Klein’s article on trauma as weapon of war is relevant here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/05/israel-gaza-october-7-memorials
The only Royal Commission I am in favour of is the one on ASIO and it's performance as a supposed "Intelligence" agency.
"Royal Commission Calls Hit Crescendo" - what does that even mean?
We hear at lot about the devaluing of expertise so who should we trust here. An “independent” blogger who googled an old article which suggests the issues raised by concurrent trial/royal commissions are complex or the list of incredibly senior figures from the bar, bench and legal profession who advocated for a royal commission. This is, of course, completely seperate from the question of whether we should have RC, which is obviously here, and tbf almost everywhere, a political question.
Your first point is very strong (the author should answer it if he can) and the second point is true for sure. Here is an article by George Brandis ( https://www.smh.com.au/national/by-refusing-a-royal-commission-what-is-the-alp-covering-up-20260104-p5nrgh.html ) who should be able to cover both legal and political aspects. It is surprisingly weak in my opinion but I am coming to think no-one really cares to follow the arguments properly.
Assess comment not who you trust - but btw 'Demonboy' is not a very trust-inspiring handle. Re your hypothesis that a 10 yr old article was so old as to be wrong and clearly a royal commission would never prejudice a trial, the Guardian now says that the Law Council of Australia "warned: “the timing, conduct and terms of reference of any Royal Commission should be structured so as not to interfere with ongoing criminal proceedings” into the Bondi attack" - point taken?
It is better if someone gives their real name if they want us to trust their testimony but in this case the writer has made a point of logic that stands on its own. We can see it is right or point out a fallacy if we think it is wrong.
I didn’t say anything of the sort tho. I said we should be wary of politically inspired non expert musings where they contradict expert opinion. I also implied fishing around through old legal articles isn’t sound practice. The law council is saying we can have a royal commission just like all the other experts
I don't get how substack works yet but it seems to be a very good platform for a national dialogue. Of course a US social media company had to set it up for us - we could never have done that by ourselves. I just wanted to point out that there is another substack thread discussing Mr Fiek's article - here https://substack.com/profile/89269347-alan-b/note/c-195557077 . This has what is lacking in the present discussion, a voice from the pro-Israel side. That writer fiercely denies that Israel is committing genocide. Nick Feik wrote in passing that there is considerable evidence for it.
I side with Adam Carr ( https://www.facebook.com/adam.j.carr ) and the rest of the Labor Right in hard-boiled pragmatism and dislike of the far left who populate the western academy - who embrace a variety of nasty third world regimes and insurgencies. My parent's generation ranted about peace and then abandonded the civilians of Indo-China to the past five decades of horror.
Don't be that generation, sir.
It is not clear what Mr Carr's view is and so yours also is not clear.
The Royal Commission's two biggest tasks.
One, to establish the facts about prejudicial speech acts and other prejudicial actions towards community groups, Jewish, Islamic and other.
Two. To assess causality. Events in the Middle East, including the Gaza genocide? Local support for events in the Middle East?
The RC may find that "reported events" tell us more about the persons reporting than actual events.
The possible gap between actual events and the speeches and reporting in the mainstream media might suggest that there is a serious facts problem with the media, both the Murdochcracy and the echoes via the ABC and the Nine media.
A significant contribution to this discussion was made by Larry Stillman. Here is a piece from him on a related topic: https://substack.com/home/post/p-183980367 . It exemplifies a problem that I have asked about here, without getting an answer - the tendentious use of the word 'anti-semitism'.
I find it unaccountable that he and other honest writers use the term anti-semitism in connection with the Israel/Palestine conflict. When I hear it I take as propaganda, from someone propagating a false concept or someone who has thoughtlessly swallowed it.
Surely we all understand the rightful meaning: where jews were generally disliked in communities where they had made a way of life as a minority tribe. It is history mostly; it comes across today as if the locals had some resentment against jews simply as being foreigners in their midst. There must be knowable economic and social causes; at any rate these have not become common knowledge.
There is a long history of anti-semitism. Shakespeare wrote a relevant play. As to the misnomer, for some reason semite was adopted as euphemism for jew when, with no arabs living in Europe, it did not cause confusion. We all know also the extremes that anti-semitism reached in the second world war such that all good-thinking people wish to have no part in it since.
This has nothing to do with Palestine in which European jews were the agressor rather than the victim. Nor should one should suppose without evidence that there were any traditional conflicts involving jews and any other tribes in the Middle East. Anti-semitism was a European thing. The European jews who set up the state of Israel did so in an act of piracy, as I would understand the term, and ruined about a million lives in doing so. Of course this resulted in hostility, but it is not as though arabs displaced from their homeland disliked jews simply because they were different to them. Anyone familiar with the concept of justice can understand that there is a well-founded grievance here.
Israel wants diplomatic acceptability and its advocates make use of various so-called 'tropes' (including "anti-semitic tropes"). To conflate the oppression of jews in Europe with the resistance to jewish oppression in Palestine is just such a device. It is dishonest and devoid of logic. Unfortunately, many Australians including political leaders, journalists etc have been unthinking enough to swallow it.
I have by now gone over some basics that are so obvious that it would not have been necessary but for the crude use of tendentious language that is "anti-semitism" for any complaint tending against jews whether true or false. I am not intending to be provocative. I do not know why Mr Stillman uses these words as I do not take him for a blatant propagandist. On the contrary, I think he can be a great help to us to understand the jewish way of thinking, and I expect he knows the normal Australian attitudes equally well.
No response from Mr Stillman, which surprises me since he has answered most other questions including very uncivil ones.
Newscorp’s bellicose role in this has been beyond disgraceful. Nine papers are following suit. Thank God for some reasoned discussion, which will sadly be read by too few.
Still it falls short. It is rather one-sided here. We do not hear from the other side, the Australian right who favour Israel without explaining why. Without that we do not have much chance to get to a conclusion. I do not believe we try hard enough to answer their arguments just as they ignore ours.
Albo’s elbows have been broken and his fingernails pulled.
Or in other words an arm has been given expect more to come later.