Israel a valid UN Member state

Let’s start by acknowledging that the Middle East is a very complex problem, and that there are no simple answers or even rights and wrongs. That said, however, it is incumbent upon your letter writers to use actual facts in their letters to the editor, rather than “alternative facts” or “fake history”. Omar Mohammad exhibits an aversion to objective reality in his letter (CW 9 November p18).

Britain didn’t “promise Israel to the Jews”. The 1917 Balfour Declaration stated that Britain “viewed with favour” the establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. Britain had been given a mandate to govern Palestine, from the League of Nations (which later became the United Nations).

The actual creation of the state of Israel was by UN Resolution 181, which sought to establish both an Arab State and a Jewish State in the region. The Jews accepted this, but the Arabs did not. The Arab leaders told the local resident Arabs to leave, promising that they could return when the Arabs won the war which they were about to start. This didn’t happen as they lost the war.

It is probably true that some Zionists murdered some Arabs as well. But the 1948 war was commenced and waged by the Arabs against the Jews. I do not dispute that they killed some Arabs. Mohammad should not dispute that some Arabs were intent on killing Jews.

Mohammad mentions the Hagganah and the Irgun. These paramilItary groups did not “inflict unspeakable horrors against the Palestinians”. They were in fact a branch of the nascent IDF, and carried out reprisals against the attacking Arab militias. Nobody comes out of this with totally clean hands. But nobody is wholly to blame either.

The Arabs can allege that Resolution 181 led to a “Nakba”. But it should be remembered that there was not and has never has been a group called the “Palestinians”. The region has been home to both Jews and Muslims (as well as Druze, Christians and Orthodox) for thousands of years. The concept of “Palestine” was created in 1988 at the Palestine National Council Meeting in Algiers. It simply did not exist previously.

In short, the state of Israel and the region calling itself Palestine is the child of the UN with some British and French parentage. It may not have been handled as well as it might have been, but Israel exists as a valid state, with membership of the UN, and satisfying the definitions of the Montevideo Convention. The Arabs who claim to be Palestinians have had numerous offers to become a state with proper borders and security. They have always chosen not to accept. They choose instead to remain “refugees” – even though four generations have passed since the defining “Nakba” event.

Even when they were given Gaza, in 2005, they chose to destroy the existing Israeli-abandoned infrastructure, and shoot rockets at Israeli civilians, rather than establish a state which, given its location and beauty, could have been a jewel of the Middle East.

And finally, I wonder when Mohammad gets his figure for the deaths of Gazans. Is it the Gazan Health Ministry? This is a Hamas mouthpiece, and even if the figures were objectively true, how many of those causalities were in fact combatants? And whilst we are on the subject of casualties, could Mohammad please explain why it is apparently OK to violently enter Israel, murder 1400 non-combatants and children, and abduct 208 hostages into tunnels built with aid money that was intended to benefit residents of Gaza, but stolen by Hamas?

• Athol Morris, Forde

The Palestine conflict

Further to Bill Stefaniak’s op-ed (CW 26 October p6), the genesis of the Palestine issue lies with the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Lord Balfour, urged by a Jewish associate, led the British government to announce its support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, in other words, a religious state within the Palestine nation. At that time, Palestinian Jews represented a small minority, some 10 per cent, of the Palestine population. The concept came to fruition following the Holocaust of WWII. The state of Israel was inflicted upon the Palestinians, by force of armed Zionists, under the emotional hubris of ‘providing a homeland for Jews’. During this episode, nearly one million Palestinians were dispossessed of their homeland. This territory grab continues to this day. The present conflict can only be resolved if Israel is obliged to surrender all hitherto illegally taken Palestinian territory, and have its territorial ambitions confined to the 1947 original borders. Israel will never escape the view that it is a cancer in the state of Palestine.
– Mike Alves, Phillip

You keep getting what you vote for

With all the predictable whinging and blaming from the Yes camp, you would have thought those in the nation’s capital may have turned to a little self-reflection. Firstly, the ACT has the lowest percentage of Aboriginals per capita out of all the states and territories. Secondly, under the Labor/Greens government, the ACT has the highest incarceration and reoffending of Aboriginals per capita. Thirdly, and most importantly, what has the local government done to address these issues that are specific to its voter population? And lastly, when are the rusted-on Labor voters that keep voting this government in, thus getting the same results with Aboriginals, going to take responsibility for their actions.

• Ian Pilsner, Weston

Price for PM ‘a joke’

I have read several letters from Ian Pilsner in Canberra media outlets but never realised that he is trying to be a comedian! His suggestion that Jacinta Price should be PM (CW letters 9 November p18) must be a joke, surely.

Price is a failed councillor and deputy mayor of Alice Springs, and resigned only six months after an election to stand for the Senate, thus causing a by-election. By championing the No vote in the referendum, she went against the vast majority of Indigenous voters (74 per cent voted Yes*) and had the nerve to accuse Yes supporters of dividing the nation. Only she and her ilk did that.

• David Hobson, Spence

*Fact check: cannot confirm number of 74 per cent.

Price lacks critical judgement

I assure Ian Pilsner (CW 9 November) that I do not fear Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price because she fails to “preach to (my) side of politics”. Mr Pilsner does not know how I vote at elections. Nor am I “jealous” because my side of politics doesn’t have “a strong articulate, female, Indigenous equivalent”. Admittedly, Linda Burney was occasionally ‘caught on the hop’ in the Voice debate, but she does not lack honesty.

Mr Pilsner wants to know the reasons why I do not consider Senator Price would make a good prime minister. For example, she is associated with Pauline Hanson’s reactionary One Nation Party whose members include ”turncoat” Mark Latham and delusional climate change denier Malcolm Roberts. Ms Price is also politically attuned on Aboriginal Land Rights and several other issues to conservative activist Warren Mundine, who was strongly supported by Tony Abbott, and a little less so by Scott Morrison. To summarise: Jacinta Nampijinpa Price lacks critical judgement and independence of thought.

Finally, I humbly and politely decline Mr Pilsner’s offer of humble pie.

– Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin

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