If any lesson can be drawn at this dismissal juncture, it must surely be that violence engenders violence …
A year has now passed since Hamas invaded Israel, committing atrocities and taking Israeli and foreign hostages. Hostages have since been murdered, others have died, and many, including women, children, and the elderly, remain in harsh captivity.
Israel’s retaliation has in turn inflicted unspeakable horrors on the people of Gaza, killing and injuring tens of thousands, including women, children and other innocents. Gazan society has been devastated. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced, a humanitarian crisis has ensued and infrastructure across Gaza has been destroyed.
In the West Bank, under cover of the Gaza war, settlers have accelerated the annexation of Palestinian land. Settler violence has increased, with more evidence of collusion by the military and the border police, eliciting some sanctions by Australia and other countries, and even condemnation from the usually silent Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Fighting in the West Bank between Israel and Palestinian militants has also escalated.
And in Lebanon, Israel’s retaliation seems headed down the path of destruction and devastation already seen in Gaza.
Yet rockets continue to target Israel, from Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Iran itself, driving tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes.
In Australia, we have seen the hardening of competing, one-sided narratives, and the rise of extremist rhetoric, threatening social cohesion, and ties and friendships across religions and cultures that have been years in the making.
If any lesson can be drawn at this dismal juncture, it must surely be that violence engenders violence, and will continue to do so, in unending cycles, unless more pressure is exerted to achieve and enforce ceasefires, and to chart progress towards a long-term political solution.
We call on our Australian government to impose further sanctions on violent settlers and organisations that support them, including sanctions on West Bank settlement products and services. We strongly urge continuing pressure for ceasefires on all fronts and the release of hostages. It is essential that our government and its allies press and support all parties to negotiate a political solution that will end Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. The aim is to provide long-term security, equal human rights, national self-determination, and peace for both peoples.
As Rashid Khalidi has wisely written (in The Hundred Years War on Palestine) “… 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.”
“Robin Margo and Harold Zwier on behalf of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society committee”
Robin Margo was an anti-apartheid student leader in South Africa and a Rhodes Scholar. He has been senior counsel, president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, foundation president of the New Israel Fund Australia, a foundation director of The Sydney Alliance, and first editor-in-chief of Plus 61J Media. In 2010 he was awarded the NSW Community Relations Commission’s Community Service Award inter alia for “fostering interfaith and intercultural cooperation in New South Wales”. He is a member of Partners for Peace, Jewish Voices for Peace and Justice (NSW), the Inner West Chavurah and the Australian Jewish Democratic Society.
“Harold Zwier has had a longstanding interest in civil debate and constructive dialogue. Although he works in the computer industry as a software engineer, his real interests are in ideas, politics, the Jewish community, interfaith dialogue and writing. He is a committee member of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society (AJDS), an organisation that takes a more independent line in matters affecting the Jewish world. “