As someone who grew up in Israel and participated in the oppression of Palestinians, I advise the Australian public not to be captivated by Netanyahu’s rhetorical juggling (”This is the battle of our civilisation”), which has succeeded in bewitching many in Israel. The story of a war of civilizations fits Hollywood, but doesn’t describe reality, which is as simple as Australian history: Zionists from Europe settled in the land of indigenous Palestinians, and in one year of barbaric atrocities expelled hundreds of thousands of them to turn the land into a Jewish state. Since then, Israel has continued to oppress the Palestinians. Especially in Gaza, where Israel imprisons millions of people, most of them refugees deported in 1948, starves and deprives them of basic living conditions, and massacres its population once every few years. This is the background to the growth of Hamas and its attacks, not Netanyahu’s incitement.
Nachshon Amir