Marrickville On Steroids

geoffff

Sold A Pup

The Greens have landed themselves slam dunk right back in the middle of their worst Marrickville moment nightmare and have added a dimension that makes the whole show look like a horror movie.

Marrickville was only a local inner city council with tickets on itself.  It was tougher to explain how BDS was antisemitic and the air over Sydney University still hangs thick with the denials in the face of all the evidence.

This time it is federal and involves the party leader who has been in the job since morning tea (hereafter referred to as "New Guy") . And it will be so easy to show that the Greens have a racism problem there has to be a fair chance that even people like Bob Carr will twig.

The full disaster is recorded at New Matilda as it unfolded but it seems they and the Greens have yet to notice the rank corner where they have wound up and so fast.

Someone should turn on the light. 

The background is simple. An AJN reporter gives a friendly interview to New Guy who too is real nice. Sweet as pie. It has the look of  part of an attempt to patch up with the Greens. (How cute)

In the course of the interview the reporter asks New Guy whether the two state solution must include the Jewish state.  New Guy emphatically agrees almost falling over under the load of sugar and spice.

Before you know it, the AJN story got around, the Greens party members are revolting and a few days later New Guy is backtracking like the Iraqi army. 

He issues a "clarification"  that includes this extraordinary sentence.

 I have never believed that the establishment of a ‘Jewish state’ (as opposed to an ‘Israeli state’) is conducive to this outcome and I absolutely do not support that goal 

Say what?

This is a "two state solution" ?

This from a comment I left on the thread. They deserve fair warning for a clanger this jarring. The Greens make these mistakes because they talk only to one side, or rather listen to only one side, they are so narrowly focused, and of course those formulating policy have no idea at all even about  the basic landscape. 

Not to mention racist.

It is astonishing that this is controversial but it is and I welcome it because  it might help the Greens to focus on and say honestly exactly what they stand for; and get the rest of us focusing on the Greens as a consequence

The background as I understand it was an attempt at a reset of the relationship between the Jewish community and the Greens whose brand had begun to stink like a dead rat in the roof.. It was probably initiated by Jewish Greens anxious to restore Jewish support which I  guess would have been disproportionately   high and may be still,  but confused and conflicted.

The construct "Jewish state"or "national home of the Jewish people" is not  controversial among Jews. The word "Israel" means the Jewish people.  There was some noise about legislation changes but that is a different matter. These are opposed by centre , moderate and left factions as being unnecessary, divisive and inflammatory for Israeli Arabs   but  all of this is something on a different plane. It is a matter for the Israelis.




It has no connection to the central principle that Israel is the Jewish state, the national home of the Jewish people with all sovereign rights and privileges that are asserted and due to every other sovereign state.

Non-negotiable

It will come as a surprise to the rest of the world that Israel was not the Jewish state especially that part that would dearly like to see it obliterated for exactly that reason. 

When did that happen?

New Guy will be well advised to have his answer ready next time because he is sure to be asked.

You can rule out that New Guy was tricked by AJN into something. Every question was in good faith and the reporter would have honestly believed that New Guy agreed with the obvious proposition that if a "two state solution " means anything at all, it means that there are two states, one of which is the existing Jewish state recognized by the civilized world for what it is for decades. The Jewish state and national homeland of the Jews.

Abbas refuses to explicitly recognize a Jewish state because he knows that if he did he would have seen his last sunrise. For most Palestinians and many Muslims, the idea of Jewish sovereignty over any part of Israel is repulsive and unthinkable. Hamas, IJ, the Salafists etc still demand that she be destroyed. Recognition in any true sense is worse than anathema. It is blasphemous in a culture where blasphemy has severe consequences.  

In the background is the so called Arab "right of return" to all of Israel, which is so loopy it is creepy. But Abbas can't revoke that either because it is core to the ideology of Palestinianism

So he tries on this formula where he will recognize Israel as some kind of concept  distinct from the Jewish state, although that is what "Israel" literally means. It's a dodge. Everything Abbas does is a dodge.

Where possibly can it lead? A peace deal?  

Then along come the Australians Greens to fix it all.

Thing is, not recognizing Israel as the Jewish state is antisemitism and this is increasingly being understood and declared by everyone from Obama to the Pope.

So in desperately seeking not to be seen to be  aligned with Netanyahu, New Guy  has now enunciated a policy that yanks the party out of alignment with moderate Jews and supporters of Israel who sincerely stretch for a two state solution, and pretty much the rest of the civilized world; and brings it into line with those who declare that  Jews were never entitled to their own state in the first place because they are Jews and as they are still Jews should have it taken from them all these years later as they have been saying all along and have been doing their absolute best to bring about with all their might. 

Which of course is antisemitism.

At this rate New Guy will be "clarifying" Greens policy on Israel and the Palestinians from here until the next election.

Which is a good thing.

After all what the hell do the Greens stand for?

Do the Greens now have an openly racist policy on their books?

And if it is not racist, how is it not, especially since the rest of the civilized world is in the process of declaring that antizionism is antisemitism?

Good one, Greens.

Glad I'm not member.  Especially a Jewish member. If you want to hang out with racists you could do better by joining the Ku Klux Klan

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If it wasn't so nasty it would be comical. They seem to actually believe that those domestic political machinations by Netanyahu a while back were the real McCoy on whether Israel is the Jewish state which of course it has been for longer than most of them have been alive.

The Israelis are about to legislate for a Jewish state, they thought 

Could they really be this bad?

New Guy could be Ollie to Rhiannon's Stan   

This is another fine mess you've got me into, Laurel.

Cross Posted Jews Down Under