Turnbull's Netanyahu-Beersheeba treacle

In late February, at a luncheon to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made a forgettable speech.

Lacquered with treacle, full of false claims, peppered with indifference to any concern about justice, Turnbull spoke as though he'd been briefed by Netanyahu's Cabinet.

As long as readers don't easily become nauseous, this speech is worth reading as a document which represents hypocrisy, develops fake news and endorses the idea that political gain can be made through deceit.

He starts with Herculean thunder as in the claim that Australia and Israel have 'a relationship forged in the crucible of history.' Presumably that means that 1788 & 1948 were the same: Australia in 1788 an empty, uninhabited continent, Israel in 1948 'a land without a people for a people without a land', hence the justification for driving 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and quickly erasing 500 villages and towns from the surface of the earth ?

In Turnbull's account of history, Australia and Israel have vitality derived from the two young nations' optimism and enterprise. There's no mention of indifference to international law, to the scorn reserved for human rights coupled to complete indifference to the suffering of Palestinians.

Charge of the Light Brigade

At that point, jingoism takes over. The Australian Prime Minister sees himself on October 30^th 1917 in the uniform of the Australia 4^th light horse brigade in the attack on Beersheeba, known ironically as the third battle of Gaza. Instead of fighting the Turks, Turnbull deploys military imagery, presumably to deflect attention from hostile opinion polls.

In a manipulative version of history, Turnbull announces that he'll be commemorating the capture of Beersheeba from the Ottoman Turks nearly one hundred years ago, 'as one of the foundations of our relationship'. The charge of the light brigade contributed to the creation of the state of Israel ? This beggars belief.

The Balfour Declaration initiated British support for the idea of a Jewish homeland. The Declaration was contained in a November 2^nd 1917 letter from the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, leader of the British Jewish community. Sent two days after the military success at Beersheeba, there's no way that Balfour could have known of the battle let alone link Beersheeba to his reference to a Jewish homeland.

Freedom, Democracy, the Rule of Law

Undeterred, Turnbull galloped on. 'Our two nations share a commitment to freedom, democracy and the rule of law.'

There is little freedom for Palestinians. The people of Gaza are imprisoned. The millions marooned in refugee camps cannot return to their homes. Even to travel between one West Bank town and another means negotiating your way past numerous military check points.

The oft repeated claim that Israel is a democracy is a lie. Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied rights to land and property.Residents of the West Bank are subject to mass arrests and imprisonment in Israeli jails. They are deprived of shelter by a systematic policy of mass house demolitions. They are crippled by ongoing collective punishments, expropriation and destruction of property, agricultural land and crops. The continued establishment of illegal settlements, housing up to 700,000 illegal settlers, represents ethnic cleansing which makes Palestinians refugees in their own lands.

Boasting about Australia's and Israel's joint respect for the rule of law Turnbull manages to conceal the Israeli laws which ensure an apartheid system.

There's civil law for citizens of Israel, residency restrictions governing Palestinians living in Jerusalem, but giving them no legal standing to challenge Israeli law. There's military law governing Palestinians living under occupation and in refugee camps, and a Law of Return which permits every Jewish person to emigrate to Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship yet denies the same protection to Palestinians.

These Multicultural Societies

Still on horseback, apparently exhilarated, the Australian Prime Minister declares that both Australia and Israel are 'successful multicultural societies.'

Successful ? A recent OECD report indicates that poverty in Israel is more widespread than in any 30 OECD countries, and that social divisions go far deeper than in records of income and employment. For example, public spending on education per child in Palestinian localities is one third lower than in predominantly Jewish municipalities.

If Turnbull wanted to identify the similarities between Israel and Australia, he might have referred to the quality of life of each country's Indigenous peoples. He could have compared the poor health, mortality, and rates of imprisonment of Australia's Indigenous citizens with the plight of Bedouin inhabitants of Israel. Around half of Bedouins live in villages defined as 'unrecognized' with limited or no electricity, water or sewage. Four out of five Bedouins are estimated to live in poverty.

Basking in the achievements of Israel, perhaps Prime Minister Turnbull could not comprehend that convenient camouflage of the separate but equal racism that also used to dominate US politics.

The record of the Israeli army slaughtering Gazans in the invasions in 2009 and 2014, is also ignored with the usual mother-and-apple-pie assertion that Israel has a right to defend itself and its citizens. That part of the speech is followed by a statement intended to make Turnbull sound Churchillian, 'We stand with Israel as we always have – an all-weather friend.' Not even a slight reflection about justice. Who cares about justice when flattery is the name of the game?

Bibi ! We are 'seeking to emulate the innovation success of Israel – the original Start Up Nation.'

Turnbull gives justifiable credit to Israel's achievements in technology, but any concern for human rights is displaced by reverence for cybersecurity, for trade, for business investment and for cooperation between Australian and Israeli universities.

Water as a Weapon

Such apparent indifference to justice is coupled to euphoria about water which Turnbull describes as 'one of my greatest passions.'

Regarding Israel's control over and distribution of water supply, what Turnbull doesn't say reveals uncomfortable truths.

Successive Israeli governments use water to exercise power and to punish an entire population. UN figures show that each day Israeli citizens have access on average to 240 litres of water, settlers to 300 litres but Palestinians on the West Bank to only 73 litres. The world minimum standard is 100 litres per day. Across Gaza, tap water, from the crucial aquifer, is unfit to drink. In the 2014 invasion of Gaza over a million Gazans were left without access to water.

The Final Flourish

In a final flourish, after more ingratiating references to Bibi, Turnbull refers to tikkun olam, 'one of the greatest imperatives of the Jewish tradition, the obligation of every person to seek to make the world a better place.'

Of ways to meet this obligation, many examples could have occurred to the Prime Minister, or to the person who wrote this speech. He, or she, could have referred to an end to the occupation, to ceasing the building of settlements, to ending the siege of Gaza.

In reference to the recent torture of a 14 year Palestinian boy from a Bethlehem refugee camp, Issa-al-Monati whose right leg had been amputated after he was shot by Israeli soldiers in 2015, even an expression of mild dismay would have been appropriate.

On the Palestine Israel questions, there is no end to cruelty, no end to the Australian Prime Minister's ignorance, or indifference, his willingness to dissemble and deceive.