Two Wrongs, Racism And Hatred, Do Not Make A Right

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday January 13, 2009

Paul Sheehan's description of the racist nature of some of the anti-Israel demonstrations is chilling ("It's too easy just to blame the Jews", January 12). The placards and chants are nothing more than racist hatred. That there has been barely a word spoken in protest is shocking. The Islamic community has the right to protest peacefully, but that does not extend to whipping up racism and hatred against another ethnic minority.

Ian Fraser Cherrybrook

Paul Sheehan's article exemplifies why the Israel/Palestine crisis remains intractable. While the issues he raises are logical and accurate, no one can afford to focus on extremists' views on whichever side. The issue for most of those concerned with ending the crisis is not about anti- or pro-Semitic feeling, but of stopping the senseless slaughter of innocent civilians. Most of those horrified by recent atrocities are opposed to Israel's policy, not anti-Semitic, and to use the latter to avoid accountability for the former only forestalls reconciliation.

After correctly lamenting the racism implicit in the signs of protesters in Melbourne, Sheehan asserts that women in Gaza "are used primarily as breeding stock". Shame.

David Hollier New York

W. H. Auden said it all: "Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return."

And the state of Israel hadn't been created when he wrote that.

Peter Spencer Darlington

So phosphorus bombs are illegal ("Egypt shuns proposal for troops on its border", January 12). Apparently they cause great pain and death. So why stop at phosphorus bombs? Which weapons of war don't hurt and kill people? That's what they are for.

Like all morally derived criteria, this is meaningless unless applied universally. But is a species hard-wired for hate and aggression ever going to bite this deductive bullet: no weapons, no war as we know it? What a result for innocent children that would yield.

Moral logic is a puny force to send out against our timeless psychic drive to destroy people we have never met, but whom nonetheless we know to be our enemies.

Stephen Clarke Summer Hill

Thanks to Julia Irwin for her courage in speaking out against the horror in Gaza ("Getting away with murder", smh.com.au, January 11). Although the Australian Government and Opposition have rushed to apologise for Ehud Olmert's actions, I cannot believe they speak on behalf of most Australians.

I have yet to meet anyone among my colleagues and students who approves of what the Israeli Government is doing in Gaza, or who does not, more broadly, condemn that Government's treatment of the Palestinian people.

None of them is an anti-Semite or Holocaust denier. None wants to see the Israelis forced into the Mediterranean. None is a Hamas supporter. Some are Jews. All hope, and in some cases pray, for a just and lasting peace in Israel/Palestine and for an Australian Government willing to work towards it.

Dr John Tully School of Social Sciences, Victoria University, Melbourne

© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

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