OPINION
The Covid pandemic was a litmus test. Ever wondered who, should real fascism come to your country, would click their heels and salute the Dear Leader? Covid let you know.
October 7 was a litmus test, too: a litmus test of basic decency. Everyone likes to brag that they would have been August Landmusser, refusing to join the crowd in a Heil Hitler salute, that they would have hidden Anne Frank and her family under their floorboards.
Bullshit.
October 7 has brought the anti-Semites and wannabe Brownshirts slavering and howling out of the woodwork. It’s also exposed, by the tens of thousands, those who are just so ideologically deranged that they’ll countenance the worst race-hate, just because their “side” tells them too.
On the other hand, some perhaps surprising figures have passed the litmus test with flying colours.
Distinguished Indigenous leader Marcia Langton has condemned the “Blak sovereignty” movement’s proposition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians feel solidarity with Palestinians as “simply untrue”, saying there is very little that is comparable in the two peoples’ situations.
Professor Langton offered a withering assessment of the pro-Palestinian strand of the Indigenous rights movement after Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni wore a pin with both Aboriginal and Palestinian flags on his jacket during a discussion of the Israel-Hamas war on ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night.
As BFD readers will be aware, I’m not exactly Langton’s biggest fan. I regularly excoriated her contributions to the Voice referendum campaign.
But Langton has proven that, whatever her other opinions, she remains a fundamentally decent person.
While she calls the loss of civilian life in Gaza “unjustifiable”, she is crystal clear on who’s responsible and who the real monsters in this conflict are.
I condemn Hamas. I am horrified and deeply saddened by the loss of lives in the Levant, the Israelis who were murdered and kidnapped by Hamas and the innocent Palestinians who are being used as human shields by Hamas.
The Australian
With unflinching moral clarity, she demolishes the bankrupt and cretinous claims of the “pro-Palestine” mob.
“‘Blak sovereignty’ advocates have entwined two extraordinary propositions – one that is simply untrue and one that is a moral outrage.
“First, they claim that ‘Indigenous Australians feel solidarity with Palestinians’. This is false; it is the view of a tiny few, if put in those words. Most of us are aware of the complexity and that there is very little comparable in our respective situations, other than our humanity.
“Second, they refuse to condemn Hamas. I am aghast and embarrassed. They do not speak for me. I fear and loathe the possibility of further loss of life in this terrible crisis.
“I fear also that our multicultural society is being torn apart by people deluded about terrorism who have used their protests as a cover for anti-Semitism.”
“Our multicultural society is being torn apart by people deluded about terrorism who have used their protests as a cover for anti-Semitism”
Marcia Langton
Langton also calls out the denialism of the likes of the Greens and Labor’s pro-Hamas apologists.
Professor Langton is categorical that Hamas are terrorists and that Palestinian Islamic Jihad are terrorists.
“The slogan ‘Not all Palestinians are Hamas’ denies the fact that innocent Palestinians are being used as human shields by these terrorists,” she writes.
The Australian
Another who’s passed the litmus test is The Australian’s Troy Bramston. Bramston might be a minion of the Evil Murdoch Press, but he’s also a dripping-wet, blue-green.
Yet, even he is able to cut to the moral heart of the issue.
The indiscriminate cruelty, savagery and barbarism inflicted by Hamas on Israel on October 7 will reverberate through the ages.
This conflict is unlike any other, not Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 or the Yom Kippur War that began in 1973. This is something altogether different and it is vital that Israel be supported in its campaign to destroy Hamas.
Responsibility for this renewed ancient conflict rests solely with Iranian-backed Hamas. Its mission is to terminate the right of Israel – a democratic country that deserves the support of all democracies – to exist. It does not support a two-state solution or territorial settlement. It wants to eliminate the Jewish homeland.
Hamas knew its murderous rampage, claiming 1200 lives, would be met with a fierce response by Israel. It conducted its attacks knowing full well that Israel would act to defend itself. How could Israel not? It is entirely within international law for a country that has been invaded and its citizens slaughtered and taken hostage to respond with force.
As the aerial bombardments and land invasion of Gaza began, Israel repeatedly urged Palestinians to leave their communities. Nobody wants to see innocent civilians, whether Palestinians or Israelis, killed in war. Yet Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields; its members hide in Palestinians’ homes, burrow beneath neighbourhoods and plan terror attacks from hospital basements.
The Australian
These simple, morally clear facts just cannot cut through the fog of leftist ideological lockstep.
Mostly, one suspects, because they’re just so blinded by anti-Jewish hate that they don’t want to see. October 7 merely gave them the excuse to say out loud what they’ve been keeping quiet ever since 1945.
We see them now for what they are.
And we see who can be trusted to remember basic human decency when the chips are down.