Independent senator’s ‘new low’ against Israel
Senator Lidia Thorpe quoted the number of Palestinians "murdered" by Israel in 2022 and 2023, while ignoring deaths caused by terrorist rockets.
A Senate speech in which independent Senator Lidia Thorpe railed against Israel “represents a new low in parliamentary debate”, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) said this week.
Rising last Thursday “to condemn the violent occupation of Palestine, the brutality of the colonial power that is Israel and their state-sanctioned murder of the Palestinian people”, Senator Thorpe went on to quote the number of Palestinians “murdered” by Israel in 2022 and 2023, while ignoring deaths caused by terrorist rockets that fell short and without clarifying the number of teen combatants killed while clashing with IDF soldiers or attempting to carry out attacks.
The former Greens senator did not mention Palestinian terrorism against Israel at all.
“We know this grief, sorrow and anger. It binds First People and Palestinians together. We share a history and reality of attempted genocide and are both yet to experience liberation in self-determination, governance and sovereignty,” she said.
“We know about apartheid and we know about being occupied by a power incapable of recognising the truth.”
Noting that Australia has not yet recognised Palestine as a state, she said, “Unsurprisingly, colonial powers are brothers in blood and have a common problem with recognising sovereignty both at home and abroad.”
ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim told The AJN this week, “Lidia Thorpe’s hysterical condemnation of Israelis for having the temerity to defend themselves from armed terrorists bent on murder and mayhem represents a new low in parliamentary debate.
“Her attempt to liken Palestinians to First Nations Australians is based on fantasy rather than history,” he said.
“Jews in Israel are not colonists. The Hebrew language and Jewish civilisation, religion and culture have been bound to the land of Israel for 3000 years.
“To suggest that Jews are illegal occupiers of the Temple Mount and Western Wall is as wrong-headed as it would be to suggest that First Nations Australians are the illegal occupiers of their sacred sites.”
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