We must hold the perpetrators accountable
When we look at the victims of October 7 we note that among the dead were 71 foreigners including Americans, Thais, Filipinas, a German and an Australian.
I suppose the question some may ask of us attending October 7 commemorations is “why are we here?” First, I believe we have absorbed the famous reflection by Pastor Martin Niemoller that he didn’t speak up when the Nazis came for the socialists, the trade unionists and finally the Jews because he wasn’t one of them. So when the Nazis came for him, there was no one left to speak up. In other words, evil triumphs when good men and women do nothing, and it will come for all of us eventually if we do not unite to oppose it.
Indeed, when we look at the victims of October 7 we note that among the dead were 71 foreigners including Americans, Thais, Filipinas, a German and an Australian. In relation to faiths there were Muslims, Christians and Buddhists alongside their Jewish brothers and sisters.
So first and foremost we commemorate and hold close in our hearts those who lost their lives, those who suffered terrible mental and physical injury, those who are still held hostage, and send our love to all their friends and families.
To place these events in context we have to appreciate that October 7 was the third deadliest terror attack since the collection of terrorism-related data. In terms of the per capita impact it is in fact the deadliest ever experienced. As President Biden noted, an event of this scale in the US would have represented around 50,000 killed. It is also the second longest hostage crisis since the 444-day US Tehran embassy crisis.
Words are not adequate to describe the attack itself involving the murder of innocent women, children, disabled and the elderly. The systematic rape and torture, the gratuitous and sadistic sexual mutilation. That understanding can only come through the imagery, the testimony and the tears of the victims, friends and family.
I believe the key question is: what can we do to properly honour the dead and learn from this? For me this all begins with determining how it was possible psychologically for the invaders to do what they did. This can be understood from the perspective of generational conditioning. For centuries Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists and others were classified under the caliphates of the Middle East as dhimmi. Second-class citizens, forced into ghettos, required to distinguish themselves by their dress. They were not permitted to build churches or synagogues, nor repair those that existed. All were required to pay the special jizya tax. Some dhimmi were at times forced to convert or be exiled or killed. None of this treatment was prescribed in the Koran.
This built the deep cultural memory of the dhimmi as being less than their neighbours. Building on this in recent history we have seen the heinous antisemitic calumnies of the Hamas Covenant, which picks up the vile tropes of the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This is reinforced through the shocking brainwashing of Palestinian children in their educational texts and materials. Today this is echoed in our country by statements claiming Jews are descended from pigs and apes, with this and other such material being volumised by social media.
I would draw attention to the European Parliament Resolution adopted in April this year, which, “condemns the problematic and hateful contents encouraging violence, spreading antisemitism and inciting hatred in Palestinian school textbooks, drafted by [European] Union-funded civil servants as well as in supplementary educational materials developed by UNRWA staff and taught in its schools”.
The statement “reaffirms in the context of the despicable terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas on 7 October 2023, that education to hatred [has] direct and dramatic consequences on the security of Israelis as well as on the perspectives of a better future for young Palestinians”. They decried the glorification of terrorism and “martyrdom”, along with the erasing of all reference to Israel that promotes its physical destruction.
They noted that UNRWA schools, which cater for around 80 per cent of the Gazan population, contain the same problematic incitement as Palestinian Authority schoolbooks. For there to be any progress towards peace this evil indoctrination must end.
I recall the comments of Chaim Weizmann (first President of Israel) when he said in 1946 – “Now, in the light of past and present events, the bitter truth must be spoken. We feared too little and we hoped too much. We underestimated the bestiality of the enemy; we overestimated the humanity, the wisdom, the sense of justice of our friends.”
How apt and how bitter to recite these words again.
Let us therefore insist that the international community hold the perpetrators of this continuing war accountable. We must demand that the aggression of Iran and its proxies be immediately brought to an end, that they renounce further violence and release the hostages. Then let us commit to the struggle at the heart of all this, the conquest of the landscape of the mind by the rule of reason and truth.
Mike Kelly is a former minister for defence materiel and the co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel. This is an edited text of his speech at the Never Again is Now rally in Canberra on Monday.
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