Last month, Labor Senator for Tasmania Lisa Singh gave a speech to Par­lia­ment which greatly concerned the ECAJ. We wrote to Senator Singh, alerting her to some of the concerns we had, and hoping to engage with her about the content of her speech.
Unfor­tu­nately, our cor­res­pond­ence went unanswered and we are making our letter to Senator Singh available to the public now, after giving the Senator ample oppor­tun­ity to privately respond.
Senator Singh’s speech can be read here, and the ECAJ’s letter is repro­duced below.

22 June 2017
Senator the Hon Lisa Singh
Senator for Tasmania
GPO Box 271
Hobart, TAS, 7001
Email: [email protected]
Dear Senator Singh

Your speech on the Israeli-Palestini­an conflict
We write in reference to the speech you delivered in the Senate on 13 June 2017 con­cern­ing the Israeli-Palestini­an conflict. We are greatly concerned by certain aspects of the tenor and substance of your speech.
In par­tic­u­lar we were struck by the contrast in the way you depicted Palestini­ans and Israelis as human beings. You spoke of the Palestini­ans’ “hos­pit­al­ity,” “maturity, “pro­fes­sion­al­ism”, their “dignity”, “human spirit”, “culture and nation­al­ity”, “incred­ible resi­li­ence”. You repeatedly mentioned how much they “inspired” you and spoke of “their children”, their “dreams” and their “hopes” and the “psy­cho­lo­gic­al impact” they endure.
In contrast, you spoke of the Israelis only in abstract and imper­son­al terms, without any similar recog­ni­tion of their humanity, achieve­ments, aspir­a­tions, legit­im­ate concerns and feelings. You described Israelis as “soldiers with big guns” and used the word “illegal” in relation to Israelis on 12 occasions. In short, your speech dehu­man­ised and degraded Israelis, depicting them col­lect­ively as one-dimen­sion­al criminals.
Nowhere did you describe the way Hamas rocket attacks have targeted Jewish kinder­gartens and nurseries, among other civilian targets in southern Israel; the suffering of Israeli children in southern com­munit­ies who are regularly forced to scurry into bomb shelters; the psy­cho­lo­gic­al impact of terrorism on Israeli society; or the trauma of a nation that has been put through countless wars and waves of terrorist attacks directed primarily at innocent civilians. Nowhere did you refer to the illeg­al­ity of Palestini­an terrorism, of PA-sanc­tioned violence, of the war crimes of Hamas in delib­er­ately targeting civilians while using their own civilians as human shields, or in employing child soldiers to build attack tunnels and summarily executing suspected col­lab­or­at­ors and political enemies.
Your speech is also entirely uncrit­ic­al of the Palestini­an lead­er­ship, which is widely known for its endemic cor­rup­tion, author­it­ari­an­ism and support for terrorism. You referred to convicted ter­ror­ists, with the blood of civilians on their hands, as “political prisoners” and expressed solid­ar­ity with them.
You described a future Palestini­an state as a “plur­al­ist­ic, demo­crat­ic society”, oblivious to the scan­dal­ous treatment of women, LGBT people and religious and ethnic minor­it­ies by both the Palestini­an Authority and Hamas in the Palestini­an Ter­rit­or­ies. You have also swept under the carpet the strong support for a theo­crat­ic form of gov­ern­ment by many Palestini­ans. Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, believes in the sov­er­eignty of God and the primacy of religious authority over the secular. (Hamas Charter 1988, Article 27: “Sec­u­lar­ism com­pletely con­tra­dicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideo­lo­gies. That is why, with all our appre­ci­ation for The Palestini­an Lib­er­a­tion Organ­iz­a­tion – and what it can develop into – and without belittling its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea”).
Your speech levels the ignorant and unfounded slur of apartheid against Israel. Nowhere do you acknow­ledge that within Israel, Arab citizens have the same voting, civil, religious and legal rights as Jews. There have been Israeli Arab members of the Knesset ever since the first Israeli elections in 1949; seventeen of them are currently members of the Israeli Par­lia­ment. Israel’s Jews and Arabs have much the same life expect­ancy and infant mortality rates, use the same public transport, eat in the same res­taur­ants, get treated at the same hospitals, share the same beaches, theatres and cinemas, shop at the same malls, attend the same public schools and uni­ver­sit­ies and work side by side in many occu­pa­tions. Immense resources have been invested in certain sectors to address areas of inequal­ity and dis­crim­in­a­tion, which exist in Israel as they do every­where. Palestini­an natives of Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, and Saudi suffer far worse dis­crim­in­a­tion, but you do not accuse these countries of apartheid.
The simplist­ic applic­a­tion of the “apartheid” tag to the Israel-Palestini­an conflict misses the essential point that Jews and Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza are not members of the same national community. Apartheid involves sep­ar­a­tion, and different fun­da­ment­al rights, between members of the same national community, based on race. Unlike the conflict in South Africa, for example, which was a struggle by blacks and coloureds for equal rights with whites, as citizens of the same national community, Jews and Palestini­ans in the West Bank and Gaza do not see them­selves, and are not seen by others, as members of a single national community. Each is a distinct national community in its own right. Each of them has a com­bin­a­tion of shared language, customs, beliefs and tra­di­tions derived from a common past which gives them an his­tor­ic­ally determ­ined social identity in their own eyes and in the eyes of others.
Your stated objection to Israel’s security barrier – “My take on this wall is that it is not for security, but for land appro­pri­ation.” – also turns a blind eye to facts that do not fit your pre­con­ceived view. The rate of large-scale terrorist attacks against Israeli buses, cafes and nightclubs, which were a regular occur­rence prior to the con­struc­tion of the barrier, has fallen to virtually nil. Many lives, Israeli and Palestini­an, have been saved. Yet you did not deem this to be worthy of mention in your speech. At the heart of the fun­da­ment­al mis­con­cep­tions contained in your speech about the conflict between Israel and the Palestini­ans is the dis­grace­ful falsehood that it “began with a group of immig­rants attempt­ing to displace a local people”. Perhaps you are unaware that during World War II, the then leader of the Palestini­an national movement, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was among the most devoted and loyal allies of Nazi Germany. His­tor­i­ans recently published a telegram to Husseini from Hitler’s henchman, Reichs­führ­er-SS, Heinrich Himmler, in which the SS chief wished al-Husseini success in his battle against “the Jewish invaders.” We would not have expected you to share a similar cynically-distorted and odious per­spect­ive of the early Jewish immig­rants and refugees.
In truth, the Jewish people, the Hebrew language and Jewish religion and civil­isa­tion are indi­gen­ous to the Holy Land, the location of the Jewish national home in antiquity for 1,500 years. Jewish polities and state insti­tu­tions existed in the land for more than a mil­len­ni­um until the first century CE. No Palestini­an state or other political entity identi­fy­ing itself spe­cific­ally as the polity of the Palestini­an people existed anywhere in the land at any time in history, until the formation of the Palestini­an Authority after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.
The Jews who came to live in what is now Israel from the late nine­teenth century onwards were not armed colo­ni­al­ist invaders coming to an entirely alien land, like the British coming to Australia in 1788, but masses of ordinary people returning legally and peace­fully to the one place on earth that the Jewish people col­lect­ively call their nation’s home, a place crowded with centuries of Jewish memories and history, including an organised State history, and nurtured with Jewish sweat and blood.
The Jewish arrivals in the late nine­teenth and early twentieth centuries were not occupiers and dis­pos­sessors of the Arab inhab­it­ants, but people who purchased land from the legal owners at often inflated prices and built entirely new cities, towns, col­lect­ive farms and busi­nesses. The economic devel­op­ment and oppor­tun­it­ies they created, and the improve­ments in health and public san­it­a­tion which they intro­duced, led to a three-fold increase in the Palestini­an Arab pop­u­la­tion between 1881 and 1948, and a further five-fold increase in that pop­u­la­tion since 1948.
Jewish com­munit­ies have existed through­out the West Bank, Gaza and all parts of Jerusalem for millennia, including in places such as Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron, though some were eth­nic­ally cleansed or massacred in the 20^th century both prior to the creation of Israel in 1948 and during the period of Jordanian occu­pa­tion of the West Bank between 1948 and 1967.
After their expulsion from the land, Jews have always returned to it. Some Jews returned after the Baby­lo­ni­an exile, others returned during the period of Ottoman rule, others again returned in the 19^th century and millions have returned since the creation of the modern State of Israel, the majority seeking refuge from the tyranny of Soviet rule or the expro­pri­ation and massacres inflicted on Jews through­out the Arab world in the 20^th century.
We find it extraordin­ary that you would at once deny the character and rights of an indi­gen­ous people and malign immig­rants and refugees in such a way.
At present, 75% of Jewish Israelis are native-born. Yet a recent exam­in­a­tion of the results of 400 surveys carried out by five Palestini­an research centres in regular polls in the West Bank and Gaza showed that during the past 20 years 70 per cent of Palestini­ans have continued to seek an immediate end of the State of Israel, or to see a two-state solution as merely a stepping stone towards that goal rather than as the basis of a permanent peace. Have you nothing at all to say about that fun­da­ment­al attitude, which makes any kind of peace impossible?
It is also worth men­tion­ing that the Palestini­ans, who you have deemed the “native” people of the land, are them­selves immig­rants and claim descent from families who arrived in the land from other parts of the Middle East after the Ottoman conquest – that is, between the 16^th and 18^th centuries, or in rare cases after Saladin’s victory over the crusaders in the 12^th century. They trace their origins to the Arabian peninsula and other parts of the Middle East.
We can accept that the Palestini­ans now are an authentic national community with the right to govern them­selves and decide their col­lect­ive future. We only wish that Palestini­ans and their sup­port­ers would do the decent thing and recip­roc­ate by acknow­ledging that the Jewish people, in addition to being a faith community, are and always have been an authentic national community connected to the Holy Land who have the same right of national self-determ­in­a­tion that the Palestini­ans claim for them­selves.
We are immensely dis­ap­poin­ted that you have made such a damaging and hurtful inter­ven­tion into the conflict. Your words serve only to polarise, not heal. Your speech will do nothing to build bridges, foster coex­ist­ence, or mutual under­stand­ing or tolerance, which are essential to peace-making. Through your false and ill-conceived remarks you have polem­i­cized instead of analysed, and made it more difficult to address ration­ally the many issues relating to human rights, national rights and conflict res­ol­u­tion that you have touched on. In fact, your complete lack of empathy for Israelis and hagi­o­graph­ic comments about your Palestini­an hosts typifies the zero-sum attitude that entrenches and per­petu­ates conflict.
We request that you apologise to Israelis and the Aus­trali­an Jewish community for the many calumnies in your speech, and refrain from making such false and inflam­mat­ory remarks in future. They have brought discredit to you, the party your represent and the office you hold.
We will await your response and are happy to discuss this issue with you in person. If we do not receive a response from you before 5 July 2017 we will publish this letter as an open letter.
Yours sincerely
Anton Block, President
Peter Wertheim AM, Executive Director