Peter Cundall's Palestine

"For it is not just a case of intellectualizing but the choice of an entire way of life. This man, perhaps a warm friend and affectionate father, who in his native country (by his social condition, his family environment, his natural friendships) could have been a democrat, will surely be transformed into a conservative, reactionary, or even a colonial fascist. He cannot help but approve discrimination and the codification of injustice, he will be delighted at police tortures and, if the necessity arises, will become convinced of the necessity of massacres. Everything will lead him to these beliefs: his new interests, his professional relations, his family ties and bonds of friendship formed in the colony. The colonial situation manufactures colonialists, just as it manufactures the colonized." (The Colonizer & The Colonized, Albert Memmi, pp 55-56)

Peter Cundall, the popular 81-year old host of the ABC's Gardening Australia program, is finally retiring from television. An iconic figure, he'll be sorely missed by many. The Sun-Herald's feature on the gardening guru (That's his bloomin' lot, 6/7/08) describes how Cundall, a soldier in the British Army during WW2, was afterwards sent to British Mandate Palestine "where the British Army was given the job of aiding Jewish settlers." Cundall's account of his experience there is revealing:-

"It was a real nightmare. Most of the soldiers who had been in Europe were quite sympathetic to the Jews who were coming from Europe to settle in Palestine because we had been there and seen how they had suffered. Then I came across some of the Jewish settlers who were so racist towards the Palestinians. I thought, 'what's going on? Here are the Jewish people who have suffered terrible discrimination for hundreds of years and they are turning around and discriminating against these people'. They just hated them. Then I suddenly realised that we're all at fault in many ways, we all have weaknesses and even people who have suffered terribly can cause others to suffer terribly."

As Memmi points out, and Cundall confirms, such is the logic of colonialism.