The European Disease

Wails Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, "Australia's most influential foreign affairs analyst,"* in today's Australian:

"Six years of Labor government, by this year's election in September, will result in a new Australia. We have contracted the European disease."(ALP has spread Europe's disease).

Well, he's got a point there. Australia does have the European disease - big time.

The only problem is it wasn't introduced by Rudd and Gillard.

It was introduced by Admiral Arthur Phillip in 1788 when he founded Australia's first British colony - later to be named Sydney - on the land of the Eora people.

The steel-borne European disease, aka settler-colonialism, spread rapidly throughout the vast island continent, decimating its indigenous people and reducing the land to a mere shadow of its former self.

Trust Sheridan to miss the real European disease.

Now no Sheridan column would be complete without a mention of Israel, and this one is no exception:

"In foreign policy we have moved towards the European consensus and away from the Australian tradition on issues such as Israel..." (ibid)

Which brings me back to the subject of the real European disease, settler-colonialism. A particularly virulent strain, called Zionism, was also introduced into Palestine by the British.

From its introduction in the wake of World War 1, Zionist settler-colonialism spread to such an extent that by 1949 it had ravaged almost 80% of Palestine, leaving the majority of its indigenous Arab population in refugee camps, either beyond its borders or in the two small enclaves that had miraculously escaped, at least temporarily, falling victim to the Zionist scourge.

That's quite a disease!

[*theaustralian.com.au]