Mundine of Zion

As we know, the Israel lobby in Australia spares no effort to win friends and influence people it regards as useful. Hence the interminable planeloads of Australian politicians (federal, state, and even student) and journalists, travelling to the Upstart Nation and returning, like so many Marco Polos from the court of Kublai Khan, with tales of the marvels witnessed thereat, and the bringing together of assorted Jewish millionaires and billionaires at election fundraisers for Lib and Lab.

One of their neatest tricks is to cultivate links with certain high-flyers in Australia's Indigenous community. Two names, in particular, spring to mind in this regard - Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine. I assume that, by rubbing shoulders with them, the lobby hopes to succeed in fooling some of the people, some of the time, into thinking that Zionism is not only a progressive force, but also that a construct known to Zionists as 'the Jewish people' is as indigenous to Palestine/Israel as Aboriginal Australians are indigenous to Australia. And if this 'Jewish people' thingy is perceived as somehow indigenous to Palestine/Israel, then some people, some of the time, may just be fooled into thinking that Israel is something other than just another - God forbid! - colonial-settler state.

I am led to reflect on these matters because of an opinion piece, Jews are the first peoples of Israel - with a right to exist, under the byline Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO (Chairman & Managing Director of Nyunggai Black Group'), which recently (6/3/17) appeared in Fairfax's Australian Financial Review.

Perhaps the most curious thing about it was its title. Was Mundine about to discourse on who was what in prehistoric Palestine? And what does he mean by "first peoples"? And why would anyone bother writing an opinion piece on the subject of Jews having "a right to exist"? I mean, come on, is that really in dispute?

On examination, the piece really had nothing to say on such matters. Mundine's rant turned out to be essentially a call for the Palestinians to pull their fingers out, now, and recognise Israel as a Jewish state. That, and the usual Zionist agitprop.

Of course, I won't waste your time or mine with the Zioprop, but OMFG, the irony of an Indigenous Australian telling Indigenous Palestinians to drop their claim to their ancestral homeland, and declare, hand on heart, that they acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land of Palestine, the people of the Jewish nation, and pay their respects to its Elders past and present, namely, Herzl, Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, Begin, Sharon and Netanyahu.

It's a batshit crazy world out there, and getting crazier by the day. We've just had Trump's Housing Secretary, Ben Carson, for example, a black, defy reality by referring to slaves brought from Africa to the US "in the bottom of slave ships" as "immigrants" with a "dream." And over here, in Little America, we've got Mundine, not only inverting reality by calling Palestinians "Arab colonisers" and Israeli Jews "first peoples," but demanding that the former acknowledge the inversion.

And another thing. What the hell possessed the AFR to publish this blatantly false and deeply offensive nonsense? Mundine's drivel should be chalked up as a new low in the sad, precipitous decline of the Fairfax press.