I have often wondered whether the obsession with Israel and its perceived faults by those like the senator aren't a form of transference or projection of their own country's flaws and embarrassments onto a scapegoat. In the case of Australian and the USA, that would be the still unresolved scars relating to relations with the original inhabitants, while many Europeans fret over their history as colonisers. Dealing with one's own issues is hard, so cue the scapegoat, the whipping boy, onto whom one's own sins can be projected.

Well David, what can one say, except I believe the Greens have form nd quite a history of misinformation or misrepresenting the facts or overstating them?

Any one would believe given their emotive evocation that our refugee camps where little better than inhumane gulags used to punish or restrain political opposition or freedom fighters? I've lived in a lot worse and been grateful for it!

Then we had that champion of social justice the Green's current leader and small businessman Dr Digitalis, being exposed paying his household staff in mostly board and lodgings, for he says, just 25 hours a week.

Simply put feelings and disingenuous diatribes mean little, when we really do need to be judged by what we genuinely stand for and backed by what we do!
Alan B.

As a communist-educated Green, she has no credibility on anything.

"We came to a region that was inhabited by Arabs, and we set up a Jewish state. In many places, we purchased the land from Arabs and set up Jewish villages where there had once been Arab villages."

You are only giving us half the truth too David. In many places they arrived and just took over the land and that is what they are still doing today. Don't keep giving us BS.

David

From memory, I recall my mum remarking that there was always a thread of anti-Semitism in the old Party: one 'colleague' even denied the Holocaust. Oh well, lie down with dogs ......

As for purchasing land, surely - since Jews have more or less always (over three thousand years) been in Palestine whatever its name or imperial rulers - they have as much right as anybody to buy land, and the Palestinians have the right to sell it.

Or would have, except for the rules of Shari'a in relation to land. In C. K. Meek's magnificent book on British Colonial Land Policy, an entire chapter is devoted to the effects of 'Muhammadan' land law: that any land bought becomes forever afterwards Muslim land, bought for Allah. Bankstown, take note.

Except for one major form of transaction: non-Muslim farmers seeking to borrow for investment in equipment, seed, fertilise, etc. - since it was illegal under Shari'a to be a money-lender, such 'loans' would be treated as purchases of the land, on which the farmer became a tenant, paying full rent (i.e. interest) until he or she could accumulate enough to buy the land back. Which was probably pretty rare.

At any rate, if you do the maths, you can see that the 'rent' on the whole of a farm would have amounted to vastly more than commercial interest rates on a standard loan equivalent in value to part of it. Meek calculated such 'rents' to be around 30-40 % of the 'purchase price', i.e. interest on a loan. In fact, the British quickly countered that form of exploitation and introduced Agricultural Banks, charging standard commercial rates, around 8%, which were bitterly resented by Muslim money-lenders. Oops, land-purchasers, sorry.

So what's sauce for the goose .....

Dubious politics aside - Rhiannon sure can sing https://youtu.be/IT1q7L4QA0A .