So Much Left Unsaid

I read with dismay Viva Hammer’s recent article, “Antisemitism in Paradise” (June). You would never know from reading it that there are Australian Jewish anti-Zionists, that numerous human-rights groups—Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem (an Israeli human-rights organization)—found before October 7 that Israel practices the crime of apartheid as defined in international law, that the Palestinian population consists of more than Muslims, that Palestinians are Semites, and that though the author’s definition of antisemitism may not include Palestinians, they have also been targets of increased hate crimes in Australia and elsewhere.

You would never know from reading her article that Israel has a Basic Law enshrining Jewish supremacy or that many early Jewish Zionists openly talked of colonization—hence the name of one of the early Zionist agencies, the “Jewish Colonization Association.”

You would never know that the Sydney police found no evidence that the “gas the Jews” phrase alleged by the author was ever used at the Sydney Opera House protest. The only picture you would take away of pro-Palestinian protestors from this article is of “a mob” who “rioted,” and whose posters are in some unspecified way “violent.”

You would never know anything about the context in which October 7 occurred—as if the context was irrelevant, as if history began on October 7. Most of all, you would never know that Israel has done anything wrong in killing over 39,000 Palestinians (mostly women and children), in torturing Palestinian detainees, in killing journalists, medical workers, and aid workers at an unprecedented scale, in using starvation as a weapon of war, in defying international law, and more. None of these are even mentioned or acknowledged in her article. They are inconvenient truths. In the world of her article, only Jewish suffering exists.

None of this letter is to excuse the October 7 attacks or any acts of antisemitism against Jews or Palestinians. But publishing this article now, in the midst of what the International Court of Justice has found to be a plausible genocide, functions primarily to highlight Jewish victimhood and erase Palestinian victimhood, and thus implicitly provides moral cover for ongoing Israeli atrocities that peoples of all faiths should oppose.

Craig Hunter
Denton, Tex.

An Unfair Characterization

I was surprised and disturbed by the bias in Viva Hammer’s article.

I live on the shoreline near Sydney’s central business district and I also witnessed the one event that Hammer refers to. The antisemitic slurs during that one event were quickly and universally condemned, and the one or two perpetrators were identified and dealt with. There have been many marches in the streets of Sydney by both pro-Palestinian groups and pro-Israeli groups, practically all peaceful.

Australian immigration has brought a diversity of religions and cultures to our community, and with it, a diversity of views. Sydney’s population is approximately 6 million. The major religion is Christianity. The Muslim community (approximately 350,000) has grown and coalesced around middle-to-poorer suburban nodes, usually associated with a mosque. Many of the Muslims have been refugees who experienced hardship. The Jewish community (approximately 40,000) has also coalesced around specific areas, but generally in the richer and more glamorous suburbs—the eastern suburbs and upper Sydney’s North Shore.

With the changes to our demographics, it is not unexpected that there will be changes to attitudes. But to call Sydney antisemitic is simply untrue. It is not antisemitic to criticize Israel, though some are quick to take offense at criticism of Israel and condemn it as antisemitism.

As for Hammer’s anguish—“Who will remember Hamas except the Jews?”—it is offensive. The Jews will certainly ensure that we will never forget Hamas, just as they have never let the world forget the Holocaust. But they are not alone. They should remember and believe that. Who will remember the nearly forty thousand Palestinians killed by Israeli forces? Will the Jews? Will the world?

I know that this whole matter is extremely complex, but publishing articles such as the one by Hammer can only make the matter worse.

Peter Murphy
Sydney, Australia

Viva Hammer Responds

God gave one sliver of the Earth to the children of Israel. They have had it and lost it to colonial conquerors. Now they are back on a part of that sliver that was given to them. The remnants of the children of Israel have made that hard, dry, barren land flourish. Many other people now want it, but God has given it to the Children of Israel as an eternal inheritance. The rest of this large and fertile world is free for all the Gentiles.

I write this to you on Gadigal land of the Eora nation. Land that has been tended by the native peoples for at least forty thousand years. It was stolen from the native peoples by Europeans through deception, disease, and warfare. Every meeting we attend in Australia acknowledges that past, but not one person says: “And therefore we will stand up and go back to where we come from, to where we belong.” The native peoples of Australia are amongst the most incarcerated people on Earth.

As an Australian Jew, I know that, by law, I deserve equal treatment by the European authorities, but that Europeans have a long history of murderous antisemitism. So I am watching and weary. I know that my stay in Sydney is temporary, as is the stay of Jews anywhere in the diaspora. We are here as guests as long as the powers find us convenient. After which we will be wiped out or moved on. That is the repeating history of the Jews.

But I also know that Jews are still around when the powers who wished to eliminate us are long gone. Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Nazis, etc. We are returning now to the land God promised us because the diaspora is mortally dangerous and the moods of the Gentiles who host us are fickle.

And for those readers who don’t believe in God or the promise of the Land of Israel to the children of Israel, can I ask you what right you have to be occupying the lands you are on? The only answer is brute force.