March 29, 2024

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Lentin’s Loathsome "Elegaic J’Accuse"

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2016/10/lentins-loathsome-elegaic-jaccuse.html

By Daphne Anson

 

Born into a Christian family in Lebanon, Professor Ghassan Hage of Melbourne, whom we’ve met before on this blog in connection with his petition against Israel of a few years ago, co-written with Sydney academic John Docker, and his on-going pro-BDS stance, is highly critical of white colonial settlement in countries such as Australia, which appears to inform his attitude to Israel.

Sometimes his indictment of white colonial settlement can appear so harsh as to give the impression, rightly or wrongly, of reverse racism.

See, for instance, this poetic contribution of his on social media:

Born in Haifa in 1944, Associate Professor Ronit Lentin of Dublin is one of a number of Israel-hating  academics  from Eretz/Medinat Israel resident in Britain and Ireland.  Her name appears here as one of the endorsers of “The One State Declaration” of 2007 authored by Ilan Pappe and others, which if implemented would end Israel’s existence, and her anti-Israel activism is well-known.

Ghassan Hage’s poem (what she calls his ‘elegaic J’Accuse‘) has inspired her to write one of her own, adapted from “white colonial Australia to Palestine,” as she puts it:

We stole the lands of another people but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We expelled 800,000 of the owners of the land, renamed their villages and settled our own people in them but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We uprooted their trees and planted European conifers to cover the ruins of their depopulated villages, which they are not allowed to settle but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We massacred whole villages, tortured their men, raped their women and beat their children but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We bombed their cities, demolished their homes and built concrete walls to separate them from each other but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We installed hundreds of checkpoints preventing the owners of the land from getting to hospital to give birth or get treatment but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We started war after war outside the non-declared borders of our state, leaving hundred of thousands homeless, claiming self defence but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We put the owners of the land under military government, enlisted them as collaborators and informers, and controlled their movement and freedom of expression but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We put thousands of the owners of the land in prison and hundreds in administrative detention without trial but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We build our settlements on their lands while preventing them from tilling their fields and picking their olives but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We allowed our illegal settlers to beat their children on their way to school and to take over their homes but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We kept thousands of citizens in ‘unrecognised villages’ without electricity, water, roads or schools but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We extra-judicially execute the owners of the land, arrest their children in dawn raids and try them in military courts but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We lock up asylum seekers whose cases we don’t process in concentration camps away from our towns, into some of which they cannot enter but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
We deny the owners of the land the memory of their catastrophe but that’s not who we are we are better than this.
You see we are Holocaust survivors, and their land had been promised to us by our god and those doubting our right to expropriate, kill, settle, imprison, shoot, bomb, torture are antisemites.

 Demonising, and demonic, stuff, eh?
 

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