Indigenous Friends of Israel slams The Greens
Indigenous Friends of Israel founders Norman and Barbara Miller condemn the ignorance, racism, and antisemitism of the Greens MPs in the Australian Senate in recent weeks and of the Greens’ mayoral candidate for Brisbane, Jonathan Sriranganathan.
Jonathan Sriganganathan
The Millers wrote: “Mr Sriranganathan created a post calling for Zionists and Nazis to be excluded from a protest rally he was calling to scrap the Gabba Olympics. Was this in the name of inclusion which the Greens usually call for?
For someone who hopes to be Lord Mayor of Brisbane to be equating Zionism and Nazism shows political naivety and poor judgment and he should make an apology to the Jewish community of Brisbane as has been called for by the Qld Jewish Board of Deputies.
It would seem Mr Sriranganathan intends to inflame hatred, racism, and antisemitism at a time when Jew hatred is rising due to the lies that have been spread. It is the Jewish people who were massacred in their homes on October 7 causing Israel to defend itself against terrorist groups such as Hamas. So do not spread a “blame the victim” narrative.
It is a historical fact that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust by the Nazis. The Jewish people were able to rise from the ashes, literally, and reestablish the modern state of Israel which had always existed in remnant form.
The Zionist dream was realized – to reestablish the Jewish people in their ancient homeland after thousands of years of colonisation and dispersal by empires now long gone. That is all Zionism is – reestablishing Indigenous Jews in their own land, never again to be uprooted.
The United Nations approved this on 29 November 1947 with the vote for resolution 181 to set up a Jewish and an Arab state in the British Mandate. This was done under the leadership of Australian Doc Evatt. Israel was admitted to the United Nations as a full member on May 11, 1949, a democratic country with equal rights for all its citizens.
Zionism, Mr Sriranganathan and your supporters, is simply the recognition of the right and legitimacy of the state of Israel to exist.”
In the meantime, president of the Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies Jason Steinberg has called for an apology from Jonathan Sriranganathan.
He wrote on the Board’s website: “Comparing Zionism with Nazism is not only deeply offensive, it reveals a complete lack of basic knowledge, and is unashamedly, offensively racist.
Zionism is the movement for self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel. Before the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, Jews endured over 1,900 years of oppression and violence across Europe (including the Holocaust) and the Middle East.
Comparing Zionists with Nazis is a false analogy aimed at demonising Jews and minimises the evil of the planned industrial extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945.
To say that Zionists are not welcome at a Greens event, or any event, is an affront to any assertions promoting multiculturalism in Brisbane City.
Mr Sri owes a big, public apology to the Jewish people of Brisbane. To say such a thing right now, when our Jewish community is experiencing unprecedented antisemitic incidents is at best juvenile ignorance, and at worst malicious discrimination that is inciting more hatred against our community.”
Jonathan S. has, I think, jumped on a bandwagon he knows nothing about.
As have so many … particularly since October 7. It’s a hideous fact that it’s become ‘cool’, fashionable, exciting even, to rail against Zionism and Israel. And the Greens are really pushing their barrow here, eager to stir the pot further.
High school students who wouldn’t normally be that interested in history are out in the streets, wearing keffiyehs, proclaiming ‘this is what learning is about; this is where we’re learning, not at school’. And you, Mr Sriganganathan, are no better.
If you really want to be Lord Mayor of Brisbane, you have a lot of work to do in educating yourself on Zionism and an apology to make to the Jewish community of Brisbane. You have, after all, just told them they are not welcome at the Protest meeting you are organising. Are they not welcome in Brisbane either?