This is a world fought in the axioms of ideas… but one truth is true for all of us, that of death, a certainty towards which all of us are hurtling, some sooner than others. There is no equivalent or greater postulate, not even the existence of an immaculately conceived son of a deity who is supposed to save us from ourselves because the idea of a Messiah, though millenially-captivating, hasn’t quite convinced everyone. But death, well, is evidentially sound and guaranteed. This should give many, if not all, pause in our transactions with one another. Nothing much matters, really, on balance, than life being lived (and suffered) at this moment, in any given moment.
From the river to the sea is a catchy jingle, and one doubts, devoid of recent spectacles, it would be anymore than that. Go back to Palestine! isn’t as catchy and therefore, as slogans go, should have less bite and should illicit less offence, and should be taken as not much more than a throwaway retort from frustrated and frightened humans who have taken to believing individual ideologies trump the value of (some) human lives which, unfortunately, number in the millions. Indeed, it would appear that the catchier the jingle, the more offensive its import, and certainly, its consequences for everybody as much more of our public monies and collective imagination are taken up prosecuting those who have committed, in their comparative powerlessness, witnessing the genocide of a people, to carrying banners, wearing t-shirts, and other car stickers bearing the words from the river to the sea. It is easy to forget that the amount of effort engaged in righting a perceived wrong depends on two factors: who is doing the offending, and to whom that offending is directed. In the case of from the river to the sea, the offender is not the favoured group of those in high office, and certainly not of those whose powers directly influence the decisions of our elected political leaders and lawmakers. More pertinently, for those offending, those to whom their offending is directed is the favoured group. So one can only see this going one way. Go Back to Palestine is just as offensive, should be deemed by our politicians and lawmakers as equally racist. The problem is, however, is the question of who is doing the offending and to whom that offensive slogan is directed. A mosque in Sydney is attacked, and a Jewish temple is similarly attacked, and yet the political response is markedly different. The latter gets millions upon millions of dollars from the government as compensatory resolve, sending a clear and present message that ‘anti-semitism’ will not be tolerated. Governmental responses to Islamophobia, on the other hand, have never been as vigorous or, more importantly, as far as acknowledgment of damages go, well-funded.
Are we to accept the Home Affairs Minister’s insistence that every claim asserted by his special appointees, in this case, Jillian Segal, the Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism, as opaque and unsatisfactory as they may be in public’s eyes, as satisfactory and unassailable? And if she plays fast and loose as to whether or not she knew or her husband knew that monies from their sizeable bank account had been donated to the extreme right-wing and racist Advance Australia organisation? Because she does not want to be held to account egarding this questionable donation, that we as the public who pays her Executive salary, should meekly accept what is being profered by someone most of us would not have heard of in the first instance? One might say, there’s something very undemocratic-like and dysphagic about this whole vibe.