Indigenous people in Australia form group to support Israel
Published July 6, 2017
SYDNEY (JTA) — The Indigenous Friends of Israel has been established in Australia to counter the growing Labor political party’s move to recognize a Palestinian State and to maintain the country’s bipartisan support for Israel.
Indigenous Friends of Israel spokesperson Munganbana Norman Miller said the national organization is concerned that the Labor Party is “going down a dangerous path” in its attempt to get individual states and then federal Labor endorsement of a Palestinian state while Palestinian leaders do not accept the right of Israel to exist and support terrorism.
Miller said Thursday from the north Queensland city of Cairns, one of the higher population areas for Indigenous people: “I support a two-state solution and Israel has offered it in 1947, 2000, 2008 and 2014, but Arab leadership including Yasser Arafat and current Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas have rejected it. Also, Hamas who are in control of Gaza have vowed to annihilate Israel and drive every Jew into the sea. It is a terrorist organization, recognized as such by the Australian and other governments,” he said.
He also said: “At this stage there is no viable Palestinian state until the governments of the West Bank and Gaza sort out their difficulties. Who will the Labor Party and possibly Labor in government recognize?”
Miller told JTA that a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state is likely to further discourage the Palestinians from coming to the peace negotiating table, which they have already shown great reluctance to do.
He said that a future Palestinian state, which could require land swaps to make it viable, “needs to recognize Israel as a Jewish state with secure borders and call off terrorism including spending millions of overseas aid money on payments to the families of terrorists and promoting hatred of Jews in its schoolchildren,”
“It is simply untrue to maintain that Israel is an apartheid state,” he added. “As Indigenous people, we know what apartheid is. Israel is a beacon of democracy in the Middle East and has Arab members of the Knesset and has Arabs living peacefully and working in all walks of life enjoying their democratic freedoms.”
