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My name is Munganbana Norman Miller, cofounder of Indigenous Friends of Israel International. I am standing here as an Aboriginal leader in front of Parliament House Canberra today, 6 December, on the 86th anniversary of the stand of Aboriginal William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League in Melbourne.

It was a stand against antisemitism then, and mine is a stand against antisemitism now. He protested the Nazi treatment of Jews at Kristallnacht in 1938. Germany is now Israel’s friend. My stand is against the treatment of Israel by the Australian government and the United Nations.

On Wednesday, the Australian government reversed 20 years of bipartisanship and supported a UN resolution demanding an end to Israel’s “unlawful” presence in the “Occupied” Palestinian Territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
It also calls for the end of new settlement activities and the removal of settlers from occupied territory. It also calls for a conference next June to set the Palestinian territories on an irreversible pathway to a two-state solution.

So, Australia and the UN are calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from their ancient homeland. For a start, what some call the West Bank is Judea and Samaria, the heartland of ancient Israel. The Jews are Indigenous to Israel. It is not an occupied territory. Also, Jerusalem is not occupied and is not the West Bank. It is the ancient undivided capital of Israel.

The Morrison government called these disputed territories, but the Albanese Wong government uses the loaded term, the term preferred by terrorists, “occupied territories”. The Australian government favours the terminology of Israel’s enemies instead of that of Israel, its ally and the only democratic state in the Middle East.

The Albanese government reversed the Morrison government’s decision to recognise West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in October 2022.

Futile Resolution

The Australian government would rather reward the terrorism of October 7 and has continually pushed for a two-state solution, when all the terrorists want is a one-state solution with the removal of Israel and the Jewish people. Hamas wants Hitler’s Final Solution to prevail in the Middle East, where Jews have been systematically ethnically cleansed from Arab lands.

Australia joined 156 nations to back a 7-page resolution supporting “the realisation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination and the right to their independent state.”

While the request for a Palestinian state is understandable, this has been offered to them many times, and they have refused because they do not recognise Israel as the ancient homeland of the Jewish people who are Indigenous to that land.

Palestinian Arabs have rejected a peaceful solution many times: 1947-48, the Oslo Peace Process from 1993, the Camp David Summit of 2000, the Gaza Disengagement of 2005 and the Annapolis Process of 2007-08, to name some of them.

Australia and Doc Evatt were at the forefront in the United Nations of voting for and offering a 1947 partition plan for the British Mandate to be divided into a Jewish state and an Arab state, as the word Palestinian was not in vogue then. The Arabs rejected it.

Australia and Doc Evatt were at the forefront of accepting Israel as a member of the UN in 1949. Let’s not reverse all our history of support for Israel and reward the terrorism of October 7 and beyond.

Doc Evatt would be disappointed to see where Australia and the ALP are now. So would former ALP PM Bob Hawke, who introduced a motion to the Australian parliament in 1986 deploring the 1975 UN “Zionism is racism” resolution and called for its rescinding.

Betrayal

I was in Israel for the 100^th anniversary of the Australian Light Horse charge that helped free Beersheva and make the way for the end of the Ottoman Empire and the eventual setting up of the state of Israel in 1948. This joint celebration by Israel, Australia and others was a high point in our relationship. At Semakh, our Aboriginal Light horsemen also fought a historic battle.

Israel is not a colonial, settler, racist, apartheid state, but was decolonised in 1948 from centuries of colonisation by various powers. It was settled by as many Jews of colour, made refugees from Arab lands as Jews fleeing the Holocaust in Europe. There are Arabs in all professions including the Knesset, its parliament.

Considering that the blood of Australians, black and white, has been shed for the freedom and right to life and safety of Jewish people in Israel, it is reprehensible, that the Australian government would sell out Israel today and reward terrorist groups who committed the atrocities of October 7 with an irreversible pathway to statehood without a guarantee of an agreement re the survival of the Jewish state and agreed on boundaries.

We deplore the Australian government’s funding of UNRWA to the tune of millions, despite the UN’s admission that it was part of the terrorist attack on October 7 and that its schools, hospitals, headquarters, etc, have been used to store weapons. Also, its schools train children to hate and kill Jews. We call on the Australian government to give its humanitarian aid through other avenues like the Red Cross.

We call on the Australian government to withdraw its membership from the International Criminal Court, which, after issuing arrest warrants against Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, is lacking credibility. It has accepted false accusations and not followed due process, has not given Israel the right of reply, cancelling a trip to Israel to discuss the case, and does not have jurisdiction in this matter. The ICC has jurisdiction only over member states; Israel is not a member, and Gaza is not a state.

Israel, while defending itself against promises of many repeats of October 7, has achieved the lowest ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths in the history of urban warfare and facilitated 11 million tonnes of aid, even though Hamas’ rampant theft means Israel is provisioning its battlefield enemy, something the law doesn’t require.

Consequently, we call on the Australian government to:

1. Support Israel at the United Nations instead of terror organisations, and reverse its many decisions adverse to Israel, including the above, and the recent one on Palestinian sovereignty of resources.
2. Call for the immediate release of all hostages held in Gaza, the cessation of attacks on Israel by Hamas and other terrorists, and a governing structure in Gaza that does not involve Hamas or other terrorist groups.
3. Withdraw from the ICC, which is not administering impartial justice.
4. Defund UNRWA and provide humanitarian aid via another means.
5. Move the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem.
6. Deal decisively with antisemitism in Australia, as its weak response to anti-Israel, anti-Jewish protests has incited an alarming rise in antisemitism in Australia. This includes adequate laws and enforcement.
7. Follow due diligence in security checks for visas from areas of conflict like Gaza.