Christmas at Pokolbin
You may wish to read the hysterical response in link from Crikey.com to Michael Backman's column
The original column of Backman's was not that good, but the response, both by the Age and by Margaret Simon indicates just how impossible it is make remarks critical of Israel.
For me, the truth of it all is that the policies, laws and wars of Israel are fundamentally racist and unjust.
I still find it extraordinary that anyone can justify or try to justify, making war on a whole population for the sake of two prisoners (the war on Lebanon) or of even several deaths, thereby killing thousands, maiming more and destroying the capacity to stay alive. The war in Lebanon and the war in Gaza are and were fundamentally racist. I would wish that there might be a sufficient groundswell to indict the Israeli government for war crimes.
(And I am reminded of a column I read before Christmas, where a fundamentally nice man, criticised us all - most appropriately - for taking moral positions on things over which we have no control, to feel good about ourselves, while turning a blind eye to our own moral failings... Spot on. But when the disconnect between the discourse and the fundamental facts is so great, it is difficult to believe one lives in the same world.)
(And the picture comes from my peaceful and happy Christmas, and celebrates Don's vegetable patches).
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Just this morning I recognised the significance of the photo.
It is a secular Christmas and clearly (unconsciously) referred to Voltaire's Candide cultivating his garden.
(And so it returns to my private but impossible desire for a world without religion. But being human, we need our tribes, and will create them regardless.)
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