Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion and I congratulate the member for Fadden on moving this resolution. The issue of Israel defending its citizens against terrorist attacks by individuals or organisations would seem to be self-evidently sensible, but it affects the safety of people around the world because, of course, we all know that defending our populations against terrorism is indivisible in these days. The jihadist threat that is around the world doesn't exist just in Marseille or in parts of Marawi in the Philippines. It exists all over the world, and we need to confront it wherever it exists. Of course, from the point of view of equality and fairness, if a third of car rammings in the world are in Israel, we need to know this. It's a shame we don't, but the pioneering of jihadist violence against publics around the world often begins in Israel. What happens there is of great relevance all around the world.

We've seen the Palestinian Authority continue inciting its population over the last 10 years, a period where there should have been negotiations. Most people don't understand what that means. These jihadists terrorists are not unique in their methods. The car rammings, the stabbings et cetera that we've seen—we saw a terrible one recently where at a Sabbath Friday evening meal an 18-year-old terrorist came into the house of a person who was having a ceremony for the welcoming of their grandson and stabbed three of the family to death. The odious thing about this, as the member for Fadden pointed out, is that the Palestinian Authority pays incentives, usually from international relief funds that they get, to people and their families who are involved in these things. If they get killed, the family gets the pension. If not, they do. It's estimated that a third of the PA's budget is spent on these odious pensions to terrorists or their families. And of course this only encourages—incentivises—people to do these kinds of things. It's an absolute shame.

This resolution also has an important point about acknowledging the Jewish connection with the holy sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel. Recently UNESCO, to its eternal shame, classified the Old City of Jerusalem as a Muslim site only. For the great city of Jerusalem we have to respect all of the great Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. History doesn't change because of a bunch of countries that make these ridiculous decisions in Geneva. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem existed 600 years before the forming of Islam. So it's absolutely and self-evidently crazy for UNESCO to decree the city which Christianity and Judaism have as their holy city as a solely Islamic city without acknowledging the affinity which that place existed with long before those days.

Let me conclude with some points on the BDS. The founder of the BDS, Omar Barghouti, makes it very clear that the aim of this program is not—not—to change this or that Israeli policy. He makes it clear that the aim of the BDS is to replace, to eliminate, Israel 'from the river to the sea', as the extremists say. So this is not only aesthetically revolting and politically revolting; we have in the leaflets of this BDS movement that Estee Lauder and Vidal Sassoon should be boycotted. What do Estee Lauder and Vidal Sassoon have in common with a political campaign against Israel? They don't have anything in common with it. They're Jewish firms that are international. Both happen to be in the cosmetic area.

It's outrageous. It's a perpetuation of the 1930s for this movement to continue that kind of behaviour. I pay tribute to some of my colleagues, Wayne Swan, Kevin Rudd, Premier Andrews and David Feeney, who all joined me at anti-BDS sit-ins at the chocolate shops all around Australia, and Max Brenner. (Time expired)

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