A councilor in Melbourne has compared marking Australia day to celebrating the Holocaust.
Marking Australia Day is like celebrating the Holocaust, a Melbourne politician said as her council scrapped a holiday it deemed offensive to Aboriginal people, in a move the government on Thursday labelled “extreme and divisive”.
The council in the Melbourne suburb of Moreland became the third in Victoria state to decide not to recognise Australia Day.
The annual holiday, on January 26, commemorates the arrival of the country’s first British settlers in 1788 and is a time when citizenship ceremonies are held.
But it is termed “Invasion Day” by many indigenous Australians who say it marks the beginning of the decline of Aboriginal culture.
In debating the issue Wednesday, Moreland Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton said commemorating Australia Day “would be like celebrating the Nazi Holocaust”, state broadcaster ABC reported.
Assistant Minister for Immigration Alex Hawke said in a statement the government rejected “the extreme and divisive nature of the discussion Greens and Socialist councillors are promoting”.
He said the government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull “strongly condemns comparisons of Australia Day with the Nazi Holocaust as deeply offensive to all Australians”.
Jewish leaders have rightly condemned the insulting analogy, but Bolton is intend on chewing on her foot (and judging by her huge teeth, that has got to hurt).
However, Ms Bolton stood by her comments this afternoon, telling The Australian: “The Holocaust is a very hurtful thing to the Jewish community … But there are other similar experiences in other continents which may not have involved gas ovens but were attempts to commit genocide.”
And as you probably already guessed, this “hater of the Holocaust” includes the Jewish state as one of those other places where there are “attempts to commit genocide,” and seems to be ok with the idea that Jews living there should not be able to prevent another one.
“Israeli warplanes, warships, artillery and tanks have increasingly targeted homes, civilian-populated areas and civilian facilities, including hospitals, in the Gaza strip. This is a deliberate war crime and Australia should express its condemnation by immediately expelling Israel’s ambassador,” said Bolton.
“Israel’s ongoing violence against the Palestinian people, including collective punishment and summary executions, is a gross violation of international humanitarian law. It has nothing to do with ‘self-defence’, but a genocidal aggression against the Palestinian people who had been constantly denied their right to self-determination by the Zionist regime.”
So in other words, Sue Bolton does not just compare Australia’s conduct to that of the Nazis, but also Israel’s. You can do the math.
