A few years ago, Australian author Thomas Mayor released a book, called Finding Our Heart – A story about the Uluru Statement for young Australians. The book followed his first book, Finding the Heart of the Nation – The journey of the Uluru Statement towards Voice, Treaty and Truth, which “tells the stories of the author and twenty Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and ultimately, why the Uluru Statement campaign is vital to Australia as it strives to reckon with its colonial past.”
Here is an excerpt from the book:
Note the Israeli flag included on the page describing how Australians come from different parts of the world, clearly acknowledging Australian Jews.
Needless to say, there are haters – like Aboriginal Australian academic and writer Chelsea Watego and Habiba Jaghoori – who are objecting to it:
These haters are denying Australian Jews any connection to their homeland, painting them – and all Jews – as White colonialist, apartheid-loving, violent settlers.
As an indigenous Australian, Watego wants Australians to recognize her attachment to her land, yet seems to deny Jewish people the same.
Note also how these haters do not seem to have the same issue with the Lebanese flag appearing on the same page, even though Lebanese Australians descend from people who appeared in modern day Lebanon well after the Jews were in the area.
And even more than that – they don’t seem to have any issue with the appearance of the flag of a brutal regime like China, or of an actual colonizer like France.
Denying Jews the rights afforded to other peoples, like our history, genealogy, and core religious beliefs and culture, is antisemitism plain and simple.
Update: According to some tweeters, the book’s illustrator Blak Douglas included the Israeli flag as a recognition of Israel as the “new Colonisers”!
I believe it, given he is an Israel-hater.
Update: Watego claims I have defamed her:
