Israelis can trace their ‘occupation’ back thousands of years

Chris Mitchell rightly affirms that Hamas/Iranian propaganda that disputes and even denies the historic Jewish/Hebrew occupation of Palestine is false (“Western media swallow the lies of Hamas”, 17/6). He writes: “No mention of the fact that Jews predate the birth of Islam’s founding prophet Mohammed by nearly 2000 years or that Jews were the original inhabitants of what Iran now claims is Palestine.” Just so. May I reinforce his important point?

In 1960, eminent biblical historian Professor John Bright, from Union Theological Seminary, published a landmark volume in English, A History of Israel. He writes: “As the Bible presents it, the history of Israel began with the migration of Hebrew patriarchs from Mesopotamia to their new homeland in Palestine.” He says it was the beginning of Israel’s prehistory. This migration took place during the first half of the second millennium BC. But Bright goes back much further. He says the earliest decipherable inscriptions both in Egypt and in Mesopotamia reach back to the early centuries of the third millennium BC – thus approximately a thousand years before Abraham and 1500 years before Moses. There, history, properly speaking, begins, he says.

And before that? Bright says research reveals a succession of yet earlier cultures that reach back through the fourth millennium and the fifth and, in some cases, as far as the seventh. The Hebrews were, in fact, latecomers on history’s stage. All across the Bible lands, cultures had come to birth, assumed classical form, and run their course for hundreds and even thousands of years before Abraham was born.

The lack of knowledge in our contemporary culture and politics, such as they are, blinds us to the antiquity of so many cultures that have come and gone. But not the Israelis. They never really went away. So which peoples got there first? “Many” is the correct answer. Yet what is also true and factual is that the Israelis can trace their occupation back thousands of years. They are not usurpers, or conquerors. It’s time for other ancient ethnicities, and other ancient peoples from these same vast lands, to start thinking in a new way about the need and the right to settlement for those peoples who created our first civilisations.

Nick Partridge, Perth, WA

Chris Mitchell would have to be up there with the most astute journalists in Australia in terms of balanced reporting and commentary. His latest contribution is a most astute piece of writing when it comes to the Israel-Hamas saga.

The hypocrisy of those who back Hamas is, to say the least, breathtaking. There is absolutely no doubt that the West is under a concerted attack from the Middle East on the one hand and China and Russia on the other. I would like all of those people who wish for the demise of Western values to lean back and contemplate their lives in the countries that they are supporting at the moment. As Mitchell states, they would not survive a day. To refer to them as naive is a huge understatement.

Peter D. Surkitt, Sandringham, Vic

The death of civilians in Gaza is a tragedy that is a direct result of the Hamas strategy of using civilians as human shields. The Israel Defence Forces is not aiming to kill civilians, or forcing them to renounce their faith.

Across sub-Saharan Africa the black Christian populations of Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Chad and others are truly the victims of a genocide inspired by Islam. Boko Haram (Western education is Haram) and Islamic State gunmen arrive in remote communities. They shoot the men, kidnap the women, sometimes to be sold as sex slaves just as happened to the Yazidi women under the ISIS caliphate.

The scale of this horror is vast with the stated aim of wiping Christianity and all Western influence out. The deaths far outweigh the deaths resulting from Hamas’s deliberate human shield policy. Hamas wanted these civilian deaths because it knew it would stimulate opposition to Israel.

Where are the Greens, where are the student protesters, where are the lions of the left stamping their feet, shouting and intimidating politicians and anyone who denies their shallow outrage? Is this because these victims are black? Is it because they are Christians? Or is it because they are black and Christians.

The Muslim perpetrators of these crimes are the brothers of Hamas. Israel must eradicate Hamas to prevent attacks like that of October 7.

Andrew Humphreys, Adelaide, SA