THE ECAJ COMPLAINT ABOUT THE PROMISE

There is a debate raging about the ECAJ complaint about the SBS series The Promise.

The complaint is set out here.

Regretably, we are already seeing attacks on the Jews for simply making of the complaint and to the everlasting shame, some of those doing so claim to be Jewish themselves.

However, I don't expect any critique on the substance of the ECAJ complaint from these people. I doubt they are aware of or understand the history of the conflict and they certainly don't care about the deception and the outright lies perpetrated by this propaganda piece thinly disguised in the veil of a work of fiction.

Here's a sample from the complaint:-

The Jewish narrative is either falsified or simply not told. For example, there is no mention at all of:-

• the history of Palestinian Arabs attacking Jews before 1948, including the 1886 attack on Petah Tikva, attacks against Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall in 1911, murders of Jews in 1912, riots and deadly pogroms against Jews in 1920, 1921 and 1929, the Hebron Massacre in 1929, the years of Arab terror between 1936 and 1939 and atrocities committed by Palestinians against Jews in the period 1946-8;


• the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel for more than 3,000 years, including the existence over many centuries of the independent and at times sovereign States of Israel and Judah, all of which is attested to by an abundance of archaeological and documentary evidence;


• the fact that the Hebrew language and culture of the Jewish people is a Semitic language and culture which is indigenous to the land of Israel;


• the fact that there were five waves of mass Jewish immigration into the country between 1881 and 1939 and that the Jewish immigrants established the institutions of statehood and civil society and a viable economy well prior to the Holocaust and World War II;


• the fact that the international community, as early as 1920, recognised the legitimacy of the Jewish people’s aspirations to reconstitute their national home in Israel and obligated Britain, as the Mandatory power, to “facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes”.

I have no confidence whatsoever in the ability of the SBS which, after all made the decision to air the series without allowing a discussion on the historic inaccuracy that undermines its validity. It is far too conflicted to make a fair and considered appraisal of the complaint even when one ignores the internal political pressure within its ranks.


Now let's be clear about this. Israel's detractors will not allow a discussion of the inconvenient points made above. They will seek to airbrush them out of existence and attempt to shut down any debate on the substance while, at the same time cry foul that this is an issue of free speech and that the Jews are the ones attempting to censor the work of their critics.

Try that when there's an issue of racist stereotyping against anyone else and see where it gets you.