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In the German movie Das schreckliche Madchen (The Nasty Girl), a high school girl is determined to win an essay prize by writing about her little town’s brave resistance to the Nazis during the Third Reich. Everyone is delighted. But, as she delves deeper, she finds the terrible truth: the town had actually been a hotbed of fervent Nazism.
Everyone wants to pretend that they’d be August Landmesser, when the fact is that they’d almost certainly really be the masses of Heil Hitler-ing robots surrounding him. This brutal fact is borne out by the avenues of trees honouring The Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem honours 28,217 non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Sound like a lot? There were some 280 million under Nazi government by 1941.
In other words, just 0.01 per cent were brave enough to help Jews against the Nazis. That’s not a lot of August Landmessers. Sure, they might not have supported the Nazis, but, as Elie Wiesel pointed out, the number of those who had the courage to act was, proportionally, abysmally small.
What made these people stand up when others didn’t? There was little commonality among the rescuers […] The only common thread was courage, based on empathy, on a sense of decency and on the ability to think independently, not to follow the herd.
The Australian
As anti-Semitism goose-steps through Australia’s streets, right into our Parliament House, those who have the courage and decency to think for themselves and not follow the herd are proving far too thin on the ground. Most especially in the ranks of our elites: politicians, academics, media, chatterers. Almost all of them are obediently snapping Roman salutes and falling in the march of anti-Jewish hatred. The same grim story is playing out right across the West.
Last week five anti-Israeli MPs were elected ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour representatives, while back in Canberra we saw our own social fabric again threatened by religious extremism.
The protesters at Parliament House last Thursday perfectly bookended the day of defection, instigated by Senator Fatima Payman.
The Parliament House protest was organised anti-Semitism at its worst, plain and simple. One of the banners displayed a Hamas red triangle symbol, the official emblem of the terror group. And then there was an unfurling of a banner – inscribed with the anti-Israel words “From the River to the Sea”. Both show the depth to which social cohesion has plunged in this country.
And the depth of willingness that the elite, most especially the political left, are prepared to extend to the most brutal, hateful ideology on the face of the planet: jihadist Islam.
As I’ve argued before, what’s failing here is the national political leadership. The Prime Minister and Labor frontbench have all but acquiesced to this rising tide of offence and abuse; they have failed to call out Islamist extremism by name for fear of offending some hate-preaching imam in Tony Burke’s electorate.
Labor must stop pandering to voters with extreme politics and stand up for what’s best for Australia, not just what’s convenient for six seats in western Sydney and Melbourne’s inner north.
Albanese’s shameful gutlessness has been artfully exposed by Muslim fanatic, Fatima Payman.
Having crossed the Senate floor to vote against Labor on Gaza, Senator Payman has further exposed the Labor leadership on this question.
Anthony Albanese has been too slow to act. But when he finally did it was typically weak. No expulsion, just a “please don’t come to our next meeting”. A month ago the senator’s husband, who ran Payman’s campaign, seemed to advocate branch-stacking the ALP with Muslim activists.
At the same time Payman is flirting with a political jihadist group, The Muslim Vote, which appears to be linked to a UK group of the same name, founded by a former UK leader of proscribed terror group, Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Senator Payman’s timing was a perfectly orchestrated act of political sabotage designed to completely blow up a week that should’ve been focused on tax cuts, power bill subsidies and fighting the cost of living. Payman made it all about herself and her extremist views, such as accusing Israel of genocide and repeating the anti-Semitic phrases of the parliamentary protesters.
The Australian
Let’s be honest, though: Payman is far from the real problem. She’s just a symptom of the underlying disease. The revolting head on the festering boil.
The real problem is that, while the hateful hordes of anti-Semites are on the march, far too few have the courage to stand up and be counted.
