What’s good for the goose…
Some people I know are into rock climbing, and today they were expressing some distress over a recent tribal claim to one of the most difficult climbs in the Grampians — sorry, I can’t find anything about this online. It was suggested that as the people making the claim hadn’t been seen anywhere nearby for 50 years, perhaps their connection with this particular bit of land wasn’t as deep as they claim…
Which reminded me of another group who claim a deep connection with a particular bit of land which they had, in large part, vacated some hundreds of years previously. They then swanned back in, supported by the military might of a waning superpower, and kicked those who’d moved in since back out again.
The “they haven’t been here for ages” line is pretty common when a native title claim affects our lifestyles, but somehow it’s not an argument which typically holds much water when the Israel situation comes up.
Is that because the Israelis are more like us than the local natives? Is it OK to boot people out of their homes if the people doing the booting have had a rough time of it, or if they have (better) weapons, or if they’re white Europeans, or they have a pretty effective set of lobby groups that aren’t constantly suffering from corruption and mismanagement?
But if they’re black or — more importantly I suspect, as these blokes aren’t particularly racist — it’s us they’re evicting? Even when the “eviction” is pretty tame by comparison with what they copped a few hundred years back when our ancestors showed up with guns, booze, and disease?
Popularity: 26% [?]