Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm afraid that some of my colleagues in the crossbench got up and I interpreted their speeches as supporting Hamas and veritably saying that the invasion was justified. Firstly, if you say that the Israelis invaded that country and took it over, I don't think many people on the planet would say that the Jews returning to Israel is someone taking someone else's country off them. Secondly, if that's your principle, then you Europeans roll your swag, go back to where you came from and give the country back to we blackfellas, I'd suggest, if you want to be consistent. If you say there was an invasion and you took our country off us, well, you Europeans go back to where you came from. That would be my answer to that argument.

Here is an article with photos on it: 'Why Egypt and other Arab countries are unwilling to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza'. These people say, 'It's unfair that Israel is not taking us back into Israel.' Well, no other Arab country is going to take you either. There's got to be a reason why all these aggressive Arab countries whose governments have all passed resolutions to destroy the State of Israel won't have any of the Gazans come into their country. There must be a reason here. If you say, 'Oh, the naughty Israelis are retaliating,' well, when you fire a bomb, it doesn't have a name on it, and when it explodes it kills people. You picked the war—you started the war—so don't come blaming everyone else when you reap the whirlwind. You sowed the seeds, and now you reap the whirlwind.

Now, let it be a message to every other country on Earth that what Russia is doing and getting away with in Ukraine is because of the very dangerous weakness of the European countries. But at least in Israel they have sent the message, 'If you invade our country and hurt our people then we will retaliate.' No country can defend themselves without having that principle. So there was a retaliation. You started the war; now you will have to live with the war.

Having said that, there are still hundreds of hostages being held by Hamas. Are you entitled to go after the people that took those hostages, that raped and brutally murdered 1,200 people, and then advertised it on the television? You could say, 'At least the Germans had the decency to try and hide what they were doing to the Jews.'

As Australians, we have traditionally stood up for the underdog, the persecuted minority group. I am very proud, as an Australian, that we have had that reputation. If ever there were a persecuted underdog throughout history, it would be the people that adhere to the Judaic religion. I cannot fathom how or why, and people say, 'Jesus was crucified.' Well, hold on a minute. Jesus was not only a Jew but also a rabbi that preached in temples. That would hardly be logical there—in fact, just the opposite.

There is a principle involved here that, if you invade somebody else's country, you must expect retaliation and that other nations might help in that retaliation, because we don't want people just walking around invading other countries and starting wars. The Israeli people are surrounded by some 700 million Islamic people. I want to make a point here that it's not about the Islamic religion as such, because I've had great interface with Indonesia over the years through the cattle industry and in various other ways. I have found them to be a very good and decent people. They have been wonderful neighbours to us, and they are a Muslim country. But there is a big difference between how it is practised there and how it is practised in certain Middle Eastern countries.

If we are letting people into this country, surely there should be criteria. Are they coming from a democracy? Are they coming from a country with a rule of law? Are they coming from a country with Christianity or some similar belief like the Sikhs: love your neighbour, be humble, make the world a better place? Do they have that sort of philosophy and commitment? Do they have egalitarian traditions? The vast bulk of the people who come to this country—no, no, no, no, no, no. Over 850 people have come in from Gaza or have got permits to come into this country from Gaza since that invasion and murder of 1,200 people took place. No Muslim country and no Arab country will take them. Why is Australia taking them? That is a big question for the ALP to answer.

We know the answer to that. It's because so many of their branches are controlled by these people coming in from the Middle East. Let me state very clearly that I have been told by the best of authority—and I hope that the ALP side of this parliament can prove I'm wrong—that the mosques in Sydney control the ALP in Sydney and Sydney ALP controls Australian ALP. I hope that you can convince me that I'm wrong. But, if you are allowing 850 people in from Gaza and no-one else in the world will take them, you've got to ask a question: why is the ALP—and I say the ALP here, not the government—taking these people?

I'll make another point here. Antisemitism: if the people in Europe had stood up aggressively against this pernicious and dreadful sectarian hatred in the early 1930s, the terrible catastrophe of the Second World War would not have occurred. The worst murder in human history, mass murder on racial lines, would never have taken place if they had stood up aggressively right at the start. If more people had joined Pastor Niemoller in his courageous stand against the Nazis and if more people had backed people like von Stauffenberg then it wouldn't have happened.

We have here an embryonic anti-Semitism coming from elements of the crossbench. They're anti-Semitic. Don't muck around: they hate the Jews. If you watched the television of that mob in Sydney, they were chanting—I saw it with my own eyes and heard it and I replayed it later on the evening; I turned on again to watch it again—they were chanting, 'Gas the Jews.' They're weren't saying 'Gas the Israelis.' The were saying 'Gas the Jews.' It was racial. Not one single one of those people were stopped from chanting, advocating the murder of people. Not one single person was stopped from doing that. Not one single one of them was apprehended. Not one single one of them was sent back to where they came from. Nothing.

You've got to ask the question, why did the ALP government of New South Wales do nothing? Why did the ALP government in this place do nothing? Absolutely nothing. Ask yourself this question: if those people had been chanting anti-Muslim chants, what do you reckon would have happened?

We have anti-Semitism here, and it needs to be stamped out and stamped out with aggression. It is hateful and it is completely opposite to what every decent Australia believes in. If ever there is an underdog, a tiny little country of 3½ million people surrounded by 600 or 700 million people, all committed to the destruction of their country—and if you say they shouldn't have been there because the Gazans really own that country, hold on a minute. What would you have done? Six million of you persecuted, and to the shame of my country, the ship of shame that went all around the world. Brazil wouldn't take them; the United States wouldn't take them; no European country would take them. They came to Australia, these Jewish people escaping the Nazis, and we wouldn't take them, these poor people. So where were they going to go to escape to massacre that was occurring? Who can blame them for going back to their homeland? It's called Israel and they are called Jews. Why are they called Jews? Because they come from Jerusalem, which is the capital of Palestine, Israel, whatever you want to call it.

If we start adopting a principle that some other group of people were there originally, I have some Britons in my family tree, so you Anglo-Saxons go home to England. You Norman French go home to France. And I will say we British copped it. We can't turn the clock back, and we want to live in harmony with each other. If somebody invades another country, like Russia has done or the Hamas invasion of Israel, the Russians haven't systematically murdered the people. It's terrible what they have done, but they didn't systematically murder the people and then put the murder and rape on the television, promoting their murder and rape on the television. And that people in the parliament of Australia could have got away with what they got away with two nights ago, it was a disgrace and a reflection on every person in this parliament.

I have great pride being an Australian. Someone should be holding up the Australian flag. My family lost a son in the first World War and in the World War II. We went out west in a stagecoach there when the terrible Kalkadoon wars were still raging. We have a reputation for being involved in public life and making things a bit better for everybody. So who else should stand up? It should be me. I think there are a whole lot of people in this place that should be standing up as well. We as Australians will not accept racial hatred. And we will not condemn people for trying to stay alive and protect themselves. There's a great saying: if you want peace, prepare for war. Yes, that's right: if you want peace, prepare for war. So, you send a message out saying that if you attack us, we will hit you back and we will hurt you. My relatives—uncles and father, cousins and everybody on Kokoda, Milne Bay, Aitape and the islands—were telling the Japanese, 'You tried to invade our country and, mate, you're gonna pay for it.' We did everything humanly possible to see that they did pay for it. The message we sent out is, 'Don't touch my country.' The Israelis, surely, are entitled to the same attitude.

You know, we want peace. My great sorrow is that my generation have left my country. If you want peace, prepare for war. Well, we're not prepared for war. Our defences are a bloody joke. They're really just a joke. I'll give you one simple example. When I was put in uniform and was on my way to Indonesia—we were at war with Indonesia—we had one and a half million combat rifles. You don't pick a fight with a country with one and a half million combat rifles. Half a million were in the hands of the army and a million were in private hands. My family had three or four, I think, if my memory serves me correctly. Now we have 36,000! Not one and a half million: 36,000 little rifles with which to defend the country! There are virtually no artillery shells. They spent $40,000 million buying 15 patrol boats that have got one machine gun on them. That's $40,000 million for patrol boats and for drones with no ordnance whatsoever, except 15 machine guns. My platoon of 32 men in the 49th Battalion had 16 or 17 machine guns and we cost the Australian people $20,000. But this government—and the last government; you blokes are just as guilty as this mob—spent $40,000 million to buy 15 machine guns. I mean— Time expired.

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