Talk about your typically confused military operation!
The full-bore charge that is the commemoration of Beersheba (is this the last horseshit military operation in the culture wars? Don’t bet on it!) has got everything: a total confusion of context, a co-option of suffering, a masking of war crimes, Israel and its supporters inserting itself anachronistically into the act, and, amid a predictably clueless commercial media, an insufficiently critical ABC.
It’s got the lot.
The best thing you can say about Beersheba, a cavalry charge on a Turkish-held Arab town in Palestine, whose inhabitants had love for neither side in the conflict, is that at least it wasn’t, like Gallipoli, an invasion of a sovereign people in their homeland. But it was one that Australian troops appear to have conducted with a brutality towards civilians that exceeded that of British troops — quite possibly because Aussie country boys were accustomed to brutalising brown-skinned people at home. The battle came towards the end of a war that we are asked to remember as the founding of a nation, in duty and sacrifice — yet which was explicitly designed by PM Billy Hughes to serve that purpose. The nation will be united in blood, said the first Australian PM to use professional PR advisers. The whole thing was a simulacrum, an image preceding the real event.
Now it is being repurposed in a way that Hughes, the little digger, would have really dug. The celebration has been entwined with the centenary commemoration of the Balfour Letter, the 1917 statement to parliament by British PM Arthur Balfour that the British empire would support a Zionist Jewish homeland in the Middle East, “so long as it did not interfere with the rights of other inhabitants”. Heh. By a bizarre process, both prime ministers, Turnbull and Netanyahu, have made the creation of Israel the meaning of Beersheba, with Bibi remarking:
“Had the Ottoman rule in Palestine and Syria not been overthrown, the declaration would have been empty words. But this was a step for the creation of Israel.
“While those young men may not have foreseen — no doubt did not foresee — the extraordinary success of the state of Israel, its foundations, its resilience, its determination, their spirit was the same.
“And, like the state of Israel has done ever since, they defied history, they made history, and with their courage they fulfilled history. Lest we forget.”
“Did not foresee” is right. What happened to the idea of commemorating the dead in the terms of what they believed they were fighting for — the empire, and the Anglo-Saxon “race”? It’s reasonable to suppose that many of the light horsemen would have been anti-Semitic to varying degrees, as were most gentiles of the time.
Well, that’s Turnbull. He loves an angle, a deal. If the commemoration can make a political point, so be it. Commercial media, with a couple of noble exceptions, watches gape-mouthed. What about the ABC? Is it succumbing further to the idea that it is not a public broadcaster, but a state broadcaster, uncritical of the government abroad? Should it not make some note of the anachronistic absurdity of the Turnbull-Netanyahu argument? It describes Beersheba as a “southern Israeli” city — which it may well be now – but does not mention it was, at the time, an Arab city, its inhabitants terrorised and ethnically cleansed in the Zionist uprising of 1948 that created Israel. Is that too much to ask to mention that? Given that the ABC’s new reality show about our border forces is titled Keeping Australia Safe, I suspect it is. If Aunty is going to take this role with regard to state power, we will have to sunder old alliances, mount our hobbyhorses and charge them afresh.
I hadn’t heard of ‘Keeping Australia Safe’, there’s plenty of that on commercial TV already and I switch channel immediately when cop reality TV comes on. Gross, ABC. Have some damn dignity.
It’s your ABC …. doing propaganda.
Like 90% of WW1 Beersheba was a dreadful waste of lives.
If GR is referring to the Surafend affair in this “Australian troops appear to have conducted with a brutality towards civilians”, then it should be noted that the massacre was conducted by NZ soldiers. There may have been one or two Aussies involved, but that has never been confirmed – just assumed.
Thank the gods for Rundle, a lone voice decrying this latest nationalistic floorshow. I’ve been mystified by the commemoration with Israel/Netanyahu not to mention the interminable direct telecast on ABC24 & media attention.
No doubt if Billy Hughes had his way with conscription there would be more Oz horsemen’s deaths to laud. We are hellbent on learning nothing from history so why keep reviving these grim chapters?
Reckon you should read the latest Wartime from the AWM to see where Beersheba fits in this. Yes crimes were committed by our soldiers, but there is little evidence they were special in this regard. There would have been more justice if they had left i to the Turks, then Israel would not have been able to steal the Palestinians land. Beersheba was a moderate event in a lesser theatre, especially compared to the contemporary slaughter at Ypres. The Palestine campaign also represented the absolute betrayal of the Arab allies who T E Lawrence organised. An issue he felt deeply till the end of his life. Not the last time the West betrayed Iraq. I reckon if the Aussies had thought they were fighting for the likes of Netanyahu they would have gone home. They would have found Johnny Turk far more honourable, though the Attaturk version, certainly not Erdogan.
It is my strong opinion that Guy Rundle is a racist bigot. He has just accused the light horsemen, of being capable of murder, he uses the white man black man argument, to further his verbal diarrhoea. He also has decided to denigrate Diggers from the first World War.
He uses assumptions and generalises his statements to further his sick article.
Len
War is organized by politicians, history is written by the victors and nothing is as it seems. Beersheba is a footnote in history and it deeply puzzles me why it should be so hyped by the media and the commemoration industry. After Rundles perspective I have a better understanding of Beersheba’s context.
That’s a bit strong.