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Follow Us on TwitterAllen Jasson (SA) writes to Australia post re Australlia-Israel joint issue stamps 14Jul13 July 14, 2013
Attn: Customer Contact Channels
Australia Post
GPO Box 9911
Melbourne VIC 3001
Ref: Australian Light Horse
Dear Sir or Madam,
I write to you concerning the release last May of an Australia Post stamp issue commemorating the Australian Light Horse and the WWI Battle of Beersheba in Palestine. Living abroad (in the UK) I am not current with events in Australia and this information has reached me belatedly and only indirectly from an acquaintance in Australia; hence the delay in responding.
I wish to express and put on record my extreme disappointment that Australia Post has participated in this appalling exercise of distortion and propaganda, which betrays the Australian Values of fairness and justice that were fought for in that war and for which thousands of Australia’s best gave their lives.
Your Australia Post shop site states: “The capture of Beersheba allowed British Empire forces to break the Ottoman line near Gaza and then advance into Palestine, a chain of events which eventually culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.”
This is an insidious attempt to coopt a pristine element of Australian Heritage, ANZAC heroic courage, to the purposes of Israeli propaganda and to insinuate that it was somehow to the purpose of “the establishment of the state of Israel”. The fact is that the state of Israel was not established until more than 30 years after the Battle of Beersheba and if it were in any way connected then, given the pariah status of Israel today, it would have to be regarded as an unforeseen and unfortunate outcome.
Those two catastrophic wars in which so many Australians died gave rise to the League of Nations and the nascent International Rule of Law outlawing war and violence as a means to settle conflict between nations. Yet the overtly racist and apartheid state of Israel has contemptuously flouted this institution and is in violation of more than 60 of its resolutions concerning expansionist occupation, ethnic cleansing and settlement of territories acquired by war and the terrorism associated with the Nakba. The genocide, the shocking oppression and persecution of Palestinian Arabs by Israeli settlers and the state of Israel by the extreme, barbaric violence of the IDF have earned international odium and the well-deserved opprobrium of pariah status for Israel.
As seems generally to be the case, any collaboration with the state of Israel invariably results in the compromised integrity of all parties involved. Sadly, Australia Post participation in efforts to sanitize Israel has soiled the reputation of yet another Australian Institution.
Yours Sincerely,
Allen L. Jasson
Thank You.
