Modi and Netanyahu: Two Sides of The Same Coin

[Riaz Haq]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently tweeted that he is "shocked by the news of terrorist attacks in Israel", adding that "We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour".  This tweet was posted immediately after the Hamas militants' unprecedented attack on Israel by air, land and sea. Modi's critics have noted that he has yet to tweet any condemnation of months-long killings of his fellow countrymen in Manipur which are continuing unabated. Nor has he issued any similar condemnation of the long and brutal Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. To those who know Modi, his reaction makes sense given the similarities between Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both leaders are extreme right-wing divisive politicians. Modi is a Hindu Supremacist and Netanyahu is a Jewish Supremacist. Both have a long history of murdering large numbers of Muslims living under their rule. Both are pursuing settler colonial policies; Modi in Kashmir and Netanyahu in Palestine. 

India's Narendra Modi and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu in New Delhi....

Indians, particularly Hindu Nationalists, have suffered from what Shashi Tharoor calls "India's Israel Envy". Here's an excerpt of Tharoor's piece published in "Project Syndicate" in January 2009:  

"Yet, when Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, killing those who launched rockets against it and dismantling many of the sites from which the rockets flew, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something similar in Pakistan. India understands, though, that the collateral damage would be too high, the price in civilian lives unacceptable, and the risks of the conflict spiraling out of control too acute to contemplate such an option. So Indians place their trust in international diplomacy and watch, with ill-disguised wistfulness, as Israel does what they could never permit themselves to do". 

In a piece titled "The Settler Colonial Alliance of India and Israel" published in The Nation, Indian journalist Deeksha Udupa interviewed Azad Essa,  author of “Hostile Homelands” – The new alliance between India and Israel". Here's what Essa told Udupa:  

"Kashmir is a perfect example of another region being turned into a sort of testing ground (for Israeli weapons and methods). Both India and Israel already share many tactics. They both attack journalists and criminalize civil society. They both exercise collective punishment on Palestinians and Kashmiris. They both maim protesters. In Palestine, protesters are shot in the limbs. In Kashmir, protesters are blinded by lead pellets. Israeli drones, sensors, surveillance, and machine guns are all there, and Israeli methods of controlling the population have long existed in Kashmir—so much so that India is now producing some of these Israeli weapons in factories across India.". 

Azad Essa argues that the Israeli occupation of Palestine has served as a model that Indians are replicating in Kashmir.  He says that Israeli weapons, developed and field tested on Palestinians, have been used in Kashmir.  Here are a couple of excerpts from his book "Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel":   :

"So how did India, which once considered Zionism a form of racism, become Israel’s number one weapons trade buyer, accounting for 42% of Israel’s arms exports since Modi came to power in 2014?* How did India, the first non-Arab state to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement that opposed colonialism and apartheid, simultaneously maintain its colonial occupation of Kashmir since 1947 and metamorphose into extolling Israel’s settlements as a model to colonize Kashmir with its own Indian settlers?"

"In the days leading to August 5, 2019 and in the weeks and months to come, Kashmir became a site of unfathomable cruelty. Thousands of Kashmiris were detained; pro-India politicians were placed under house arrest, pro-freedom leaders as well as minors were rounded up and thrown in jail. Young boys were shipped off to Indian prisons 1,500km away in Agra and Varanasi. Foreign journalists and international human rights groups were banned from access to Kashmir. The region was placed under a complete communication blackout. Cellular phones, Internet, landline services, and even the postal services were dismantled. News traveled by word of mouth. Journalists compressed photos and video onto memory cards and smuggled them out with passengers en route to Delhi. Schools, offices, banks, and businesses were closed for months. Life came to a standstill". 

Here's India's JNU Professor speaking about illegal Indian occupation of Kashmir, Manipur and Nagaland:

https://youtu.be/KWp1E8xrY5E

https://www.youtube.com/embed/KWp1E8xrY5E"; title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>" height="315" src="https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" width="560" style="cursor: move; background-color: #b2b2b2;" /> 

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[Riaz Haq]

Israeli intellectual Professor Avi Shlaim:‘Israel Does Not Want Palestine as Partner in Peace, Wants To Maintain Control Over It'

https://thewire.in/world/full-text-israel-palestine-karan-thapar-av...

‘Land grabbing and peacemaking don’t go together, it’s one or the other, and by constantly expanding settlements, Israel showed that it prefers land to peace.’

‘Israel by its actions has shown that it is not interested in having a Palestinian partner for peace because it wants to maintain its control over the territory.’

‘Israel refuses to accept Hamas as a negotiating partner. Israel’s position is that Hamas is a terrorist organisation – pure and simple. It will never negotiate with it.’

‘Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy has been to let Hamas rule the Gaza Strip, but to contain the Gaza Strip, and this policy collapsed, because Gaza could not be contained.’

Shlaim's interview with Karan Thapar:

https://youtu.be/W43Rgzge4Po?si=VhOecA8hGiJKqNy3

----------------------


On October 25, Karan Thapar spoke to Avi Shlaim, emeritus professor of international relations, St. Antony’s College, Oxford. Shlaim, the acclaimed author of Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions Refutations and The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, spoke about the history of the conflict and the aftermath of the October 7 attack by Hamas.

‘What Israel refuses to do is to accept that Hamas represents a serious body of Palestinians, and that you cannot reach any peace agreement with the Palestinians that excludes Hamas. So, the sensible thing for Israel to do and the other European powers to do is to recognise Hamas and to negotiate with Hamas for a political settlement of the conflict.’


‘My duty as a public intellectual, and as a student of this conflict, is to give the public… an account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is as truthful as possible, as honest as possible, and as fair-minded as possible.’

[Riaz Haq]

Ishaan Tharoor
@ishaantharoor
"We're rolling out Nakba 2023" — Israeli minister just flatly says it, while many in the West tie themselves up in knots to avoid seeing things as they are

https://x.com/ishaantharoor/status/1723712055021105388?s=20

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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-12/ty-article/israeli-s...

'We're Rolling Out Nakba 2023,' Israeli Minister Says on Northern Gaza Strip Evacuation
Likud Minister Avi Dichter says that 'war is impossible to wage when there are masses between the tanks and the soldiers.' While Netanyahu does not support resettling the Gaza Strip, he says will not give up security control over it 'under any circumstances'

Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”

When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter – a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director – said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

When later asked if this means Gaza City residents won’t be allowed to return, he replied: “I don’t know how it’ll end up happening since Gaza City is one-third of the Strip – half the land’s population but a third of the territory.”

The Gaza Strip’s settlements were evacuated by Israel in 2005 during a unilateral disengagement helmed by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon. Following coalition members’ declarations regarding reversing this move,

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked on Friday if he supports Israeli resettlement in the Gaza Strip after the war. “No, I don’t think so,” he answered, “I said I want full security control. Gaza must be demilitarized. I don’t think (resettlement) is a realistic goal, I’m saying it plainly.”

Netanyahu, who spoke at a press conference alongside Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and minister Benny Gantz, added that he won’t give up control over security in Gaza “under any circumstances.”

In response to a question about the war’s aftermath and the possibility of the Palestinian Authority controlling the Strip, he said: "I repeat, we will have total security control, with the ability to enter whenever we want to eliminate any terrorists who re-emerge. I can say what won’t happen – there will be no Hamas."

"I can say what else will not happen – there will not be a civil authority there that educates its children to hate the State of Israel, to kill Israelis, to eliminate the State of Israel. There cannot be an authority there that pays the families of murderers. There cannot be an authority there whose leader has not yet condemned the terrible massacre more than 30 days after it occurred," added Netanyahu.

[Riaz Haq]

John Oliver on Netanyahu and Hamas:

https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/tv-series/israel-hamas-war-last-week-...

the truth is, Netanyahu has been struggling to hold office in the last half-decade. Voters there actually endured five elections in just four years, because neither Netanyahu nor anyone else could form a stable majority. He only made it back into power last year, by forming a coalition with those on the furthest right wing of Israeli politics — leading to the most right-wing government in the country’s history. His cabinet is stocked with extremists. Take Itamar Ben-Gvir. He’s been convicted on at least eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism. He was once considered so fringe, the Israeli army rejected him from mandatory service. But he’s now Netanyahu’s minister of national security. Meanwhile, his current finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has said, “Is there a Palestinian history or culture? There is none. There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” He’s also advocated for “victory through settlement,” very basically seizing land in the West Bank, and driving Palestinians from their homes to the point where, quote, “I abort their hopes of establishing a state.” Settlements are widely understood to be against international law, yet Smotrich wants a massive expansion of them, and Netanyahu gave him a special role in charge of settlement affairs. But perhaps the most surprising way Netanyahu has jeopardized Israel’s safety is that, for years, he deliberately used Hamas as a way to undermine the Palestinian Authority, a rival to Hamas, which administers parts of the West Bank and has much more legitimacy on the world stage. Experts say the idea was basically divide and conquer — if Palestinian leadership remains split, and one of the main parties at the table has a terrorism label on it, it’s going to be much easier for Netanyahu to refuse to engage with them, and say he has “no partner for peace.” Here’s Smotrich explaining that strategy out loud in 2015.

The Palestinian Authority is a burden and Hamas is a terrorist organization that no one will recognize, and no one will give it status in the ICC. No one will let them lead a decision in the security council. The main pitch we are playing now is international delegitimization. Hamas at this point, in my opinion, will be an asset.

John: “Hamas is an asset.” If you’re calling the group that has repeatedly killed your people an asset, it shows pretty clearly that what you care about isn’t safety, but total control. And for years, Netanyahu’s government was actually allowing suitcases of cash to be delivered to Hamas, something by the way that earned suitcases of cash the title “most morally disreputable way to transfer money” for the nine hundredth year in a row. When the scandal broke, Netanyahu insisted that that money was for humanitarian aid. Which still doesn’t explain why it had to be delivered in luggage in the back of a fucking car. The point is, Netanyahu took the risk of betting that he could control Hamas, and use them to his own ends. And he was horribly wrong about that, to the point that his ministers are now getting screamed out of hospitals. So, to recap so far: Palestinians and Israelis have both been relentlessly let down by their leaders, and the result has been a decades-long cycle of extremism, violence, retaliation, and more extremism. And Palestinians have been on the receiving end of that extremism twice over — subject to the inadequacies and cruelties of a Hamas government and the punishing isolation and daily misery of an Israeli one. Because Israel’s approach to Gaza has been truly punishing — fencing people in, limiting exits, and trapping them inside of what has been called an open-air prison by many human rights organizations. Life under a blockade there has been hard for a long time, even when there aren’t bombs flying.

[Riaz Haq]

Adam Shatz · Israel’s Descent


https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n12/adam-shatz/israel-s-descent


The Zionist idea of ‘transfer’ – the expulsion of the Arab population – is older than Israel itself. It was embraced both by Ben-Gurion and by his rival Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Revisionist Zionist who was a mentor to Netanyahu’s father, and it fed directly into the expulsions of the 1948 war. But until the 1980s, and the rise of the New Historians, Israel strenuously denied that it had committed ethnic cleansing, claiming that Palestinians had left or ‘fled’ because the invading Arab armies had encouraged them to do so; when the expulsion of the Palestinians and the destruction of their villages were evoked, as in S. Yizhar’s 1949 novella Khirbet Khizeh and A.B.Yehoshua’s 1963 story ‘Facing the Forests’, it was with anguish and guilt-laden rationalisation. But, as the French journalist Sylvain Cypel points out in The State of Israel v. the Jews, the ‘secret shame underlying the denial’ has evaporated. Today the catastrophe of 1948 is brazenly defended in Israel as a necessity – and viewed as an uncompleted, even heroic, project. Bezalel Smotrich, the minister of finance, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, are both unabashed advocates of transfer. What we are witnessing in Gaza is something more than the most murderous chapter in the history of Israel-Palestine: it is the culmination of the 1948 Nakba and the transformation of Israel, a state that once provided a sanctuary for survivors of the death camps, into a nation guilty of genocide.

[Riaz Haq]

Why is India’s Hindu Right Pro-Israel?
Hindu nationalists would like to emulate Israel. They would like to create a Hindu Israel in India.

By Akhilesh Pillalamarri


https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/why-is-indias-hindu-right-pro-israel/


During the premiership of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi — which has mostly coincided with the premiership, in Israel, of Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom lead right-wing, nationalist parties — ties between India and Israel have grown much closer.

This is true not only at the political level, but, more importantly, at the social level. Israelis hold a higher favorability of India than any other country in the world — 71 percent — while a 2009 survey recorded support for Israel in India at 58 percent, higher than in the United States. During the recent war in Gaza, a large number of Indian social media accounts have been amplifying a pro-Israeli narrative.


What is behind this extraordinary support of Israel in India? After all, post-independence India has traditionally taken a pro-Palestinian stance, as part of the left-leaning Congress Party’s belief in post-colonial solidarity. India did not even vote in favor of the United Nations partition plan in 1947 that led to the creation of Israel, though it did recognize Israel in 1950, before fully normalizing relations in 1992. India was also the first non-Arab state to recognize Palestinian statehood in 1988.

In retrospect, however, these decisions were not necessarily driven by national interest, but by ideology, and given the current upswing in close ties between the two countries, it is doubtful if this ideological position was held by the majority of India’s population.

Three factors explain the upsurge in pro-Israel feeling in India over the past three decades. First — and this goes beyond right-wing politics — is the empathy and solidarity felt in India toward Israel on the issue of terrorist attacks. Both countries have suffered heavily from Islamist terrorism, often sponsored by hostile foreign powers — Pakistan in India’s case and Iran in Israel’s case — and have accordingly, developed, for similar reasons, tough stances against terrorism and an emphasis on national security. Indeed, a milestone in contemporary India-Israel relations was Israel’s supplying of weapons to Indian forces fighting Pakistan during the Kargil War of 1999.

This shared security perspective has smoothened the second factor responsible for pro-Israel sentiment in India: better overall people-to-people and trade ties.

Post-Cold War, India and Israel have developed more normal relations, particularly as the political configuration in India no longer incentivizes governments going out of their way to signal solidarity with post-colonial Muslim countries, or to use the Palestinian issue to garner domestic support amongst Muslims.

[Riaz Haq]

Why is India’s Hindu Right Pro-Israel?

By Akhilesh Pillalamarri


https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/why-is-indias-hindu-right-pro-israel/


As a result of this thawing, several economic and military factors have drawn India and Israel closer together. The two countries engage in robust trade and India’s defense industry has developed strong ties to Israel; India is the largest buyer of Israeli weapons, which are vital to its national security. Almost half — 42.1 percent — of Israel’s arms exports went to India since 2014. Since 2022, India has been a participant in the I2U2 group of four countries — India, Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — that is aiming, among other things, to build a transport corridor linking India and Europe through Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

However, as beneficial and positive as all these developments are, they are not strictly unique, from India’s perspective, to Israel. India, after all, enjoys robust military, trade, political, and social ties with a variety of other countries, ranging from Japan to France. What really lies behind much of India’s love for Israel today is the affinity that the Hindu-right has for Israel as an ideological and political model.

In the past, many Indian nationalists, whether secular or Hindu, had some affinity for imperial Japan, a model of a well-managed, technologically efficient, ethnostate. Imperial Japan was the model for Asian nationalists, from India to China to Thailand to Indonesia, throughout the early 20th century. Japan was, after all, the first non-Western, Asian country to successfully industrialize and hold its own against the European colonial powers of the 19th century, and the purpose of nationalism is to strengthen the nation’s culture and military vis-à-vis other nations.

In contemporary India, Israel occupies such a role of emulation for Hindu nationalists, that it is often said that they seek to create a Hindu Israel in India. Israel is what they envision for India, and indeed, what nationalists throughout the world envision for their countries: a well-ordered state that stands against adversaries, modern — technologically and legally advanced — but also traditional at the same time, as well as supporting a society that gives the pride of place to its dominant cultural group and its norms, where minorities are managed.

Indeed, just as there is a gulf within the Israeli right between secular Zionists and the ultra-Orthodox, Hindu nationalists are rarely theocrats. Their goals are more aligned with shepherding India away from its constitutionally-mandated neutrality between different confessional communities toward something more akin to Israel’s Jewish state model wherein all groups have equal civic rights but the titular group has preferential treatment.

On top of this ideological convergence, Hindu nationalists see much in common with Israel and India’s specific situations. Both are countries that serve as the primary home of a religious (and some would say, ethnoreligious) group that does not have other homelands, unlike say Arab Muslims or Western Christians.

Both neighbor hostile powers, some of which seek to deprive them of land or destroy them altogether. Finally, nationalists see Jews and Hindus as being similar in that both groups had to struggle for political power for centuries before finally attaining it, in the form of their own states, during the 20th century, either through the independence of India in 1947, or the creation of Israel in 1948.

In short, a major factor in the upsurge of Indian favorability to Israel is that Israel is a contemporary example of a modern ethnostate, one that combines ancient culture with modern prosperity, technological prowess, and military success, all factors that appeal to the Hindu right. More generally, and less ideologically, Indians feel a shared sense of empathy with Israel in its struggle against terrorism, while three decades of increased economic and people-to-people ties have drawn Indian and Israeli societies closer together.

[Riaz Haq]

Fidato
@tequieremos
Anand Ranganathan, a right wing hate monger who is close to the ruling establishment in India, has called for an “Israel-like solution in Kashmir”. An open call for a genocide of Muslims in Kashmir while appearing on India’s official news agency.

https://x.com/tequieremos/status/1800406972757672032


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Indian commentator advocates for Israel-like genocidal solution in Kashmir - Muslim Mirror



https://muslimmirror.com/eng/indian-commentator-advocates-for-israe...

On Sunday Indian right-wing commentator Anand Ranganathan called for an Israel-like solution in Kashmir during The Samosa Caucus Podcast hosted by Smita Prakash. Other co-panelists included Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, Sushant, and Tahseen.

“You need an Israel-like solution to Kashmir. The fact that Israel has not been able to ‘solve it’ is not because Israel is not acting to solve it, or Israel is not doing things that should be done. If, for example, seven lakh (700,000) Israelis were driven out of their homes, and Israel had not acted, you would have said ‘Yes, they didn’t solve it,’” Ranganathan stated.



He continued, “Israel has catered for its people who were hard done by, we haven’t! It’s as simple as that. Despite that, yes, there may never be a solution because of the ideology of the people who hate Israelis, and the ideology of the people who hate Hindus. That’s irrespective. What I’m saying is, have we taken the right decisions; we haven’t.”

This is not the first time right-wing Hindu nationalists have invoked the “Israeli-model” as the go-to solution for Indian-occupied Kashmir. In 2019, a former Indian envoy to New York City suggested at a private gathering that India should follow the Israeli settler model in Kashmir.

Anand Ranganathan, an Indian scientist and political commentator known for his crass Islamophobic remarks, is the Consulting Editor of the Hindu nationalist publication Swarajya. He has more than a million followers on X and is known for his vehemently anti-Muslim rhetoric. His remarks on the podcast followed dehumanizing commentary about Kashmir’s “fertility rates” by Abhijit Iyer-Mitra.

“The fertility rates [in Kashmir] cannot support an insurgency,” Iyer-Mitra said casually. The concern over “Muslim fertility” is a deeply ingrained Zionist and Hindu nationalist talking point. In their view, Muslims are not seen as human beings but as “terrorists” or “demographic threats.”

The discussion’s shift from “fertility” to the adoption of Israeli genocidal tactics in Kashmir highlights the troubling nature of such rhetoric. The invocation of Israel’s tactics, which have been widely criticized for their human rights violations, as a model for Kashmir underscores the dangerous and dehumanizing ideologies driving these conversations.

[Riaz Haq]

#India exports rockets, explosives to #Israel amid #Gaza war, documents reveal. A ship containing explosives loaded in India and was en route to Israel’s port of Ashdod, some 30km (18 miles) from the Gaza Strip. #Palestine #genocide #Hindutva #Zionism
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/6/26/india-exports-rockets-...

In the early morning hours of May 15, the cargo vessel Borkum stopped off the Spanish coast, lingering in the waters a short distance from Cartagena. At the port, protesters waved Palestinian flags and called on authorities to inspect the ship based on suspicions that it carried weapons bound for Israel.

Leftist members of the European Parliament sent a letter to Spanish President Pedro Sánchez requesting that the ship be prevented from docking. “Allowing a ship loaded with weapons destined for Israel is to allow the transit of arms to a country currently under investigation for genocide against the Palestinian people,” the group of nine MEPs warned.

Before the Spanish government could take a stand, the Borkum cancelled its planned stopover and continued to the Slovenian port of Koper. “We were right,” Inigo Errejon, the spokesperson for the hard-left Sumar party wrote on X, arguing that the Borkum’s decision to skip Cartagena confirmed the suspicions.

But missed in the debate over whether the ship ought to be allowed to dock in Spain were the unlikely origins of the Borkum’s cargo.

According to documents seen by Al Jazeera, the ship contained explosives loaded in India and was en route to Israel’s port of Ashdod, some 30km (18 miles) from the Gaza Strip. Marine tracking sites show it departed Chennai in southeast India on April 2 and circumnavigated Africa to avoid transiting through the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Houthis have been attacking vessels in reprisal for Israel’s war.

The identification codes specified in the documentation, obtained unofficially by the Solidarity Network Against the Palestinian Occupation (RESCOP), suggest the Borkum contained 20 tonnes of rocket engines, 12.5 tonnes of rockets with explosive charges, 1,500kg (3,300 pounds) of explosive substances and 740kg (1,630 pounds) of charges and propellants for cannons.

A paragraph on confidentiality specified that all employees, consultants or other relevant parties were mandated that “under no circumstances” were they to name IMI Systems or Israel. IMI Systems, a defence firm, was bought by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, in 2018.

The commercial manager of the ship, the German company MLB Manfred Lauterjung Befrachtung, told Al Jazeera in a statement that “the vessel did not load any weapons or any other cargo for the destination Israel”.

A second cargo ship that had departed India was denied entry on May 21 to the port of Cartagena. Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that the Marianne Danica left from India’s port of Chennai and was en route to Israel’s port of Haifa with a cargo of 27 tonnes of explosives. Minister of Foreign Affairs Jose Manuel Albares confirmed in a news conference that the vessel was denied entry on the grounds that it was shipping military cargo to Israel.

These incidents add to mounting evidence that weapon parts from India, a country that has long advocated dialogue over military action in resolving conflicts, are quietly making their way to Israel, including during the ongoing months-long war in Gaza. A lack of transparency on India’s transfers helps them slip under the radar, say analysts.

[Riaz Haq]

Australian judge rules senator broke race law by telling rival legislator to return to Pakistan

https://apnews.com/article/australia-racial-discrimination-pakistan...

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian judge ruled Friday that anti-immigration party leader Sen. Pauline Hanson breached a racial anti-discrimination law by crudely telling Pakistan-born Sen. Mehreen Faruqi to return to her homeland.

Faruqi sued Hanson in Federal Court over a 2022 exchange on the social media platform X, then called Twitter, under a provision of the Racial Discrimination Act that bans public actions and statements that offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate people because of their race, color or national or ethnic origin.

After the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Faruqi, deputy leader of the Australian Greens party, posted, “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonized peoples.”

Hanson, the leader of the One Nation party, replied that Faruqi had immigrated to take “advantage” of Australia, and told the Lahore-born Muslim to return to Pakistan, using an expletive.

Hanson has been known for her views on race since her first speech to Parliament in 1996, in which she said Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians” because of its non-discriminatory immigration policy. She once wore a burqa in the Senate as part of a campaign to have Islamic face coverings banned.