Independent Queensland MP Bob Katter has defended the seven Manly rugby league players who refused to play in a strip displaying colours od the LGBT rainbow flag on religious and personal grounds.
At a press conference in Parliament House, Katter invoke the Holocaust saying, “Six million people were sent to the gas chambers in Germany because they believed in this book. No other reason, than they believed in this book. It started pretty unthreateningly ‘oh we just want you to tell us whether you believe in the bible and whether you’re a Jew, that’s all we want you to do.’ That’s how it started in Germany.”
The co-CEO of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry Peter Wertheim told J-Wire: “The Manly Rugby League players who boycotted the game last night had a reasonable point to make in complaining that they were being conscripted into publicly supporting a cause when they were not prepared to do so, and that they were not consulted. Unfortunately, Bob Katter has undermined the point they were making because he has made spurious comparisons to Nazi Germany. There is nothing in contemporary Australian life that is remotely comparable to the horrors that occurred in Nazi Germany.”
Let us not lose sight of the core issue, Forget Bob Katter, he meant well and we cannot expect the world to have the sensitivity to invoking Holocaust analogies that we Jews understandably have. That it can even be questioned that the Manly 7 had the right to stand up for their religious and moral principles speaks volumes for the moral abyss into which society today has fallen.
I am Jewish and I think it is disgraceful when non-Jews trivialise the Holocaust in the way that Katter trivialised it. I suspect he knew exactly what he was doing. He is no fool.
“Moral abyss” is just what I’d expect you to write. Glad to hear you’re still on message. 🙂
I wonder if Peter Wertheim would think Pauline Hanson has a reasonable point when she walks out during the Acknowledgment of Country,
That’s a pity. As rule Bob Katter is usually pretty well on the mark.