To be Jewish does not mean an automatic identification with the rogue state of Israel. Nor does it mean that Jews are automatically threatened by criticism of Israel, yet our media and Labor and Liberal politicians would have you believe this is the case.

We are seeing a debate in Australia about the so-called rise of antisemitism which includes rally chants for Gaza at a time when we are witnessing the most horrific Israeli genocide of Palestinians in which our government is complicit.

Jewish peak bodies here and internationally have continually linked their identity to that of Israel.

Why? Can generations of Jews in this country still believe that Israel represents anything like the myths that were perpetrated at its inception?

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Zionist Federation of Australia, the Jewish Board of Deputies and others, all staunchly defend this apartheid state that is accused of plausible genocide by the UN International Court of Justice and confirmed by dozens of human rights and legal NGOs, UN Rapporteurs, medical organisations and holocaust scholars.

Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defence Minister have been charged as war criminals by the International Criminal Court and must be arrested and tried in the Hague, yet Australia maintains a cosy relationship with Israel and our media dutifully repeats its outright lies verbatim.

Conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism has been the main focus of the Israeli state and its defenders for decades. With the emergence of the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement in 2005, Israel’s narrative was countered, leading to a persistent Israeli directed campaign to link BDS with antisemitism.

Colonial, occupying power
BDS focuses on the actions of Israel as a colonial, occupying power violating international law against the indigenous people of Palestine. It is anti-racist and human rights-centred.

On December 11, we heard Prime Minister Albanese at the Jewish Museum in Sydney combining his support for Jewish people with his ongoing condemnation and active campaigning against BDS.

He referred to the Marrickville Council BDS motion, (which I proposed back in 2010 along with my Greens councillor colleague, Marika Kontellis), and again repeated the bald-faced mistruths that were spread back then about BDS and the intent and focus of the Marrickville motion.

“I was part of a campaign against BDS in my own local government area. At the time I argued that if you start targeting businesses because they happen to be owned by Jewish people, you’ll end up with the Star of David above shops.

“And that ended in World War II, during the Holocaust, with six million lives lost, murdered. We need an end to antisemitism.”

In one sentence we see Albanese’s extremely offensive equation of the horror of the Holocaust and antisemitism, directly linked to BDS. Why would a prime minister and local federal member deliberately mischaracterise BDS, given the movement has always been clear that its targets are global companies and corporations that are complicit in the Israeli state’s apartheid and genocidal actions, as well as Israeli government bodies and arms companies?

What is in it for Albanese, Wong, Plibersek or Dutton and all of the politicians back in 2010/2011 who appeared to think there was political advantage in scapegoating BDS by jumping on the frenzied anti-BDS campaign?

Fawning support for Israel
It was obvious back then, as it is now, that their fawning support for the rogue Israeli state knows no bounds. Lock step in line with the United States outlier position, Australia has maintained its repugnant inaction in the face of 15 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza despite continued condemnation by the UN and a majority of states.

But Australia has, however, appointed a public supporter of Zionism and the Israeli state, as its special envoy on antisemitism.

The inaction by all states since 1948 to apply sanctions has gifted Israel the impunity that’s led to its industrial scale slaughter of innocents in Gaza and its continuing violence and killing of civilians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. All governments must bear responsibility for this.

Albanese has been described as an opportunist, liar and a bully.

At the time of the Marrickville BDS, he used the situation to attempt to discredit the Greens who were challenging the incumbent Labor state member, Carmel Tebbutt (his former wife). He fanned the national media frenzy that was fed by pro-Israel Jewish lobbyists who were the long-time custodians of the “reputation” of Israel.

Marrickville Council and the Greens were characterised as antisemites who would be pulling Jewish books out of the local library.

This insanity was akin to what is happening today. The legitimate opposition to the worst, most egregious, brutality of the Israeli state has somehow been cleverly morphed into so-called expressions of antisemitism.

Absurd claims on protest
In the media conference of December 11, Albanese also made absurd claims that the peaceful 24-hour protest outside his electorate office in Marrickville was displaying Hamas symbols in a vile attempt to discredit the constituents he had refused to meet for more than eight months.

He and his colleagues in Canberra continue to appease the powerful Israel lobby at the expense of our rights and the rights and visibility of the whole Palestinian population here and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories who are now literally on death row.

Back then, we heard locally that he and the party had bullied the four Labor councillors to vote to rescind the Marrickville BDS motion that they had all previously wholeheartedly supported. Some months earlier these same councillors had also supported a motion condemning the latest Israeli strike against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

The meaning of BDS was no secret to them — they appreciated that it was important for a council to check its ethical purchasing guidelines to ensure that it was not supporting companies that were in violation of international human rights law by operating in the illegal Israeli settlements or by providing technology or services that maintained Israel’s apartheid and dispossession of Palestinians.

They knew then, as we know now, that this is not antisemitic. They knew then that no Jewish businesses per se were the target of this peaceful civil rights movement. And they knew then that the Labor Party was lying for political gain.

Now, as for far too many decades, political parties in power in this country have failed Palestinians for political gain and at the behest of Israel lobby groups which dare to speak on behalf of anti-Zionist Jews like me.

Despite all the gratuitous rhetoric, these politicians have failed to uphold the basic precepts of human rights law — rights they regularly give lip service to, but rights they will never defend by taking the action required of them as signatories to numerous UN conventions.

Australia must sanction Israel
To act with humanity and to act as required by international law, Australia must sanction and end all economic and military ties with the Israeli state.

We must expel the Israeli ambassador and bring our ambassador back and we must prosecute any Australian citizen or resident who has joined the IDF to kill Palestinians. We must also support Palestinian refugees and take all action necessary to assist those in Gaza for as long as it takes.

But as we have seen so clearly this year, most governments have not acted to pressure Israel to end its barbaric colonial project. To protest as allies and to call out the hypocrisy of governments and politicians that speak of a rules-based order while enabling a state that has continually breached fundamental human rights laws, is to be called antisemitic.

The pressure applied to governments, universities and the like in recent years to adopt the discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism is precisely because it equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

It’s the perfect tool for shutting down condemnation of Israel’s grave human rights violations. We’ve seen some universities and parliaments endorse it in deference to this pressure, despite the serious flaws that have been identified, including from Jewish Israeli experts.

Now more than ever BDS is imperative.

BDS campaigns will work to isolate Israel as it should be isolated until it complies with international law. Multinational companies are increasingly loath to be associated with this terror state.

Major pension funds are divesting from companies that are complicit in Israel’s human rights violations and local councils, unions and universities are taking steps to ensure they divest from any partnerships or investments that would make them part of the chain of complicity and liable for prosecution by the International Court of Justice as enabling Israel’s genocide.

The facts are indisputable. Australia’s complicity with Israel’s genocide and colonisation of Palestine can be countered by individuals, churches, unions, councils and students taking immediate and urgent BDS action.

Do not wait for Labor or Liberal politicians in this country to act, as they are doing their best to shut us down and to appease Israel. Their complicity will never be forgotten.

Cathy Peters is a former Greens councillor on the Marrickville Council from 2008-2011 and the co-founder of BDS Australia. She worked as a radio producer and executive producer for the ABC for 30 years making some documentaries on the Israeli occupation. She is Jewish and her grandparents and other relatives perished in the Holocaust. She has travelled to Gaza and throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories on a number of occasions and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights and justice. First published in the Australia social policy journal Pearls and Irritations and republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Twenty-four weeks of city marches and a five-week vigil outside the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s electoral office in Marrickville have taken pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war on Gaza to an unprecedented level.

In a new development, hundreds of protesters joined in a street theatre performance outside Albanese’s electorate office on Friday evening to highlight their horror at massacres of Palestinian citizens by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in Gaza.

Over 31,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, including many shot by the IDF while seeking care in hospitals, food from aid trucks or fleeing IDF bombing.

The street theatre protest was part of an ongoing 24-hour-a-day peaceful vigil that has been going now for five weeks. There is no shortage of volunteers.  A minimum of 6 people are present at any one time with around 200 people visiting each day.

When City Hub attended twice last week, frequent toots from passing cars indicated plenty of public support.

At 6.30 pm on Friday, sirens and rumblings could be heard along Marrickville Road sending a signal to scores of protesters dressed in white to lie down on the pavement. They were then sprinkled with red liquid.

As the sirens quietened, a woman’s voice rang out: “War criminals, that is what our government is. They are not representing the people . . . We will not stop until our government ends every single tie with Israeli apartheid.

‘We’ll not stop . . .’
“We will not stop until the ethnic cleansing has ended. Palestinian voices need to be heard. Palestinian voices must be amplified.”

Greens Deputy Leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi attended the action. Before the “die-in”, she responded to Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s announcement earlier in the day that Australia will resume funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

Last week, Senator Faruqi called on Wong urgently to restore the funding. “It has been 43 days since the morally corrupt government made the inexcusable decision to suspend aid funding to UNRWA despite the minister admitting she hadn’t seen a shred of evidence,” she tweeted.

Along with some other Western governments, the Albanese government suspended UNRWA funding when Israel circulated a reportedly “explosive” but secret dossier outlining alleged links between Hamas and UNRWA staff. This happened shortly after the International Court of Justice found that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide.

The dossier alleged that UNRWA members were involved in the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.  After analysing the documents, Britain’s Channel 4 concluded that the dossier provided “no evidence to support the explosive claim that UN staff were involved in terror attacks”.

Recently, UNRWA accused Israel of torturing UNRWA staff to get admissions. On Friday, the European Union’s top humanitarian official Janez Lenarcic said that neither he nor anyone at the EU had been shown any evidence.

In “unpausing” the aid, Wong provided no evidence about what the government knew when it suspended aid and what it now claims to know about the allegations. Speaking at Friday’s protest, Senator Faruqi said she welcomed the restoration of  funding but, “just as they restored the funding, they paused the visas of Palestinians en route to Australia while they were mid-air. How cruel and how inhumane can this Labor government get? Just as you think that there are no further depths that they can get to, they show us that they can.” (Late on Sunday, there were reports that the visa decision may be reversed.)

Unprecedented protest
While protests outside Prime Minister’s offices are not unusual, a 24-hour protest for more than a month has never happened before.

Given the length of the protest, it is remarkable that there has been almost no media mainstream coverage. City Hub conducted a Dow Jones Factiva search which revealed one report on SBS and a mention in The Guardian. (The search engine does not cover commercial radio.)

The weeks long, 24 x 7 protest in the heart of the Prime Minister’s own electorate has remained hidden from most of the Australian public and international audiences.

Prime Minister Albanese has not responded to requests for meetings with organisers who include Palestinian families who have been his constituents for many years. City Hub has spoken to protest organisers who say that despite repeated requests, they have received no response from the Prime Minister. The office is now closed to the public which means people are unable to deliver letters or make inquiries.

Protesters sit down in Market Street

The ongoing 24-hour sit-down Marrickville protest is an extension of the broader protest movement in which thousands of protesters marched on Sunday for the 24th week in a row. Similar protests have been happening in Melbourne and other cities. Again, although there have been bigger protests at times, the regularity of protests attended by thousands each week is unprecedented in Australian history.

Protests on this scale did not happen even during the Vietnam War era in the 1970s.

Last week, protesters marched from Hyde Park down Market Street completely filling several blocks of Sydney’s busiest shopping area. Their chant “Ceasefire Now’ reverberated around the streets. It was accompanied by drummers, some of them children.

Some protesters briefly took their demonstration to a new level by staging a brief sit-down in Market Street. The area was filled with Sunday shoppers who watched as protesters chanted, “While you’re shopping, bombs are dropping.”

The Prime Minister’s office has been contacted for comment. When a response is received, this article will be updated.

Wendy Bacon was previously professor of journalism at the University of Technology (UTS). She spoke at the rally about the lack of media coverage of pro Palestinian protests. She will write about this in a future article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz