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Fear and Loathing in Marrickville – BDS in Australia

Fear and Loathing in Marrickville - BDS in Australia
Fear and Loathing in Marrickville - BDS in Australia

Fear and Loathing in Marrickville - BDS in Australia

Samah Sabawi and Sonja Karkar, Australians for Palestine
Melbourne – Australia

It appears that once again the pro-Israel apologists have decided to single Israel out by making boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel a leading issue for the Marrickville electorate in the lead-up to the NSW state elections.
Not surprisingly, the Palestinians are rendered invisible again as right-wing groups, politicians, the pro-Israel lobby and the Murdoch Press attack the Marrickville Council for their resolution to support BDS. That Palestinians living under Israel’s 43-year-old occupation are being ethnically cleansed on a daily basis from their land, their neighbourhoods and farms seems to be of no concern to our Liberal and Labor candidates who are vying for seats likely to favour the Greens.

There would be no BDS campaign if Israel was not denying the Palestinians their basic human rights: the right of return, the right to citizenship, the right to equality, the right to self determination, the right to live free from occupation, the right to education, the right to freedom of movement, the right to security, the right to fair trials, and much else besides.

The call for BDS was initiated in 2005 by Palestinian Civil Society as a form of non-violent resistance that is rooted in international law and the universal declarations of human rights. It aims to empower individuals to take action to end the conflict. Since 2005, BDS has had a steady rise in popularity amongst Palestinian and Jewish peace groups only to accelerate in 2009 when Israel attacked the Gaza Strip. The deliberate sidelining of the Goldstone report in the UN after the evident savagery of the assault, galvanized organizations and individuals around the world to join the BDS campaign and call for an end to Israel’s criminal impunity and disregard for international law.

On the eve of the NSW elections, none of the politicians are giving a thought to Israel’s new round of attacks on Gaza. Nor is the media, despite Israel’s opposition leader Tzipi Livni calling for another “Operation Cast Lead” with the same chilling indifference she showed when she defended the earlier offensive as “necessary”.

Instead, a smear campaign has been and is still being waged against the increasingly popular Greens for their principled support of BDS, a call coming now from numerous mainstream organisations around the world, including a good number of unions here in Australia. Besmirching the good character of Greens’ candidates like Marrrickville Mayor Fiona Byrne who is standing for the seat of Marrickville, as well as distributing false and sensationalist propaganda for political advantage, ought to sound warning bells for the local electorates and Australians generally.

If Ms Byrne is indeed an “extremist” then she is in illustrious company. Nobel Peace Laureates Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, as well as former US President Jimmy Carter, were also labelled “extremists” by blind supporters of Israel, for daring to criticize Israel’s systematic discrimination and violations of International Humanitarian Law.

Nevertheless, as Israel expands its Jewish-only colonies, pushes its indigenous Palestinian population behind barbwires and tall cement walls, and strips them of any shred of freedom or dignity, our politicians continue to reward Israel. A resolution moved by Liberal Senator Fifield condemning Marrickville’s decision to implement a boycott was just passed in the Federal Senate. The Greens were the only ones who opposed it.

The resolution acknowledges the friendship between Australia and Israel and this is no surprise at all since successive governments here in recent times have bent over backwards to embrace Israel.

Notwithstanding our politicians’ blind support, Australia’s relations with Israel have caused many Australians to question what business we could possibly have with a state that is entrenching its occupation of another people. There is a growing recognition amongst Australians that Israel simply does not live up to its tired and discredited mantra of “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

The idea that Israel is a democracy like Australia is simply not valid. You cannot deny the rights of half of the people living under your control and still be called a democracy. As if that is not enough, Israel has now made it illegal to hold events or ceremonies commemorating Israel’s Independence Day as a day of catastrophe or “Nakba” for the Palestinians dispossessed of their homes and land in 1948. And the Israeli Knesset has just passed a segregation bill, which prohibits Palestinian Israelis from living in Jewish localities built on land confiscated from them.

In light of such blatant discrimination, the call for BDS is neither extreme nor unrealistic. More and more people around the world see it as a morally sound strategy for holding Israel to account. If anything, the spectacle of fear mongering and name calling in Marrickville has shown how incapable some politicians are of having a rational conversation on Israel/Palestine, despite its importance to world peace and security.

Samah Sabawi is a Palestinian-Australian writer, playwright, producer, political analyst, commentator and public speaker on human rights and is the Public Advocate of the Australian advocacy group Australians for Palestine.

Sonja Karkar is the founder of Women for Palestine and the editor of the Australians for Palestine news website. Her articles have been published in Australian and overseas publications.

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Will the Palestinian Authority declare an independent state… or collapse?

Palestinian Loss Of Land 1946-2000
Palestinian Loss Of Land 1946-2000

Palestinian Loss Of Land 1946-2000

Stuart Littlewood, 28 Nov 2010

“Either might force international community’s hand, suggests Halper”

The other day I looked back with sadness on how nothing had changed for the better since my last trip to Palestine three years ago. On that occasion I also visited Gaza, an experience indelibly etched on my memory.

The situation there only goes from bad to worse – intolerably worse. But if I’m dispirited, heaven knows how the average Palestinian must feel as a result of the incompetent leadership they have had to endure these last 63 years… a leadership which failed to coherently argue and convey the justice of the Palestinian cause and never bothered, even to this day, to formulate and put into action an effective communications plan to win freedom.

The Israelis, though accomplished propagandists, are not very bright. In the battle for hearts and minds they have a violent story to tell and a lousy reputation to defend. And it’s getting worse every day. In their greed they score potentially damaging own-goals and leave the moral high ground to their victims.

Their conduct reveal a cruel streak. They trample human rights and show no respect for international law. They are steeped in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Yet the Palestinians shrug and let the endless flow of priceless PR opportunities slip away.

The Palestinian Authority, which is supposed to be leading the fight-back, has little to say to the outside world and the many sympathisers out there.  The task of informing and educating is left to a handful of exiles, academics, dedicated internet site operators, conscientious UN personnel like John Ging and Richard Falk, political mavericks like George Galloway, bold ‘freelancers’ like Ken O’Keefe, a host of courageous charities on the ground and rising numbers of students across the globe. Jewish peace activists play a vital role too.

All work hard to keep the issue alive, no thanks to the PA.

The front that Palestine presents to the world remains disunited, chaotic and dysfunctional, just the way Israel and the US like it. Fatah, with a history of sleaze and corruption, has taken on a role similar to that of the hated Milice in World War 2, the ass-licking paramilitary outfit set up by the Vichy French government, with Nazi help, to fight the French Resistance and do much of the Nazis’ dirty work. Parallels with what’s happening now in the Holy Land are unmistakable.

Fatah should remember that when the Nazis were beaten the French people took their revenge on surviving members of the Milice.

Hamas, defending its packed coastal enclave, meanwhile allows itself to be demonised and makes no move to overhaul its image – a puzzling omission and a blunder with huge self-inflicted consequences.

We are watching the sort of self-indulgent and ultimately self-destructive lunacy no-one in this day and age can afford, least of all the Palestinians. Who can blame sympathisers for throwing up their hands in exasperation, crying “Enough! A pox on you all,” and reaching for the ‘off’ switch?

If any real progress is to be made, things must now change drastically within Palestinian ranks.

My own finger was hovering over the ‘off’ switch when an excellent piece by Jeff Halper entitled “Palestine 2011″ http://ramallahonline.com/2010/11/palestine-2011/

dropped into my Inbox and made me sit up. When this remarkable man speaks I, for one, listen.

Will a jolt from the outside create “new circumstances for peace”?

For many years Jeff Halper and his organisation ICAHD (Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions) have closely monitored the Israeli occupation and its sinister methods, sometimes courageously facing the bulldozers and re-building what they knock down. ICAHD’s analyses and other resource materials are essential reading for anyone wishing to properly understand the situation. If you visit ICAHD in Jerusalem, as I have done twice, you can arrange to be taken on a tour to see the awful truth.

“We are at a dead-end of a dead ‘process’,” says Halper, adding: “Israel will

never end its Occupation voluntarily; the best it may agree to is apartheid,

but the permanent warehousing of the Palestinians is more what it has in

mind.”

Given the massive ‘facts on the ground’ Israel has established in the Occupied Territories, Halper believes the international community will not exert enough pressure to make the two-state idea a reality. Even if they wanted to, the veto power enjoyed by Israel’s sponsor, the US, wouldn’t allow it. “And the Palestinians, fragmented and with weak leadership, have no clout. Indeed, they’re not even in the game….we have arrived at the end of the road.”

However, he predicts that 2011 will create a new set of circumstances in which a just peace is possible, but the necessary game-changing jolt must come from outside the present “process”.

He puts forward two possibilities. The first is a unilateral declaration of independence by the Palestinian Authority on the 1949 armistice lines (the 1967 “Green Line”) together with an application for UN membership. A Palestinian state within those pre-1967 borders, which UN member states, including the US, already recognise, would be accepted by most countries in the world. Such a move would place reluctant powers like the US, Britain and Germany in an awkward position and force the hand of the international community.

The trouble is, says Halper, “the leadership of the Palestinian Authority lacks the courage to undertake such a bold initiative”.

It’s more likely, he thinks, that 2011 will see a continuing deadlock in “negotiations” and the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, bringing to an end the current process. It would be unthinkable for Israel to allow Hamas to fill the vacuum, so it would be faced with the prospect of re-occupying the Territories at full security strength, a massive burden. Such a move would, of course, inflame the Muslim world and generate massive protests worldwide, again forcing the hand of the international community. “Looked at in this way,” Halper observes, “the Palestinians have one source of enormous clout: they are the gatekeepers.”

Jeff Halper throws some welcome shafts of sunlight onto a bleak landscape. But is civil society, in Palestine and abroad, in any shape to seize the opportunities presented by either of these scenarios? Activists, wherever they are, need to prepare for what happens and agree how to react if the Palestinian Authority falls.

“Abbas may be weak and pliable, but he is not a collaborator,” says Halper. Well, he certainly had me fooled. If it waddles like a collaborator, quacks like a collaborator and jumps through hoops like a collaborator, it sure as hell ain’t no patriot duck! Abbas might have created a better impression if he’d carried the fight to the Israelis and the US, demanded the enforcement of international law and UN resolutions, refused to negotiate before Israel complied, and insisted on any subsequent talks being supervised by the UN, not by Israel’s ally, financier, arms supplier and all-purpose bitch.

Far from upholding Palestinian rights, “honest broker” America torpedoes them at every turn even under this peace-prize president. It must be sidelined somehow.

To my mind the international community, with or without the US, could have used leverage to force an end to the occupation any time during the last 63 years, and could do so tomorrow. The great mystery – for many – is why the Palestinian Authority and the Arab community of nations have not explored that angle energetically enough.

It has always been vitally important to counter Israeli propaganda. Abbas should have set up a professional communications unit, trained and funded Palestinian embassies around the world to educate and inform, and orchestrated an effective worldwide campaign.

Why didn’t he? His ‘silent routine’ and reluctance to make waves lend weight to accusations of collaboration.  The only information coming out of the PA’s embassy in London, for example, is social ‘froth’ like details of the next concert. Its website hasn’t been updated for since April, which just about sums up the uselessness of Abbas and his henchmen.

Compare this with the slick, always-on-the-ball Israeli operation.

As for Hamas, they certainly have what it takes in terms of raw courage, firm resolve and popular support to fill the void, as they did in the 2006 elections. But they are unapproachable at a time when they need to open up, forge friendly links and defuse the West’s fears and misconceptions. Without a careful makeover and general re-branding they’ll have a hard road ahead and so will their people.

If 2011 doesn’t bring Jeff Halper’s “jolt from outside”, and a dose of salts to flush Palestine’s insides, the ‘off’ switch will remain a serious temptation.

Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood is an industrial marketing specialist turned writer-photographer. In 2005 he was invited to write and shoot pictures for a book about the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. ‘Radio Free Palestine’ was published in 2007. For details please see www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.

  • The Author is a regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com.Find more Articles by Stuart Littlewood on RamallahOnline.

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Zionism and Peace Are Incompatible

Alan Hart

Alan Hart, AlanHart.net, 22 Oct 2010

At last somebody has said it in the most explicit way possible. The somebody also said: “The problem is Zionism and the solution is dismantling the Zionist framework and instituting a secular democracy that does not discriminate between Israelis and Palestinians.”

The somebody was Miko Peled, a Jewish peace activist who was born in Israel and lives in America.

He is the son of an Israeli war hero, Matti Peled, who was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the war of 1967. After that war, General Peled signalled his own commitment to truth by rubbishing Zionism’s version of events. He did so with the statement that there was not a threat to Israel’s existence and that it was a war of Israeli choice (i.e. aggression not self-defense). General Peled was also one of a number of prominent Jews who called soon after the 1967 war for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In his latest article from which my headline for this piece was extracted, Miko says that the two-state solution was clearly viable 40 years ago, but today…? He writes (my emphasis added):
“Now the West Bank is riddled with towns and malls and highways built on Palestinian land for Jews only and Israeli cabinet members openly discuss population transfers, or rather transfer of its non-Jewish population. The level of oppression and the intensity of the violence against Palestinians has reached new heights… Discussing the two-state solution now under these conditions shows an acute inability to accept reality… There is an illusion that a liberal, forward thinking government can rise in Israel and then everything will be just as liberal Zionists wish it to be. They will pick up where Rabin and Arafat left off and we will have the pie in sky Jewish democracy liberal Jews want so much to see in Israel. This illusion is shared by American Jews, liberal Zionists in Israel and around the world and in the West where guilt of two millennia of persecuting Jews still haunts the conscience of many. If only there were better leaders and if only this and if only that… But alas, reality continues to slap everyone in the face: Zionism and peace are incompatible. I will say it again, Zionism and peace are incompatible.”

Miko adds that serious study of the history of modern Israel shows that “the emergence of Netanyahu and Lieberman was perfectly predictable.”

I agree and offer this summary explanation of why.

Zionism is not only Jewish nationalism which created a state in the Arab heartland mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing. It is also a pathological mindset. In the deluded Zionist mind the world was always anti-Jew and always will be. It follows that Holocaust II (shorthand for another great turning against Jews) is inevitable. It follows that there can be no limits to what Zionism will do in order to preserve nuclear-armed Greater Israel as a refuge of last resort for all Jews everywhere when the world turns against them.

When I was reflecting on Miko’s main point, that Zionism and peace are incompatible, I found myself wondering why really it is that American presidents will not use the leverage they have to try to call the Zionist state to account for its crimes when doing so would clearly be in America’s own best interests.

I’m beginning to think that the awesome influence of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress is not the complete answer. And the question I am asking myself is this: Could it be that all American presidents know there is nothing nuclear-armed Israeli leaders would not do if they were seriously pressed to make peace on terms which they believed in their own deluded minds would put Israel’s security at risk? Always in my own mind is what Prime Minister Golda Meir said to me in a BBC Panorama interview and from which I quote in my book – in a doomsday situation Israel “would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it.”

If it is the case that American presidents are frightened of provoking Israel, the conclusion would have to be that the Zionist state is a monster beyond control and that all efforts for peace are doomed to failure.

Is the situation really as bad as that?

My own answer is yes. But there are some observers who think that after the mid-term elections in America there might be one more opportunity for President Obama to bring enough Israelis to their senses in order to give peace its very last chance.

This new hope has been inspired, apparently, by reports of a forthcoming Palestinian (and presumably wider Arab) initiative to have the Security Council recognize Palestinian independence within the 1967 borders.

In Ha’aretz on 20 October, Aluf Benn wrote this:

Israel’s diplomacy has reached a turning point. Instead of dealing with the failed direct talks, from this point Israel will be orchestrating a diplomatic holding action against the Palestinian initiative to have the UN Security Council recognize Palestinian independence within the 1967 borders. Such a decision would deem Israel an invader and occupier, paving the way for measures against Israel. Obama could scuttle the process by casting an American veto. Would he do it? And at what price?

Barak is warning Netanyahu that Obama is determined to establish a Palestinian state, even if it requires political risks. The president doesn’t have to come out publicly against Israel, but can simply stand on the sidelines when the Security Council recognizes Palestine. The international movement to boycott Israel will gain massive encouragement when Europe, China and India turn their backs on Israel and erode the last remnants of its legitimacy. Gradually the Israeli public will also feel the diplomatic and economic stranglehold.

It’s not certain that this will happen.

We shall see.

Alan Hart

Alan Hart

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years…

Alan maintains an online blog with a wealth of articles that can be found here http://www.alanhart.net/