2025 Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize to Wendy Turner

Feb 2, 2025
Al Quds Jerusalem Peace Prize. Image source: APAN

At the 2025 Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize ceremony in the Melbourne Town Hall on Friday evening February 21, this year’s award will go to Wendy Turner, trade unionist, ageless social justice activist and long term advocate for the human rights of all Palestinians.

From a record list of ninety two nominations, Wendy Turner more than met the award jury’s criteria: expecting nominees to have a record of commitment to Palestinians’ rights to self determination, to diverse social justice goals and to the philosophy, language and practice of non-violence.

Beyond those criteria, Wendy displays courage in public life, determination never to give way to abusers of human rights, always prepared to fight for a sense of justice despite, in many cases, overwhelming opposition.

Hailing originally from the north of England, her life has been characterised by a quality usually referred to as ‘Yorkshire grit’, a gutsy response to demanding conditions, an ability to tolerate and overcome adversity. That could refer to being marooned in wet, windy, wintry weather on Yorkshire’s Ilkley Moor, exposed ‘without a hat’ yet regarding that experience as of no consequence. Or it could mean a taste for Yorkshire puddings as a sort of carbohydrate delicacy served with roast beef.

Irrespective of those idiosyncrasies and from the time of her arrival in Australia with two young children, Wendy committed herself to social justice goals, which meant a way of thinking and living which put collective interests above efforts to seek individual advantage: altruism overcoming egoism. That selflessness, she explains, had little to do with individual virtues. ‘In a woollen mill town like Bradford, selflessness was in the air, everyone was expected to muck in, supported one another and as far as possible share.’

Such values affected this Australian citizen’s caring not only for her own family but for the interests of others. She became a member of the Miscellaneous Workers’ union, of the Labor party and was a founder of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network. Seldom missing the chance to be creative, the conversations which contributed to the birth of APAN appear to have depended in part on Wendy’s ability to build friendships and networks. After a visit to Palestine but in an Amman Hotel with Peter Jennings of Apheda and Sally McManus, now President of the ACTU, conversation turned to developments in Australia which might do justice to the oppression which these three citizens had witnessed in Palestine. From that conversation came the proposal that all Australians should become aware of the Palestinian story and no longer take for granted the Israeli version of history, an exchange which became a catalyst for the creation of APAN in which Wendy became an inaugural secretary and for years a significant board member.

If your DNA shows Yorkshire grit, you don’t rest on your laurels, in Labor Party forums, at conferences and among members, even when Palestine was not central to ALP interests, Wendy Turner publicised and argued that political attention be paid to Palestinians’ rights, lives and life chances.

Wendy’s political vision and personal determination correspond to the values shown currently by people in Gaza and on the West Bank, though faced with Israeli genocidal slaughter, famine, imprisonment and other brutalities. As someone with a flair for using art as a crucial means of publicity and protest, Wendy shares with Palestinian poets the resolve to conjure hope from solidarity, vision when it might be easier to despair. Those who mulled over the qualities of all the candidates for the Jerusalem Prize, identified Wendy’s consistent challenging of oppression, as in campaigning for the rights of Indigenous Australians and Palestinians, as in recognising the courage of Palestinian poets, many of whom have been killed by Israeli forces.

At an earlier time, Mahmoud Darwish, national poet of Palestine wrote that every beautiful poem was an act of resistance. To keep faith with Darwish’ vision, the young Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour wrote ‘Resist My People, Resist’ for which the Israeli government placed her under house arrest for three years and sentenced her to five months imprisonment. Tatour wrote,

’Resist my people resist them,
In Jerusalem I dressed my wounds and breathed my sorrow,
in the palm of my hand I carried the soul for an Arab Palestine.
I will not succumb to the peaceful solution, ‘Resist my people, resist.’

Question, challenge, resist, is written into Wendy Turner’s c.v.

In the final deliberations about her record and the consequent award of this Prize, the familiar principle that ‘the personal is the political’ showed why this courageous, humorous person – self deprecation so obvious and enjoyable – made her a distinguished and worthy recipient.

In an age when violence waged by authoritarian bullies provides the means of governance, Wendy resists, shares solidarity with everyone committed to freedom for Palestine, thousands of whom have marched each week, hundreds of whom will be in the Melbourne Town Hall to thank Wendy Turner and hear her response to this award. Be there if you can.

 

Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize 21 February, 2025

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