Angela Smith
Angela Smith is a former lawyer with broad legal experience including in refugee law and the university sector. Her writing has been published widely and can be found in such places as The Guardian (online), Griffith Review, Meanjin, New Philosopher and Overland.
Recent articles by Angela Smith
9 March 2025
Legitimising the erasure of Palestinians
“Physical violence can’t exist without violence of language.” Omar El Akkad
25 February 2025
Vote no to genocide
If people want to know how genocide can occur, just look to our politicians who have done nothing to stop the crime of the century, Israel’s live-streamed mass slaughter of Palestinians and erasure of Gaza.
8 February 2025
A political ethos of justice and human commonality
On 24 December 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it’s a battle of civilisation against barbarians.”
14 January 2025
Facts, alternative facts and Edward Said: Narrating a genocide
As Donald Trump is inaugurated as a second-term president, readers may recall the infamous expression “alternative facts” used by Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s senior counsellor, to defend the false statements of Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary. At the time, the media mocked Conway for describing Spicer’s falsehoods about attendance numbers at Trump’s 2017 inauguration as “alternative facts”.
20 December 2024
Reporting on a genocide: Questions for the legacy media
We are now 14 months into Israel’s live-streamed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Why have you failed so dismally to report Israel’s blatant, murderous campaign of annihilation with any depth or rigour?
27 November 2024
The politics of ignoring genocide
Jews in Germany, Bosnians in former Yugoslavia, Tutsis in Rwanda, and now Palestinians in Gaza. In a recent interview, Francesca Albanese posed a rhetorical question: What kind of monsters have we become to see the live-streamed genocide of Palestinians and not act?
13 November 2024
Australia's settler-colonial view of Israel's genocide
“Australia’s colonial history is full of [such] genocidal punitive massacres. But somehow the Australian government couldn’t see the similarity when they declared their full support for Israel’s right to defend itself.”
3 November 2024
The politics of appeal and the asymmetrical valuing of lives
On October 11, I attended a vigil for Palestinians in Federation Square, Melbourne. The event did not attract politicians’ censure as it was sufficiently distanced in time from Jewish vigils on 7 October.
23 October 2024
The big con on climate action
The Labor government was elected on a platform of integrity and “real” action on climate. We’ve been duped.
18 October 2024
Terms of engagement: Refusing the Zionist narrative
“Our language shouldn’t be designed to appease the oppressor.” Steve Salaita
7 October 2024
The hierarchy of death
When Israel Defence Forces shelled the home of Quama, an eight-year-old Palestinian girl, and her family, the little girl was seriously injured. Because the IDF has been systematically devastating Gaza’s hospitals, her parents were unable to access a hospital with the necessary medical services. Quama was admitted to a maternity hospital which lacked both the services required to treat her injury, and the antibiotics to stop her leg becoming infected. So Quama’s leg was amputated.
30 September 2024
Israel and the culture of denial
There will be no peace and security for Israelis until Palestinians enjoy freedom, justice and equality from the river to the sea.
14 September 2024
The defence of self-defence
As Israel’s genocidal rampage in Gaza continues unabated after 11 months, the Labor Government recites ad infinitum its talking point, borrowed from the Biden/Harris playbook, that Israel has the right to defend itself, thereby legitimising its carpet-bombing and indiscriminate mass killing of Palestinian civilians. Treating the atrocities of 7 October as an isolated event that came out of the blue buttresses the self-defence line, de-contextualising it from decades of brutal subjugation of Palestinians, which have fuelled their resistance against the settler-colonial apartheid state.
12 September 2024
Sanctioning universities for failing to address antisemitism
Liberal MP Julian Leeser has accused Australian universities of “studied indifference to Jew hatred on our campuses. His solution is a Private Member’s Bill to establish a judicial inquiry into antisemitism at universities. The Commission of Inquiry will have the powers of a Royal Commission. The Bill constitutes a major assault on academic freedom, critical inquiry and the independence of universities.