Stuart Rees
Stuart Rees AM is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney & recipient of the Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize.
Stuart's recent articles
22 April 2025
Silence is no response to slaughter, so at least recognise Palestine
Death, destruction and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and on the West Bank continues. Israeli savagery, lying, and disdain for international law display the depths of inhumanity, but when challenged to show courage by supporting life for Palestinians, the Australian Government remains silent.
7 April 2025
Institutionalisation: Vice-chancellors’ cowardly collusion with antisemitism lobby
In response to a Senate inquiry into supposed antisemitism on Australian university campuses, the Group of Eight (Go8) vice-chancellors representing the Australian National University, Sydney, Melbourne, Monash, UWA, UNSW, Queensland and Adelaide have produced a definition of antisemitism which is to be enforced on all their respective students and staff.
24 March 2025
A moral precipice challenge – Vote for humanity
Response to the latest Israeli/US slaughter in Gaza shows the world’s citizens looking into a moral precipice. How will they act? Will they ponder the principles of humanitarian law let alone ideals of a common humanity?
17 March 2025
Anatomy of a public meeting: genocide a key election issue
Sunday evening in a crowded Glebe Town Hall in Sydney, the audience came to hear speakers address several objectives to make candidates attitude to genocide a key election issue, hold politicians accountable for genocide, vote for humanity.
11 March 2025
Universalism the panacea for Palestine
Defence of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination is a collective responsibility fuelled by commitments to theory and ideology inherent in universalism. In domestic and foreign policies and in the conduct of personal relations, the values associated with universalism concern altruism and inclusiveness, each goal delivered in a spirit of generosity.
21 February 2025
Moral panics, from Teddy Boys to antisemites
Seventy years ago, British youth, dressed in tight jeans, pointed winkle picker shoes and with greasy duck’s arse haircuts, gathered on the beaches of seaside towns, usually well know for their Victorian piers. By adding rock’n roll music to their unusual appearance, the young Teddy Boys, also referred to as ‘Folk Devils’ added a colourful but challenging culture to a dour post-war Britain.
15 February 2025
Palestine, incredible, unbelievable
An Opening Salvo Five hundred days into a war to achieve death and destruction which at a glance looked like organised slaughter where most casualties were women and children, a carnage is justified by claims that even newborn babies must be terrorists, hence a beyond belief horror movie beamed nightly on television screens. Murder Unlimited A cast of extras has included home grown journalists, aid workers, nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, all targets for death by invaders loving their chance to kill, destroy, dress in women’s underwear and have the selfies sent home as military snap reminders of...
2 February 2025
2025 Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize to Wendy Turner
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.
26 January 2025
Anti-semitism ‘rise’ obscures more slaughter in Gaza
Australian political leaders and their mainstream media backers are in moral outrage mode. Anti-semitism they say is rife, infectious, getting worse and must be stamped out. At first sight these claims seem plausible. They are made in response to the burning of a synagogue, a child care centre, to a Jewish community leader’s home being torched and to anti-Jewish slogans being painted on public buildings and Jewish places of worship.
18 January 2025
Gaza ceasefire, the missing pieces
Palestinians and Israelis are breathing sighs of relief that after fifteen months of killing, famine, torture and destruction across Gaza, the Israeli Netanyahu government and representatives of Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire.
10 January 2025
Sudan: Beyond pessimism
In numerous journals and newspapers, death and destruction in Sudan is described as probably the greatest, certainly the most neglected, humanitarian catastrophe in existence.
5 January 2025
Noam Chomsky, the voice silenced, the legacy unending
Voted many times by UK and US magazines as the most important public intellectual in the world, Noam Chomsky, scientist, linguist, human rights activist, suffered a stroke at age 95 and can no longer speak. Yet as 2025 begins, Chomsky at 96 gifts the world his examples of inquiry and dissent. These qualities he might say, remain the much needed means to strive for freedom, justice and peace.
30 December 2024
Goodbye democracy: Labor’s rank and file of no consequence
In the 2022 federal election, Labor members in the supposedly safe seat of Fowler were not allowed to choose their candidate. Instead, head office parachuted star performer Kristina Keneally into the seat and were rewarded with a huge up yours by voters. The seat was lost with an 18% swing against Keneally, a punishment which prompted a senior Labor member’s comment, I bloody hope we’ve learned that imposition from on high is deeply resented.
21 December 2024
Anti-Semitism, a pandemic of concocted claims
In response to arson on a Melbourne synagogue, ill informed politicians, ignorant media commentators and a bully Israeli Prime Minister have rushed to declare this crime is not only anti-Semitic but an act of terrorism. A year of pandemic like claims about a rise in anti-Semitism has reached a climax in interpretations of the meaning of this synagogue fire.
18 December 2024
Canberra’s cowardice leaves Australian women and children stranded in Syria
US diplomat Peter Galbraith insists the Australian Government and Opposition are exaggerating the dangers of even trying to bring 10 Australian women and 30 children home from Syrian camps. In an affidavit to the Australian High Court, Galbraith explained he had made 20 visits to camps in north-east Syria and had helped to extract several women and 29 children.
5 December 2024
Survival of a people: Threats to Palestine’s existence as Israel kills 45,000
Israeli leaders insist that all the people of Gaza are Hamas. In the same breath, Prime Minister Netanyahu boasts that victory in his war depends on the complete annihilation of Hamas, by which he presumably means a whole people?
24 November 2024
Poetry in times of despair
In a search for light in the tunnels of previous dark times, poets responded with lines depicting cruelties yet leavened with resilience and hope. The English romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley and the Russian resistance poet Osip Mandelstam cherished what they judged to be a panacea like quality in poetry. Shelley forecast that by crafting images of humanity, poets could become the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
19 November 2024
A fighter for Palestinians’ freedom: Ali Kazak
Exceptional courage and commitment is needed to spend decades pursuing freedom for your people and to do so with few resources against considerable odds.
13 November 2024
From Fowler to Barton, Labor HQ ignores the rank and file
With a Federal election early next year, and opinion polls showing Labor at best only level with the Coalition, it would seem wise for Labor HQ to ensure that no mistake is made in the choice of candidates even in supposed safe seats. But head office need to control, which in 2022 led to parachuting Kristina Keneally into the Sydney western suburbs seat of Fowler, looks like being repeated in Barton, where MP Linda Burney is not contesting the next election.
4 November 2024
Anomie: Enabled by Western media, Israel's lies have become a galloping cancer
Israel’s unholy policy trinity - destroy, kill, lie - has been underway for decades. But since October 2023 it has reached horrific levels. The horror of Israeli destruction, torture and slaughter is apparently taken for granted by Israeli citizens and by supporters in western countries, largely because telling lies as a feature of warfare is not challenged.
23 October 2024
Coping with despair: Palestine, Lebanon and beyond
Israel’s atrocities for which they are not held accountable, leaves a world feeling powerless to do more than watch and protest. Intervention to cope with a pandemic of despair, requires life enhancing responses to foster peace and revive respect for international humanitarian law.
16 October 2024
Dutton thuggery, coalition compliance
In the October 13 edition of P&I, George Browning gave substantial, comprehensive analysis as to why Coalition leader Peter Dutton is ‘dishonest, self deluding and dangerous.’ That appraisal is so important that I do not want to let it rest, not least because there are Australians who support the Dutton viciousness; and his colleagues like to repeat the claim that Australia holds the same values as the Israeli government. A government which is intent on slaughter in Lebanon and in Gaza, and continues its passion for destruction, murder, torture and famine.
7 October 2024
Life in Gaza and on the West Bank: Political leaders invited to interpret humanity
In the current global turmoil of revenge and war, Australians want to see political leaders speaking about humanity and negotiation, not the old rhetoric which chooses winners and losers. In the following letter to party leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate, we urge all parliamentarians to support their leaders by making their own “Personal Statements of Humanity” in their communities as well as in the Parliament or on their websites.
6 October 2024
Lebanese and Palestinian lives mean nothing to Western politicians
The deaths of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians killed by Israel can be ignored, so too the misery of millions. Small wonder that protesters want to register disgust and despair.
28 September 2024
Campus protests: A view from a seasoned observer
A letter sent by the author to Mark Scott, vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, after he apologised during a Senate hearing for not cracking down on alleged anti-Semitism during protests on the university campus in support of Palestinians in Gaza.
21 September 2024
Pager slaughter in Lebanon, humanity of no consequence
Thousands of Lebanese citizens, injured or murdered by apparent Israeli planted explosives in pagers and other communications devices, are referred to as Hezbollah operatives, even though victims have included small children.
19 September 2024
Pearls and Irritations awarded an Ink & Impact award
At a lavish ceremony at the Highline Venue in Bankstown, NSW on Sunday, 15 September, the independent Australian Muslim Times newspaper celebrated its 10th anniversary.
16 September 2024
Sudan’s nightmare: 150,000 civilians killed
UN estimates suggest 2.5 million people will die by the end of 2024 and six million by 2027. World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called on the world to wake up and help Sudan out of the nightmare it is living through.
16 September 2024
Antisemitism tangle: Can ridicule depict reality?
Current responses to the Gaza war would seem to suggest that antisemitism is the priority issue, not the unending slaughter of Palestinians.
5 September 2024
Israeli hostages, Palestinian prisoners: the worthy and unworthy
Israeli citizens’ demand to bring home an estimated 100 Israeli hostages still held captive by Hamas is assumed to depend on a Gaza ceasefire which would include a Palestinian prisoner release.
26 August 2024
Replacing Dutton’s bottom of the barrel ideas about leadership
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton seems bereft of the qualities required in a leader, so it’s worth pondering how he and those who support him could show leadership.
15 August 2024
Politicians browbeaten and brainwashed by Zionism
Duly browbeaten by Zionists and Zionism, many Australian politicians fear to question Israeli terror. Evidence for that assertion has accumulated over years but was displayed last week in the lukewarm regrets expressed when an estimated 100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs dropped on a school in northern Gaza.
10 August 2024
Zionist bullying distorts politics, media and education
In addition to physical or psychological abuse, bullies use power in relationships to pressure others to adopt their world views. The bullying may appear in letters, lobbying, radio and television interviews, secret meetings with politicians and business leaders and even in legal action against those who criticise the bullies’ points of view.
9 August 2024
Bangladesh’s inspiring new leader: inaugural Sydney Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus
In the last several years, democracies around the world have been led by leaders of low calibre, who displayed little vision, not much courage and in whom voters had shown no confidence. But in strife torn Bangladesh, a country of over 174 million people, the inaugural (1998) Sydney Peace Prize recipient Professor Muhammad Yunus, a man of courage, imagination and integrity, has just been chosen to head an interim government.
7 August 2024
The language of right wing thuggery in British cities
In response to riots, attacks on police, and destruction of property in numerous British cities, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says ‘I utterly condemn the right wing thuggery we have witnessed this week-end.’
17 July 2024
Israeli hasbara wants to silence Mary Kostakidis
Regarding recent social media posts by journalist, former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis, the CEO of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) has lodged a complaint with the Australia Human Rights Commission. Under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, Mr. Alon Cassuto, a dual Australian Israeli citizen, claims that by sharing a speech by Hassan Nasrullah, the leader of Lebanese based Hezbollah, Mary has been ‘sharing extreme propaganda and hateful material.’
11 July 2024
"No ceasefire" in Israel's Gaza genocide, says 'Anti-Semitism' envoy
The appointment of Jillian Segal, immediate past president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's new 'Anti-Semitism Envoy' is a response to the demands of a powerful lobby, designed to conceal Australia’s collusion with the beyond belief cruelties imposed by Israel on the Palestinian people. “There can be no ceasefire until every hostage has been released,” Segal stated in November; joining with the Zionist Federation of Australia to criticise the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, for saying “we all want to take the next steps towards a ceasefire” in Gaza.
4 July 2024
For Labor, Payman breaching caucus rules is worse than Israel committing genocide
Instead of concern about continuing slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank, the major controversy surrounding Senator Payman’s support for a Palestinian state and for Palestinians’ lives has focused on her non-compliance with rules and discipline in the Labor caucus. That seems astounding.
26 June 2024
Freedom for Julian Assange but a history of injustice
After years in a top security British jail, Julian Assange has been freed provided he pleads guilty under an US Espionage Act to unlawfully obtaining and disseminating US defence information. That should be the last and long overdue chapter in a cruel, revengeful persecution of an Australian citizen, a whistleblower, journalist and publisher.
23 June 2024
‘I’m permanently pissed off’- just one feature of a Gaza malaise
In response to the question, ‘Do you despair over the slaughters in Gaza’, a close friend responded, ‘When I hear the news, I’m angry and permanently pissed off. I also recognise that anger can lead to despair.’
13 June 2024
Open Letter to Anthony Albanese: ‘Why collusion with this grotesque Israeli government?’
We write in sadness and despair at your government’s failure to condemn openly and persistently the Israeli government’s determination to ethnically cleanse Palestine and to cause brutality, famine, death and destruction to a whole people and their country.
11 June 2024
Israel the grotesque, who supports that government?
Celebrations on Tel Aviv beaches followed news of the rescue of four Israeli hostages. As part of an alleged clinical, precise military exercise, as many as 300 Palestinians were killed and 700 injured, but in Israeli revellers’ eyes, this latest slaughter of Palestinians is of no consequence, even welcomed.
1 June 2024
To Israel’s ‘Tragic Mistakes’, the world’s response is pathetic
Israeli forces’ slaughters of Gazans, journalists, doctors, humanitarian aid workers are described by military spokespersons and by Prime minister Netanyahu as tragic mistakes. In retrospect, killings appear an intention conducted by an alleged accident, in which well rehearsed explanations are part of a familiar two faced process of speaking with double tongues.
27 May 2024
Israel and Hamas: no moral equivalence
When asked to compare life in apartheid South Africa with conditions in occupied Palestine, Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s judgement ran counter to prevailing orthodoxy. People make the comparison, said Tutu, but life in Palestine is far more brutal and repressive than in apartheid South Africa.
15 May 2024
Protesters for Palestine targeted by Group of 8 universities
Fuelled by well armed pro Israel groups and by university administrators' decision to move police and riot squads to break up peaceful encampments, a terrible thuggery has invaded US universities.
2 May 2024
US campus protests, establishment’s automatic suppression
From Columbia University in New York to the University of Texas at Austin, from Emory University in Atlanta to the University of California at Berkeley, American students are protesting the genocide in Gaza. They are scorning the moral bankruptcy of governments which supply arms to Israel which simultaneously pretend support for humanitarian aid.
23 April 2024
The costs of living and the price of death: Spare a thought for Gaza and Sudan
In response to questions about starvation in Gaza and Sudan, a Federal Labor MP has explained, ‘In Australia, the cost of living is the issue. It’s voters’ major concern, and a political priority.’
17 April 2024
Intervention to stop genocide: From investigative reporting to freedom flotillas
The leader of South Africa’s Palestine Solidarity Alliance insists that the ruling of the International Court of Justice ‘requires the whole world to play their part to stop genocide unfolding in Gaza.’
31 March 2024
A Plea for Gaza: Remember humanity & forget the rest.
If you are not outraged by injustice, you lose touch with your own humanity.