Pearls and Irritations

My mother survived the WW2 Nazi Auschwitz extermination camp, and she always asked why was the world silent? Why did they look away from the genocide of the Jews and do nothing? Today we know the answer as our government and media look away and do nothing for the Palestinians.

The following is the text of a speech delivered at the Sydney Palestine rally, Sunday, November 24, 2024.

I’m among very many Jews, here and around the world to protest what Israel is doing in our name, and I’m proud to join you every week for over a year in solidarity with Palestinians.

I want to give a shout-out to those each week holding the banner “Jews Against the Occupation.” Our presence and our solidarity refute the smear that these rallies are antisemitic Jew-hate rallies. I know what antisemitism is and it’s not here EVER at these rallies.

My mother survived the WW2 Nazi Auschwitz extermination camp, and she always asked why was the world silent? Why did they look away from the genocide of the Jews and do nothing? Today we know the answer as our government and media look away and do nothing for the Palestinians.

Well, in the last few days we have seen the landmark decision by the International Court of Justice – the ICC – an important victory for accountability. The ICC has issued warrants for the arrest of two of Israel’s leaders – Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant. Both are charged as perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Above all, the ICC arrest warrants confirm that those of us protesting here each week, and especially the university student encampments, were right all along.

As a member of the Rome Statute and ICC, Australia is legally under an obligation to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they arrive here. However, Australia is yet to confirm whether or not it will comply with arrest warrants issued for these indicted war criminals. The ABC Headline says “Australia tip-toes around ICC decision” issuing only an opaque motherhood statement. What is Penny Wong waiting for? Well, she is probably ambivalent because in March she and Albanese were also referred to the ICC for being complicit in the Gaza genocide in a claim co-signed by over 100 Australian lawyers.

Of course, Zionists in Australia are apoplectic and having a melt-down echoing Netanyahu’s excuses. Predictably, he called it an “antisemitic decision.” But even in Israel’s newspaper Ha’aretz the headline says: “Netanyahu Brought the ICC Ruling on Himself and Now He’s Whining About Antisemitism”. There is a great deal of deliberate, cynical confusion about this. As the Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein has said, Israel is a rogue, lunatic state. It is not antisemitic to say Fuck Israel and Fuck Zionism: A guy was arrested on Bondi Beach for wearing this on his T-shirt.

Netanyahu also said “No war is more just than the war Israel has been waging in Gaza” because Israel’s destruction of Gaza is in self-defence. This is deceitful, delusional bullshit. In international law, it’s not actually OK to starve children to death for self-defence! We have all seen the pictures – mile after mile of residential cities reduced to rubble. What kind of sick mind can consider the complete destruction of Gaza as “self-defence”? Since October 7 last year, Gaza has been transformed from the largest open-air prison in the world to the largest mass-grave. Australian Judge at the ICJ, Hilary Charlesworth, has said that Israel’s occupation “does not qualify as an act of self-defence.” And the other Albanese, the wonderful UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, points out that Israel has no right to defend itself against resistance emanating from the territory it controls under occupation. On the contrary, according to international law it is the people under occupation who have the right to resist, including the right to armed resistance.

Israel has dropped more bombs on Gaza than the Allied bombing in World War 2 on Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined! That’s more bombs on Gaza in a week than the US dropped on Afghanistan in one year. In 1967 during the Vietnam War, American scholar Noam Chomsky said something relevant today: “With no further information than this, a person who has not lost his senses must realise that the war is an overwhelming atrocity.”

Doctors have been speaking out about the horrors they witnessed. One American Doctor said “Every Day I was there I saw children shot in the head. That’s not an accident. That’s deliberate targeting of children for death. That’s murder.” The assault on Gaza is not a “war” but a cowardly act of terrorism by the most sophisticated military force against a defenceless population. It’s important to recognise that the excessive, disproportionate military force against civilians – mass murder – is deliberate. It is official Israeli military policy. It’s actually called the DAHIYA DOCTRINE – Google it!!

Netanyahu says that “Hamas attacked us unprovoked.” But, of course, history didn’t begin on October 7 last year. Gaza has been under brutal illegal blockade since 2007. In 2018 during the peaceful protests at the Gaza border Israeli snipers killed or maimed hundreds of unarmed protesters, nurses and disabled people. Australian Human Rights expert at the UN Chris Sidoti said: “Israel’s is one of the most criminal armies in the world” because “this is a period without precedent in a war that has been going for a century.” Of course, Penny Wong says that there is a need “to end the cycle of violence.” What “cycle of violence”? If Tel Aviv was reduced to rubble like Gaza City the world would stop the war immediately.

We must not neglect immense tragedy of the occupied West Bank. Just since October 7, Israeli forces and settlers have killed over 700 people, including at least 167 children. More than 6,000 people have been injured. There is no Hamas in the West Bank but for years, Israel has been killing on average two kids a week. In July, Senator Penny Wong said that the Australian Government has imposed financial sanctions and travel bans on seven Israeli settlers for their violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. That’s pathetic! The entire Israeli Government is a bunch of terrorists and extremist criminals. They are guilty of immense, obscene violence against Palestinians since 1948.

On 19 July 2024 the ICJ reiterated the illegality of the entire Israel occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The decision calls for dismantling of settlements and reparations. The Court specifically said that states like Australia should not recognise Israel’s unlawful presence in occupied territory, nor should they render aid or assistance in maintaining it. So far, Australia has done next to nothing. However, states must immediately suspend all investment, trade and scientific, technical and technological cooperation in these areas and engage in a systematic review of all economic, financial, academic, diplomatic and political ties with Israel – in other words BDS. We must recall our ambassador from Tel Aviv and we must expel Israel’s ambassador from Australia.

Finally, it’s important for me to say something about our chant heard at rallies around the world – “From the River to the Sea …” The apologists for Israel’s crimes claim that this slogan is antisemitic or even a call for the annihilation of Israel. But the charter of Israel’s governing Likud party says there will be no Palestinian state between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the possibility of a Palestinian State and in July 2024, the Israeli Knesset voted overwhelmingly against the establishment of a Palestinian State. Obviously, the global chant is a plea for liberation. My Palestinian colleague Dr Lana Tatour has pointed out: we “ought to listen to Palestinians who have been articulating liberation as an inclusive project of equal rights for all.” She says, this liberation means “equality for all the inhabitants of the land—and the dismantling of the settler colonialism and the apartheid regime that exist now.” This is “The demand for … the right of Palestinians to live in dignity and equality in their homeland.” We should also listen to Palestinian Nasser Mashni, President of APAN – Australia Palestine Advocacy Network:

The call is “a vision for a shared political reality beyond Israel’s current brutal colonial apartheid. It should not be controversial for Palestinians to reject oppression or to aspire for liberation, to live a life in their own homeland, free from Israel’s racist system of control. … That’s why we say Palestine will be free from the River to the Sea for everyone. And if you have a problem with everyone being free, because you only want some people to be free, the problem is not the chant, the problem is you.

“From the RIVER to the SEA, Palestine will be free.”

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