Letter

In response to P&I authors expose Israeli atrocities, but with what effect?

It's not war

Genocide is taking place in Palestine and Australia is showing moral cowardice.

Calling for a ceasefire is water off a duck’s back to Netanyahu. Recognising Palestine infuriates him to the extent we try to placate him. Treading gently in the name of “community cohesion” is to be complicit and allows the supporters of genocide to remain comfortably complicit also. The press is guilty. No protest at the targeted murders of their fellow journalists. Printing errors of fact in news, opinion and letters pages enables further killings.

Australia must act. We actively supported BDS when South Africa was an apartheid state. Israel is both an apartheid state and a genocidal one.

Locally, we must call out those universities, and others of influence, that accept the IHRA definition of antisemitism, thereby shutting down criticism of, and action against, genocide. Australian citizens who participate in genocide must face the legal consequences. Those who support genocide must be shaken out of their comfort zone by being confronted with truth.

If we fail to act, we are morally bankrupt and when “they” come for us and there is no one left to speak for us, as Martin Niemöller famously said, it will be our just desserts.

— Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn