Letters to the Editor
Our future is waiting in the wings
August 11, 2025
For the last 2000 years, advancements in warfare have altered the state of war and without much pushback. Nuclear is just another progressive armament. As destructive as nuclear has been demonstrated to be, its effectiveness is limited. A technology that has greater power and effectiveness is the digital world. Nah. Nuclear is the least of our problems. We have much greater threats to our future staring us in the face.
Aale Hanse from nsw
In response to: Eighty years with the bomb: How long can our luck continue?
No need to increase the GST
August 11, 2025
Despite all the rhetoric, there is no need to increase the GST. Indeed, there is no need to panic about improving our tax system, overall. However, there is one area of taxation that could do with a massive shake-up, and doing so could solve a lot of problems. Foreign companies — especially mining companies — must be forced to pay their fair share for the right to use our nation's people, resources and infrastructure to make a profit. Despite making huge profits, many such companies have paid no Australian tax for decades – and we know how they do...
Tom Orren from Wamberal
In response to: The GST — past, present, future — and always tense
Taking care of the amputated children of Gaza
August 11, 2025
Most of us are feeling helpless to reach out to the Palestinian children and their families. I would love to donate to help the children who suffered amputations and require prosthetics. I am aware that we would not be able to deliver and provide the prosthetists to Gaza, but we can start to organise financially now so we can act on it as soon as we get an opportunity. I would appreciate if you could bring that up with John Menadue and people following Pearls and Irritations who are feeling helpless to help.
Selma Terzioglu from Melbourne Bonbeach Victoria
In response to: The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention
Medibank was radical, Medicare is its reincarnation
August 11, 2025
John Deeble is one of my heroes. He and Whitlam did a radical thing in introducing Medibank. So I was disappointed with the use of Medicare throughout this article. I remember clearly after only a few years of Medibank, Malcolm Fraser's Government gleefully destroyed it, for ideological reasons and following the wishes of the AMA. They changed it to Medibank Private, just another health insurance company. A good, essential thing was cruelly snatched away. If you couldn't afford private health insurance, tough. You paid for healthcare, or went without. It was devastating for many Australians. I remember clearly...
Deanne Perry from ACT
In response to: Vale John Deeble - an architect of Medicare
Understanding the 'war' in Gaza
August 11, 2025
1. Why does Hamas not surrender unconditionally and return all hostages? 2. Is there still any actual armed or other resistance by Hamas militants? (if so, where do they get the ammunition?) Why is a “ceasefire” needed if there are no armed, fighting Palestinians? 3. Has any evidence been given by IDF for (repeated): • murdering food/aid seekers • bombing of civilians. 4. How much opposition is there in Israel (by Israelis) to genocide, as opposed to just return of hostages? 5. How much opposition is there within Israel to West Bank attacks by settlers and...
Bede Doherty from Naarm/Melbourne
In response to: The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention
The Indian Ocean Zone of Peace
August 11, 2025
Let’s look back after Gareth Evans’ article, at the Indian Ocean Zone of Peace proposal by Sri Lanka in 1964 which was endorsed by the UN. I recently found a 1984 letter to me by then aviation minister, Kim Beazley. The letter puts the Forces Posture Agreement with US and UK nuclear armed submarines operating from Rockingham in a new light. Beazley said the then federal government was committed to an IOZP. He was involved in lobbying in Washington for continued US participation in the UN Ad-Hoc Committee on Indian Ocean Arms limitation. Warship visits, under the IOZP, he...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Eighty years with the bomb: How long can our luck continue?
Perpetrators posing as victims
August 11, 2025
War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not colour his crime with the pretext of justice: Voltaire John nails it again. I, too, was a lifelong member of the ALP but can no longer be a member of a party without a conscience!
les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention
Towards a one-state solution
August 11, 2025
I commend Kym Davey for making the case that Hamas should participate in future negotiations for a Palestine state, but what has been entirely absent from the discussion is, what state, where? Since 1948, the amount of land that Palestinians occupy has shrunk from 45% to less than 15% today, and Israel is determined to occupy and annex the rest. As Craig Mokhiber, the former New York director for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has said: “The mantra of the ‘two-state solution’ has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter...
Stefan Moore from Sydney
In response to: Justice for Palestine: Why Hamas must be involved
Obliteration was always, and remains, the aim
August 11, 2025
Everything John Menadue writes of the genocide in Gaza is true. I would add only a couple of things. First, as 7 October 2023 didn't come out of nowhere, neither did the Nakba. In 1948, Israel grew out of several terrorist organisations and its early prime ministers came from within those organisations, ie they were terrorists. I couldn't find a quote I remembered from Moshe Dayan on a TV show to the effect Israel was taken at the end of a gun and will be kept the same way but, in searching, found three others from him showing...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention
Long live the alternative media, especially P&I
August 11, 2025
Re John Menadue's criticism of the media in his article on the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza... Since 1999 I wrote letters to and was regularly published in The Age. Those letters included some about Israel going back over the years. That changed on 7 October 2023. Initially, letters on the nascent days of Israel's genocide went unpublished. All reporting was biased in favour of Israel and actively against Palestine. As time has gone on, it became impossible to ignore what was happening and reports filtered through and letters appeared. As an avid reader and writer of...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: The occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza was always Netanyahu’s intention
It's not only the ABC
August 11, 2025
By all means, criticise the ABC for its low-quality journalism. There are exceptions, but it's never been the same since the Liberals got their hands on the ABC board. However, we have to remember that our traditional, legacy media are no better. And not only on China. They all take their news with an American bias, and sometimes a UK bias. It is also US and Euro-centric. Our knowledge of countries outside those blocks is all but non-existent if we haven't been dragged into a war there. Alternative and new media does so much better. But the problem...
Margaret Callinan from Hawthorn VIC 3122
In response to: Australia needs better China coverage. This ABC story just gave us less
Who's got Dibbs on the paranoia?
August 8, 2025
Some of our more devoted Anglophiles have made substantial careers in Australia out of taking the British Empire's view of the rest of the world as threatening to the empire. That view was adopted by the new American empire which succeeded the collapse of the British in the early part of the last century. Most of these Anglophiles were attracted to the Conservative and often racist side of Australian politics. Paul Dibb fitted comfortably into this 18th century mould when associated with Beazley, who, even though in the ALP, shared the attachment to much of the US and...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Layered perversion of Australia's defence policy
Choctaws and Samaritans
August 8, 2025
Re Paul Heywood-Smith’s article: US House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson has just visited Northwest Palestine and declared that it should be called Judea and Samaria. If we follow the current state of Israel's logic based on ancient history, then Samaria belongs to the Samaritans, not to the Jewish state of Israel. Judaism stems from when Eli in the 11th century BC led a split in the people of the man Israel aka Jacob, leaving the Samaritans in Samaria. The Samaritans were not deported to Babylon by the Assyrians, unlike the Jewish people. What would be Johnson’s reaction...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Palestine recognised
Anti-racist Jews threatened by Zionist McCarthyism
August 8, 2025
Excellent article by Professor Henry Reynolds. Australians are subject to massive “antisemitism hysteria”. Antisemitism occurs in two equally repugnant forms, anti-Jewish antisemitism and anti-Arab antisemitism (including Islamophobia) but these three key terms (and indeed about 80 pertinent terms) were not mentioned in the recently released “Special Envoy’s plan to combat antisemitism”. Data published by expert epidemiologists in the leading medical journal The Lancet indicates that 136,000 Gazans died violently by 25 April 2025, with a “conservatively estimated” four times that number (544,000) dying from imposed deprivation for a shocking total of 680,000 deaths. However, in Australia (as...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: The Segal report and the universities
Democracy or police state?
August 8, 2025
What the court system did was not legalise the march but słow the steady march towards a police state. Any attempt by the NSW premier to change that, by giving the police even more power, will bring us one step closer to a Trump-style dictatorship.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SĄ
In response to: Watermelons in the rain
If AI reduces the working week, fine
August 8, 2025
I can't think of anything better than a reduction in the working week and an associated Universal Basic Income. People are working much too hard and there are too few people left to care for children, the elderly and the ill. It would be nice to have a world where children are brought up largely by their parents (doesn't have to be just the mother beyond the breast-feeding stage) and not shoved into before school care at 7.30m and collected at 6pm and then out-of-school-hours care for the entire school holidays. It would be nice to have elderly parents...
Jenny Goldie from Cooma NSW
In response to: The end of jobs?
Thank you for your voices
August 7, 2025
To all signatories to the open letter to Mr Albanese, thank you. Perhaps the combined weight of your importance and words will put an end to this country’s unforgivable reluctance to do the right and just thing. As an average Australian citizen I have also written to our prime minister and foreign minister advocating the return of the hostages, the recognition of Palestine, the cessation of all war/weapons-related trade with Israel to no avail. To see Australia’s politicians hand wringing, waiting for when the moment is right is not only disgusting, it is ethically and morally wrong. Palestinians...
Lesley Armstrong from Bathurst NSW
In response to: Open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese MP from Australian former diplomats
China's different road
August 7, 2025
At its most fundamental, the US problem with China is that it has chosen a different road to economic security which the US has finally realised is working better than their model. The US model is untrammelled capitalism with vast expenditures on the military to retain hegemony over the world. The Chinese system is socialism with Chinese characteristics. In the last 40 years, the wage of the average industrial worker in China has risen 130 times (not 130%). In that same period, the wage of the average US industrial worker has risen about 4 times. China has...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Is the ‘China threat’ real or trumped up?
Power without purpose
August 7, 2025
Governments in a West declining in importance in an emerging multipolar world seem to see, at some basic level, that their time in the sun is now ending. The problem is they have no idea of how to respond to that reality. So they are reduced to gesture politics and to acting as though nothing has changed at a geo-political level. Australian Governments of the past couple of decades are a good illustration of that, actually dealing with the clearly identified problems that we face at political, economic and geo-political levels with gestures that will meet with daily media...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Roundtable will fix nothing unless we can all park our self-interest
Diplomacy and civilisation
August 7, 2025
It is encouraging for all Australians who truly value whatever remains of our civilisational values, after decades of pathetic abasement of those values before the otiose criminality of the US, to see a group of eminent retired diplomats show their despair at the failure of our leaders to actually honour those values. I admire their desire to speak out against failure to confront Zionist pressure to support genocide!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese MP from Australian former diploma
Spooks and the need for fear
August 7, 2025
Paddy demonstrates a realistic view of the self-promotion of spooks. They are the least accountable public organisations as they cover their activities with a cloak of national security more often than not to prevent the public from seeing the vast waste of public funds involved. Burgess deals in generalisations and vaguely worded, but titillating, assertions without ever being required to produce for the public paying for this any substantive evidence. It is the position many public servants envy. Much public money and no accountability for its use or misuse. The estimates of savings that he suggests ASIO achieves...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Mike Burgess on the ASIO soapbox, again
A joyous and solemn occasion
August 7, 2025
A really heartwarming celebration by Alison of the solidarity demonstrated on Sunday by a massive and truly heterogeneous multicultural event. It represents civilisation at its best, compassionate, concerned, prepared to stand up for the values our leaders so often promote, but so much less frequently demonstrate. Minns demonstrated those leadership failures pretty clearly in his opposition to the expression of the people's will. His position on the genocide occurring in Gaza has brought shame on the political party whose membership simply doesn't share his timidity and lack of moral leadership. Thank you Alison for a wonderful summary of...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Watermelons in the rain
We have the knowledge, we lack the will
August 7, 2025
Irene Watson quotes Aime Cesaire: A civilisation that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilisation to introduce her study of South Australia’s algal bloom. The causes she cites are of pollution: carbon building in the atmosphere bringing increased water temperatures, and nutrient-laden run-offs in the water feeding algal growth. Enabled through weak environmental legislation which, as she says, is always subservient to economic interests, the over-exploitation of our natural environment foretells its continuing decline: floods, droughts, heatwaves, famines, fish kills, extinctions, and more. The problems we face in South Australia are just the...
Chris Young from Surrey Hills, Vic
In response to: Algal bloom: first peoples ngamath-sea country
Palestinian statehood
August 7, 2025
It is interesting that most Australian anti-genocide commentators, who have recently written about the shift in Western countries such as France, Canada and the UK to recognise Palestine, and urge Australia to follow suit, do not seem to consider the views expressed by non-Western commentators located on the ground in the Middle East, who discuss such issues in depth in publications such as The Cradle, Middle East Eye, Palestine Chronicle and Mondoweiss, for example. These commentators, who have in-depth experience and detailed knowledge of regional affairs, are very wary of the fine print in the proposals of Macron, and...
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: Palestine recognised
Competitive Neutrality – the obstacle
August 7, 2025
Has the author, Stewart Sweeney, not heard of Competitive Neutrality? It is a policy adopted by all levels of Australian Governments — in the late 1990s — that prohibits us using such competitive advantages as we — through our governments — may possess in competition with the private sector; it would be unfair. I believe that it was the adoption of this policy — backed by I know not what — that caused local authorities to stop providing social housing and today explains the convoluted finances of the Housing Australia Future Fund and the National Restoration Fund. We...
Colin Cook from Henley Beach
In response to: Bringing government back - but not all the way
We must act on Northern Territory outrage
August 7, 2025
The Northern Territory, like the past to which it belongs, is indeed another country. The barbarity with which children are treated there — incarcerated in large numbers from as young as 10 years old, tortured with spit-hoods and solitary confinement — shames us all. The Gooda/White Royal Commission called for the closure of the Don Dale youth detention centre by 2018 – yet it remains open to this day. The abominations simply continue. It is a waste of time for do-gooders from the South to importune the Territory authorities. I have previously written to all doctor and nurse federal...
Richard Barnes from Melbourne
In response to: Is the NT Government knowingly endangering First Nations children?
Deficits don't threaten future generations
August 7, 2025
The article Tax, productivity growth and equality is based on the false premises that taxes directly pay for federal government spending and that federal government deficits have to be repaid. Modern Monetary Theory informs us that all federal government spending is new spending and that federal taxation merely takes money out of the economy. There is no debt to be paid back by anyone to any other party in respect of the federal government deficit. The federal government deficit is simply the currency that the Australian Government has spent into the economy that hasn't yet been taxed out...
Gregory Olsen from Bundanoon, NSW
In response to: Tax, productivity growth and equality
The ethics of war: What happens at the end of wars?
August 6, 2025
Eighty years ago, the American bomber the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Why? The aerial bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. During World War II, Allied air forces dropped approximately 2.7 million tons of bombs on Germany, much of the intense bombing towards the end of the war, when the Allies already knew they had won the war. Cities like Dresden and Hamburg were flattened, most of those killed were civilians. Why? War is a...
Jennifer Haines from Glossodia
In response to: Palestine recognised
Correcting Richard Llewellyn's letter
August 6, 2025
I'm happy to correct Richard on the points he raised. The US Navy describes the Catalina flying boat as an antique in a wartime newsreel; The life of the Catalina was deemed over at the outbreak of WWII. Veteran Philip Dulhunty and others described it to me as doomed to the scrapyard before it was saved. For colour, which you criticise, I refer you to RAAF Catalina gunner Cyril Payne's hilarious description of his friend Lenny on an early flight using the wrong shute to poo down with the result spraying all over the interior. This...
Robert Cockburn from Sydney
In response to: Flying Boat vs Atom Bomb
Endloesung?
August 6, 2025
I have admired the many pieces Paul Heywood-Smith has written on Palestine. And also the contributions of many others. I have hoped that John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations wasn’t just an echo chamber, but that its powerful facts and writings were influencing general public opinion. But, alas, now I think we are watching Benjamin Netanyahu and the government of Israel preparing for the Endloesung (final solution) for Gaza and the West Bank. Some say the world won’t allow it. Well, it has allowed the 60,000 deaths of the last 20 or so months in Palestine to occur with no...
Geoff Taylor from Perth
In response to: Palestine recognised
Aussie economists aren’t realistic about carbon
August 6, 2025
Felicity Deane’s article repeats the familiar daydream of economic experts” – carbon-pricing best tackles climate change. Case by case, it’s true carbon-pricing schemes can “reduce emissions” or at least reduce the “growth rate”. Back at macro level, so what? Sure, the US has genuinely reduced emissions – largely via coal-to-gas switching. The EU has had an ETS since 2005, but it doesn’t even cover half their emissions. Their emissions-reduction factors are coal-to-gas and more renewables. The power of the ETS itself is debatable. Meanwhile, China gets an indulgent UN pass to burn far more coal than the rest...
Stephen Saunders from O'Connor
In response to: Economists want a carbon price comeback – but does Australia have the political courage?
Conditional recognition of Palestine mere words
August 6, 2025
Reports of 60,000 Gaza violent deaths ignore (a) those blown to bits, (b) those buried under rubble, and (c) the hundreds of thousands dying from imposed deprivation and disease but uncounted because barely surviving, ill, exhausted and traumatised relatives did not risk being killed or injured and carry the dead bodies tens of kilometres in the heat to physically register their deaths with authorities. However, expert epidemiologists published in the leading medical journal The Lancet expertly assessed 64,260 violent deaths after nine months, and by 25 April 2025 about 136,000 violent deaths, this indicative of 544,000 deaths from deprivation...
Gideon Polya from Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria
In response to: Palestine recognised
Who is leading whom?
August 6, 2025
The danger that comes with activating cells of influence that have hitherto remained in the background is that those cells now have to reveal themselves. Zionism worldwide, but seemingly especially within Europe and the Anglosphere, is facing this problem. To counter growing outrage over Israeli actions in Palestine, a small minority has had to reveal just how much lobbying power it has within most, if not all, branches of government. They have forgotten that leading from behind is only possible by remaining behind, and by maintaining an at least deniable, if not invisible, existence. By stepping forward, they take...
Hal Duell from Alice Springs
In response to: Israel activates its cells – the Kostakidis case
A pivotal moment for change
August 6, 2025
Australia should immediately commit to recognise Palestine as a sovereign and independent state on pre-1967 lines, as almost 150 of the 193 UN countries have already done. Recognition of a Palestinian state is solely a bilateral issue between Australia and Palestine. Israel itself does not declare its own borders; indeed, it claims the territory of other states. As Francesca Albanese reminds us, the international community stands atop a precipice. The status quo since 1967 has been disastrous. For the last 668 days, we have watched a live-streamed settler-colonial genocide. Nothing will change unless we heed the clarion call...
James Schofield from London
In response to: Palestine Recognised
Catalina were Australia's long-range bombers
August 5, 2025
Robert Cockburn is quite correct about the role of the Catalina flying boat as Australia's long-range bombers in the Pacific. However, and with respect, some of his descriptions are rather more colourful than factual. They were not saved from the scrapyard, nor were they antiques. Their wings were not canvas - only the control surfaces (ailerons and flaps) were bagged, the rest was conventional aluminium construction. But their exploits he has well covered and I recommend strongly Sir Richard Kingsland's autobiography Into the Midst of Things for much more authentic information. Sir Richard flew the very first...
Richard Llewellyn from Colo Vale
In response to: Hiroshima anniversary – RAAF flying boat vs atom bomb
Please reintroduce readers' comments on P&I
August 5, 2025
Please reintroduce readers' comments to your invaluable articles. I gather you treat such an initiative as a pain in the butt, because, as a longstanding consumer of P&I, I've noted this feature has come and gone at various stages in the growth of P&I. In my humble opinion it adds significantly to the strength of an article. You only have to look at any edition of The New York Times — where there can be many thousands of comments on an article — to see how it adds to the story, both in terms of reader engagement and often...
Paul Montgomery from Mansfield
In response to: The US is a very foreign country
We must be vigilant against both traditional and unconventional threats
August 4, 2025
I’m writing to respond to the discussions surrounding Australia’s defense strategy, especially in light of Angus Houston’s comments in the Defence Strategic Review. While some argue that Australia faces minimal risk of a land invasion, we must consider historical lessons, particularly from World War II. Japan’s decision not to invade Australia was a significant strategic error. Their resources were stretched, and focusing on Australia would have jeopardised their campaigns in Southeast Asia. Today, Australia’s enhanced military capabilities and strong alliances, particularly with the US, create formidable deterrents against potential aggressors. However, we should contemplate unconventional threats, such as...
Lawrence Lyons from Rockhampton
In response to: Does China really want to invade Australia?
The evil of antisemitism and other equal evils
August 4, 2025
Yes, yes, antisemitism is an evil and must be eradicated. It has no place in a civil society. But at the same time it is not any greater evil than any other prejudice that besmirches our society. For Jillian Segal to elevate antisemitism above all other evils like racism, Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination, which only those who have experienced can comprehend their widespread harm, is unbecoming. In particular, it is unbecoming to associate antisemitism with criticism of the genocide perpetrated by the Netanyahu Government. What is incomprehensible to most people is, knowing what the Jewish...
Jon Jovanovic from hobart
In response to: Humanitarian propaganda conceals the real famine in Gaza
Courage and Albanese?
August 4, 2025
All sentient, compassionate and justice-loving people can only hope that our prime minister will finally provide the same honour to the name Albanese as Francesca Albanese has done at enormous costs to herself and her family. Courage can be infectious!
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: ALP members demand more from PM on Palestine
AUKUS and Gilbert and Sullivan
August 4, 2025
Fowler indeed did a wonderful job, as I have said in these pages in the past, but he also succeeds in evoking images of infantile cupidity and stupidity as so beautifully portrayed in the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. He is rather dunder-headed. Still distinctly, he's a duck. The Gondoliers. A perfect summary of the Dodgy Brothers character played by Scott Morrison.
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Nuked: The submarine fiasco that sank Australia’s sovereignty
Confucian commitment and the dam
August 4, 2025
This is a very informative and carefully thought-out article. The question of Chinese intentions is raised with respect to potential concerns of India and Bangladesh. Those concerns can and will be dealt with by China as it deals with all such issues, by good-faith negotiations and through the five principles of peaceful co-existence that China has adopted in the Sino-Indian Agreement of 1954. These underlie China's foreign policy generally.They are mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and co-operation for mutual benefit and peaceful co-existence. China...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: China is building the world’s biggest hydropower dam. Why is India worried?
Speaking the unspeakable
August 4, 2025
Leonie has admirably summarised the facts that the Western media has been burying for the last 80 years. Memory, as far as the persecution of the Palestinian people is concerned, is a very dangerous thing to possess. The Zionist cabal have spent that entire time erasing the memory of what they have been doing to the Palestinian people for that entire time. But truth in the end will out. as George Santayana so memorably wrote, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In this case, the people who have been condemned to repeat their...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Palestinians have a history of oppression long before 7 October, 2023
P&I lets us down with Al Jazeera article on Syria
August 4, 2025
I feel sure that most Pearls and Irritations readers are anti-war. P&I can make us more alert to insidious war propaganda and so better able to take a stand for peace and humankind’s survival. Yet, P&I posted an article by Al-Jazeera's Mat Nashed that dealt with the recent fighting in Suwayda, Syria, and the Israeli response. When it comes to Syria, Al-Jazeera is basically a mouthpiece for the foreign policy of Qatar, whose royal family provided billions of dollars toward the phony war in Syria, as it’s described by Jeffrey Sachs. Qatar is known for its links...
Susan Dirgham from Melbourne
In response to: Sectarian tension, Israeli intervention: What led to the violence in Syria?
When the chips are down, the people unite
August 4, 2025
It is difficult to disagree with Cynthia in her summary of the poison informing those who equate criticism of Israel with that much abused word, antisemitism. It is difficult for ordinary citizens of the world to grasp the depth and extent of the daily atrocities being carried out by the members of the most moral army in the world. It is as difficult for them to comprehend the active participation in this daily barbarity by the mainstream media and their servile journalists and editors. In countries around the world, people have finally had enough and are massing in their...
Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW 2041
In response to: Jewish safety and the weaponisation of antisemitism
Time to move on
August 4, 2025
Thank you, Hiba Farra. The Israeli Government warns against “rewarding Hamas”. What about “rewarding the perpetrators of 70 years of attempted ethnic cleansing”? Rather than continue with the barbarism of ancient Middle Eastern religious disputes with their “chosen people” idiocies and holy texts that call for women to be killed for burning incense and fathers being told to kill their kiddies to prove their blind obedience to a jealous, homophobic God with anger management problems, it’s time to adopt the social values that are accepted around the world many thousands of years later. Is it possible for the...
Neil Hauxwell from Moe Victoria
In response to: Australia speaks of normalising Israel, My family is living through genocide
The Australian Government's choice
August 4, 2025
In the conclusion of his profoundly significant article, Hiba Farra, noted that The Australian Government has a choice: stand with justice, or stand in the way. The Albanese Government has never been interested in matters of justice on any matters, domestic or external. Its focus is entirely on policy and associated funding which serves its careerist interests, nothing else. It has long since made a choice. It now seeks to protect that choice in its own interests by all means available in relation to evading accountability for complicity in genocide.
Peter Henning from Melbourne
In response to: Australia speaks of normalising Israel. My family is living through its genocide
The real antisemitism
August 4, 2025
I am so tired of the Zionists claiming antisemitism where if they really looked at the term would realise what they are committing is antisemitic. It usually refers to the peoples of the Levant and includes Palestinians, as well as the ancestors of Noah. Semitic people or Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia.
Melody Kemp from Balmoral Brisbane
In response to: Australian journalist in court accused of ‘antisemitism’
Show some leadership, Albo and Penny
August 3, 2025
Trump's real estate dealmaker mate Witkoff completed his GHF-curated no famine here tour of Gaza last week, while NSW's Chris Minns whinged about the the sheer inconvenience of Sunday's pro-Palestine demo on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Meanwhile, Albo and Penny Wong are guardedly preparing to recognise Palestinian statehood, given the state is one of appalling human horror, rubble and expended American supplied ordinance. Hiba Farra eloquently and heart breakingly makes the point from the perspective of his own family's experience. Come on Albo, show us something resembling visibilty, courage and leadership on Palestine. By the same token, Penny...
Donald Clayton from Bittern 3918 Victoria
In response to: Australia speaks of normalising Israel. My family is living through its genocide
Is the tide really turning ?
August 3, 2025
Is the tide turning or is this yet another example of political opportunism... wedge the other party? We need to ask ourselves this question before we vote in a system where PR election promises are deliberately vague to limit criticism when they are not delivered.
Bob Pearce from Adelaide SA
In response to: US Senate Dems vote to block arms sales to Israel – the tide is turning, says Bernie Sanders