I first met Ali Kazak soon after he arrived in Australia in the early ’70s when I was in my early twenties.

Ali invited me to his flat for lunch and I noticed that he had Alberto Moravia’s, The Conformist, on his coffee table; the brilliant film version of the novel by Bertolucci had not that long been released, and we immediately started an animated conversation about the main character in the book, Marcello, a former philosophy postgraduate student of a Leftist philosophy professor in Rome who joins Mussolini’s fascist secret service, the Ovra, and becomes a central figure in luring the professor to be assassinated by his new employers in Paris.

Our discussion ranged widely and I recall a number of key themes dealing with resistance to oppression, which soon after went on to discuss specifically the plight of the Palestinian people and Zionist intentions and strategies.

We were both very young, of similar age, and we were both open to understanding each other because we had much in common: Ali’s family were victims of ethnic cleansing and the Nakba and I was the child of Holocaust survivors.

I recall mentioning to him my perspective and hope of the fusion of Palestinian and Jewish people, that is, my hope that intermarriage and a new Palestinian-Jewish culture would emerge in Palestine. This hope of mine was, of course, shattered over the years by the increasingly murderous and intransigent ethno-nationalism and ethno-centrism of the Zionist Establishment which now shamelessly conducts a war of annihilation against the hapless Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Ali and I kept up intermittently thereafter and I followed him through a number of publications. Ali struck me from our first encounter as a very sincere human being, wanting to bring justice, the end of oppression and light to the world, a human being who wanted a reconciliation between the Palestinian and Jewish peoples.

I look forward to his legacy continuing and our common visions being realised in the not too distant future.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.