BY ALISON DELLIT
"If I stole your wallet, and then came up to you and said that it was too late, now that it was stolen, to give it back, and offered you just $15 of the $100 that was in it — would you accept?", Wajma Tapadshah, a member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance and a student at the University of Western Australia, asked me. "If not, then how can you expect Palestinians to give up on their land?"
Like Resistance members all over the country, Tapadshah has been campaigning on her university to defend the Palestinian people against Israel's renewed war on the Occupied Territories which began in late March.
Resistance campus clubs have initiated meetings and protests on 11 different universities, as well as video screenings and are attempting to organise debates with representatives of Zionist organisations.
Because of their support, in particular, for the right of the 3.7 million Palestinian refugees to return to the towns and villages they or their parents were driven out of by Zionist terror in 1947-48, Resistance campus activists have had to combat accusations of "anti-Semitism" from the Zionist Australian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS), which argues that the Palestinians should simply be satisfied with whatever land Israel offers them.
But Resistance members argue that what they are doing is important to win peace and social justice. They have been angered by the massacre in Jenin, and the number of people killed by the Israeli military.
"There is [on Australian universities] an overwhelming ignorance of the history of the [Middle East] region", Tapadshah told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly. "People think this is a war between two countries. They don't understand that it is ordinary people struggling for their homes against a big power."
"The massacre of Palestinians must be stopped and Israel must withdraw all its troops from the Occupied Territories, implement all relevant UN resolutions and allow the Palestinian refugees to return. Only then will we see a just peace", Maria Voukelatos, Resistance organiser in Brisbane told GLW.
Media black-out
"We are aiming to break through the media blackout", Perth Resistance organiser Fred Fuentes explained. "The corporate media, partly because they have been banned by the Israeli military from parts of the Occupied Territories, but mostly because they are pro-Israel, concentrates on the Palestinian suicide bombers, not the violence of the Israeli military, which kills far more civilians."
"Our objective is to educate people", George Youssef explained. "People are willing to listen and to learn." Youssef is a Resistance activist on La Trobe University in Melbourne. He explained that Resistance decided to organise a speak-out on April 10 in defence of Palestine, and from there initiated a Palestine Solidarity Network (PSN).
"We thought there might a few people on campus willing to speak-out. But when we got to the Agora, where we were going to hold the protest, it was chokkas — full of people."
Since then, the PSN has organised another protest, and contingents to Palestine protests in the city. PSN now has more than 80 contacts spread over six Victorian campuses.
Resistance member Kim Halpin is La Trobe University's education officer. She has used the office-bearer's budget to support the protests, and the PSN meets in her office, despite condemnation from AUJS members.
"I've been abused profusely at Resistance stalls by two different AUJS members", Halpin explains. "Actually it was quite good, because other people came over and defended me, and then took some of the information I was handing out."
"I was elected on a 'No war, No racism' platform", Halpin said. "To promote Zionism at the moment is to support war and racism. That's not what I was elected for."
While maintaining the right to organise speak-outs against Israeli aggression, the PSN is anxious to debate Zionists on campus. The network offered the AUJS the first spot on the microphone for the second speak-out, but the organisation declined, refusing to attend, because the event was "inherently racist and anti-Semitic". The AUJS has not yet accepted any of Resistance's repeated invitations to debate on any campus, although negotiations continue.
"We don't have a problem with Judaism", Halpin explains, "but with the Israeli state. To oppose the 54 years of oppression of the Palestinian people — the racist system of segregation, the theft of land and the ethnic cleansing — has nothing to do with anti-Semitism."
Zionist students
According to Resistance national co-ordinator Simon Butler, the AUJS "pretends to represent Jewish students, but actually it represents Zionist students — it's a myth that all Jews are Zionists".
In Perth, some Jews (not members of the AUJS) have attended the speak-outs and meetings. "The question here isn't religion", Fuentes told GLW. "It is what is happening to the Palestinian people and which side you stand on.
"Socialists support the Palestinians because we oppose all oppression — that's why socialists fought alongside Jewish people against Nazi Germany. We fight with the Palestinians against their oppression — not by a religion, but by one of the most highly militarised states on Earth."
Youssef and Halpin argue that at La Trobe the speak-outs are actually helping to fight racism. La Trobe has a high proportion of students from Arabic or Muslim backgrounds. "After the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center", Halpin noted, "racist graffiti repeatedly appeared on campus with slogans such as 'Kill all Muslims', 'Muslims, I hope you all die' and 'Make it a job of yours to kill as many Muslims as you see'."
"Muslims really did cop it", Youssef explained. "They wondered 'who is writing this?' and felt intimidated. People like Resistance members, who speak out against their oppression, give them confidence.
"We had an influx of young Arabs to the first PSN meeting. They had a better understanding of what is going on in Palestine [than most Australians] and they were angry, but didn't have a focus. The PSN got everyone together, and then the next speak-out had heaps of Arabic people involved."
The AUJS has recently been putting up posters around La Trobe claiming that Palestinians train 10-year-olds to be terrorists.
"There are a lot of misconceptions about suicide bombings", Tapadshah told GLW. "People think they are absolutely supported by all Palestinians, which they are not.
"We point out that they are acts of desperation — because they see no other means of resisting oppression. If you don't have tanks and helicopters, then people think that this is all they can do. The bombers don't help the Palestinian people — they make things worse — but you can't just condemn them and forget about Israeli terrorism."
At Sydney University, Resistance members are involved in a Free Palestine Collective (FPC), which was launched at a 100-strong protest on the campus on April 9.
"I think a lot of people don't know very much about what's happening", FPC activist and Resistance member Aaron Benedek told GLW. "But since Israel's attacks on the West Bank, a lot more people are interested in finding out.
"We try to engage with those people — through 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, and printing things off from the internet about what is happening. We also raise the issue in different university departments and activist collectives."
The FPC plans to set up mock "checkpoints" on campus to let students know what it feels like to be a Palestinian living under Israel occupation.
Debates
Resistance members are planning to continue the speak-outs and meetings, and are negotiating with Zionist student groups to hold debates on as many campuses as possible in late May.
According to Fuentes, "the protests can make a difference, not only in putting pressure on the Australian government to oppose Israeli aggression, but so that Palestinian people know they are supported across the world".
"We want the campuses to become places where students stand up against all oppression throughout the world", he added.
Tapadshah agrees. "I joined Resistance in March. I don't agree with everything it says, but what Resistance is doing now is a good thing — every human being with a heart who listens would see this and would be supporting the Palestinians."
"The people who rule the world can do as much as they want to try to stop the masses", Youssef said, pointing out why Resistance keeps trying to convince more people. "But if everyone stands up and won't go away, things will change."
[To get involved in Palestine campaigning on your campus, contact your local Resistance centre, listed on page 2, or visit the Resistance web site at .]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 1, 2002.
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