Janet Parker, on behalf of Jews for Palestine, gave the following speech at a protest in Boorloo/Perth on October 12.
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As ever more horrifying images come out of Gaza and Lebanon, the Australian government and corporate media become ever more shrill in their support for the Israeli state and their condemnation of those who dare to protest for humanity and justice.
The West Australian reported our peaceful gatherings last weekend as being “hate-filled”, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese solemnly warned about the “cold shadow of antisemitism after October 7”. In July, he appointed Jillian Segal as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.
The same government and media repeatedly blames the Palestine solidarity movement for fanning the flames of antisemitism, for undermining social cohesion.
They claim that the student encampments for Palestine at our universities have made Jewish students feel unsafe.
Jews for Palestine refutes this.
Palestinians were not responsible for antisemitism in Europe, let alone the Holocaust. We refuse to let Western politicians make them bear the burden of Western guilt. You don’t atone for one genocide by supporting another.
It’s embarrassing that this even needs to be said.
The Palestine solidarity campaign has been vigilant about giving no room to antisemitic language and behaviour. Jews for Palestine members have been present at every rally over the last year and have been welcomed with open arms.
It may well be that these protests have made supporters of Israel feel uncomfortable, as they grapple with the reality of their attachment to a genocidal ethnostate.
But this is not antisemitism.
Of course, there is antisemitism in the world and, like all forms of irrational prejudice, we must strive to stamp it out.
Whether or not there really has been a rise in antisemitism is hard to judge because the pro-Zionist Jewish community organisations count all Palestine solidarity activity as incidents of antisemitism, making their figures completely unreliable.
This dishonest accounting is both a slur on the Palestine solidarity movement and actually undermines the fight against antisemitism.
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If there has been a rise of antisemitism, then significant blame for it must rest with Israel. It is Israel and its backers who falsely conflate Jewish identity with unconditional support for Israel. It is Israel that sticks the Star of David all over its machinery of war.
It is Israel that dishonestly claims to speak for all Jews, that claims we rely on Israel to keep us “safe”, and hence we support its genocidal war on Palestine.
It’s hardly surprising that some people believe all this, especially when it is repeated uncritically by the corporate media — the same media that censors anti-Zionist Jewish voices and pretends we don’t exist.
None of this is new, and is itself antisemitic.
The basis on which Albanese and the corporate media claim that the slogans of the Palestine solidarity movement are antisemitic is transparently false.
The Arabic word intifada simply means uprising; in using this, we are defending the lawful and moral right of Palestinians to resist occupation, ethnic cleansing and oppression.
We want the Palestinian peoples to be able to live freely in their traditional homeland. For that to be possible, all people “from the river to the sea” need to enjoy the same rights, regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity.
It defies belief that a state that grounds its so-called “right to exist” in the evils of the Holocaust and historic oppression, can revisit the horrors of death and persecution on another people.
Will the appointment of Segal, immediate past-President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry bring a more nuanced view to the table?
To the contrary.
Segal has made statements insisting there be no ceasefire in Gaza until every hostage is released. By this she means the Israelis taken captive on October 7, not the thousands of Palestinians that Israel holds without charge.
Anyone who opposes a ceasefire is actually prioritising a continuation of the annihilation of the Palestinians over a release of the hostages, just as Benjamin Netanyahu does. It’s why his government now turns water cannons on the protesting families of the Israeli hostages.
Segal has lobbied university vice-chancellors to take disciplinary action against student protesters; she has repeated the totally discredited claim that children were “beheaded in their beds” on October 7; and she insists there is no evidence that Israel is not observing the laws of armed conflict.
What? Did the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice get it all wrong?
As someone with a track record of smearing legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitic, it is more likely Segal will in fact be an envoy for promoting racism, division and the criminalisation of legitimate political criticism of the Israeli state.
We saw this at our protest last week with police insisting — unsuccessfully — that a banner that read “Israel Kills Kids” — a widely known and reported truth — be taken down.
There have been numerous reports, from credible sources, about children arriving at the hospital with single gunshots to the head or chest. At the time, they were playing in the street: they were singled out by sniper fire — a deliberate targeting of Palestinian kids for no reason other than the goal of ethnic cleansing.
We have also received complaints from police about our use of the chant “From the river to the sea”. Some of us have received complaints from Jewish supporters of Israel that our wearing of keffiyehs makes them feel unsafe.
Unable to win the moral, political and legal arguments, the apologists for genocide in parliament and the media are pushing back.
First, they are seeking to deny our rights and freedoms. We’ve seen people sacked from their jobs, students threatened with expulsion or disciplinary action and a senator driven out of the Labor Party.
Secondly, they are doubling down on the disingenuous claim that our movement is antisemitic, that we are “hate-filled”, in an attempt to silence us all.
Let us be very clear, it not hate but love that motivates those protesting for Palestine and Lebanon. We are angry not with Jews, but with the state of Israel that inflicts this barbaric assault on the peoples of Lebanon and Palestine.
If you want to see hate, I recommend you watch the Al Jazeera documentary Gaza that reflects on a year of ethnic cleansing and draws from the social media postings by Israeli soldiers and civilians. This is hate of the kind witnessed during the Holocaust: the denigration and dehumanising of an entire peoples to justify, indeed celebrate, their annihilation. It is devastating viewing, but shockingly real.
It is love not hate. It is grief and a sense of permanent rage at a system so racist, so steeped in colonialist self-justification, so dominated by geo-political and economic interests over human rights, that drives us forward.
We rage at the Labor government that maintains bilateral military ties with the perpetrator of genocide, while for the victims it offers impotent, performative hand-wringing.
We rage at this government that abstains from the United Nations General Assembly’s resolution demanding Israel end its illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
We rage at a government that continues to pump money into the Israeli military industrial complex, even after the ICJ finds a case of plausible genocide.
As Netanyahu doubles down in his effort to create a new “Greater Israel”, we must redouble our efforts to force this government to cancel all military ties and impose diplomatic and business sanctions on Israel.
Supporters of justice will not be vilified and will not be silenced.
History will judge those who remained silent at this time, just as history judged those who remained silent during the Holocaust.
Israel does not speak for all Jews and never has done. None of us are free until we are all free. Not in our name.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.