Israeli Orientalist Festival in Morocco Bellyflops

Moroccan BDS activists who say NO to normalisation with apartheid Israel have claimed victory with the cancellation of the second Mediterranean Delight International Belly Dance Festival which was to be held in Marrakech in May. The Festival has now relocated to Loutraki, Greece in June. It is produced by Israeli Simona Guzman, also involving owner of an Israeli belly dancing school, Asi Haskal, and Israeli belly dance teacher Anabel.

While the Festival site is available in English, Hebrew and other languages, there is no Arabic version, highlighting the exploitative orientalism of the Festival.

Guzman is crying foul:

“I cancelled it because I didn’t receive any authorization and I was afraid for the safety of my participants,” festival producer Simona Guzman told AFP.

Islamist members of parliament and pro-Palestinian associations had criticized the invitation to the Israelis for the May 10 festival.

Criticism over the Israeli presence was first heard last year when the festival was also held in Marrakesh, but the event went off without mishap.

On her Facebook page, Guzman falsely blames “fanatic Moroccan islamists movements” for her cancellation and exposes her racism and bigotry. According to Moroccan news source, Scoop, the Festival was cancelled due to the participation of Israelis. However, objections to the Festival came from across the Moroccan community, regardless of religious view. Guzman further admits on her Facebook:

While the pressure increased, we were asked by the Moroccan authorities to ask for an authorization to produce the festival in Moroccan Territory, a thing that was never asked before. We were suppose to receive an immediate confirmation, but the Moroccan bureaucracy has it’s own time, and time is running short.

The Festival was opposed by Moroccan BDS activists because it was organised by Israelis and aimed at whitewashing Israeli crimes.

Elsewhere, in Hespress, Guzman denies being Israeli and claims to be a Turkish citizen, while on Rue 20 she is said to have “family roots in Turkey and Morocco” and “responded she was surprised by reports in the Arabic media that the event had stirred controversy in Morocco because Israelis would be present”. Yet on her own site she is described as “among the leading belly dancers in Israel”, and offers bellydancing classes in Israel.

‘I teach belly dancing to women of all ages – ranging from high school students to pensioners.

The classes are offered privately, at “Studio C” at “Derech Haim House” and Beit Danny in Tel Aviv and in many other locations.’

The Festival website, bellydancefestival.net is registered to

simona guzman
moshe basula 1
tel aviv, israel, tel aviv 69869
Israel

At the present time, the Belly Dance Festival website shows the transition to the new venue and dates – the homepage and registration have been changed, still many of the associated Moroccan activities have not been altered.

The Festival is partly sponsored by Israeli business Sea of Spa, based in Arad, whose website is owned by Yuval Yarin Dead Sea Ltd. Sea of Spa claims to be “a family business that was founded in 1998, though its activities at the Dead Sea began at the end of the end of 1980s.” YYDS Ltd also owns seaofspa.biz.

Sea of Spa products are marketed, along with Ahava’s, on deadseaofspa.com “founded in 1999. Dead sea of spa.com is a web store dedicated for dead sea and other products related to Judaism and the state of Israel”. seaofspa.com and deadseadeal.com market Sea of Spa products too and have the same domain owner information which coincides with the contact information on the aforementioned storefronts. Ahava.co and seaofspa.us are also owned by the same organisation.

new dead sea
pob 507
arad, 80700
Israel

The visit of the ex-Israeli Consulate from New York, now Head of European Parliament Liaison Department – Mission of Israel to the EU, David Saranga, was also the target of Moroccan protest last week.

On Sunday, Israeli diplomat David Saranga was forced to cut short a working visit to Morocco after tens of thousands of people took part in a pro-Palestinian protest in front of the parliament in Rabat where he was attending meetings.

Saranga, Israel’s representative at a meeting of the Euro-Med organization that groups the 27 EU states with Israel, the Palestinian Authority and eight Arab countries in the region, was escorted out of the parliament at the end of the meeting and – instead of spending another night in the Moroccan capital – was taken directly to the airport and put on a flight to Paris.

Palestinians have called for boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel until they receive their just human rights guaranteed under international law.

Congratulations to BDS Maroc for successfully fighting normalisation with apartheid oppression. Morocco, which has been exploited by Israel as a playground for normalisation, is now at the forefront of the anti-normalisation campaign.

UPDATE 24/4/12

Moroccan belly dancer Nour withdrew from the festival after becoming aware of the BDS anti-normalisation campaign. Translation of scanned material below:

The people against normalization with Israel are getting ready to face off against the Belly Dance Festival. (written in yellow)

Khalid Alsoufiani. with the National Labor group for the support of Iraq and Palestine disputes Guzman’s claim that she is Moroccan, (she claims her mother is Turkish) Khalid said that if Guzman was speaking the truth then she needs to leave Israel and move to Morocco then.

Noor (dancer who cancelled): Don’t entangle me in this troublesome situation with this festival, I’m not going to participate in it.

Kuzman: I am from Moroccan origins and seek for peace
Anti-normalisation activists prepare to face the oriental belly dancing festival

Last year, a Zionist delegation of 17 dancers participated in the festival.. so how many dancer will they participate this year?

Last year, Al-Tajdeed (renewal) newpaper which was owned by the minister of telecommunications and the spokesperson of the new government, published an article on its front page about the the Zionist dancer who is gonna visit Marrakesh to teach the Moroccan girls how to shake their bellies in the capital of Yusuf Bin Tashqin. So what the newspaper is going to write this year which is a tool to Adala and Tanmiya (Justice and development) party?

The activists of Al-Misbah (Lamp) party protested last year in front of the hotel which organised the festival demanding to punish who allowed it to be organised, and kick the Zionist dancers out. Who is going to punish whom this year? who is going to kick the Zionists out? adding: “how come some business men allow themselves to let their classy hotels host Zionist dancers, and at the sametime they claim their support for the national issues and not promoting alcoholic drinks in their markets.” Summing up: The second version of the oriental dancing festival which was organised from the 6th-11th of May.

Related Links:

Youth and BDS groups corresponded with PM Benkirane to cancel the Festival because of its normalisation of zionist oppression against Palestinians.

BDS Maroc calls for cancellation of an Israeli company exhibition in the printing industry and associated sales activities, while Moroccan Palestinian solidarity organisations demand the Moroccan government criminalise normalisation with Israel.

A new report on the complicity of Hewlett-Packard with the policies of the occupation

Challenging Zionism’s False Dichotomy : Human Rights are for All

In his excellent response to Daniel Levy, Yousef Munayyer sets the record straight and takes apart Levy’s liberal zionist apologetics, emphasising that Palestinians are not seeking a zionist-style national identity as Levy and others assume, but rather rights as a priority.

“The question of Palestine has always been one of rights — rights to vote, rights to return to and live on your land, rights to equality among others — and not simply one of identity. Palestinians are not in search of a national-state identity; we know who we are, and we are the people of Yaffa, Haifa, Nablus, Ramallah, Gaza, Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine.

This is perhaps why the ‘peace process’ was such a dismal failure. It attempted to Zionize the Palestinian cause, converting it from a cause of rights to a cause for an ethnically homogeneous state to address a Zionism-created problem of statelessness within the confines of 22% of Palestine. Palestinians do not want a state for the sake of having a state, a flag, an anthem, an army, or a president. Palestinians who supported a two-state outcome only sought a Palestinian state in so far as that state would be a vehicle toward realizing Palestinian rights.”

Disgracefully, the nationalist ethnosupremacist ziocolony, founded at the expense of Palestinians’ human and civil rights, advertises the achievement of these essential rights as a threat to its existence.

Munayyer goes on to explain:

“It is because Zionism holds that these two things, Palestinian human rights and “national Jewish interests” are mutually exclusive. It’s because Zionism was put into action at the expense of the rights of Palestinians and that the maintenance of Israeli Jewish monopolization of political control demands the continued violation of Palestinian rights.

The way forward requires us to challenge this false dichotomy, which means challenging Zionism. The human rights of Israeli Jews do not need to be violated in any way for the human rights of Palestinians to be realized.”

Daily, Israel abrogates Palestinian rights in the most appalling ways – like how Israeli soldiers trained this week:

‘Israeli soldiers shot an 18-year-old shepherd in the chest on Thursday evening during military training exercises in the northern West Bank.

Yasir Suleiman Nijad Kaabnah was shot while herding sheep and camels near Wadi al-Maleh in the northern Jordan Valley.’

And here’s how Israel torments and brutalises the Indigenous Palestinian people of the village of Al Aqaba.

Yet zionism doesn’t only abuse the rights of Palestinians, it exploits its Jewish citizens as well – Holocaust survivors are struggling to make ends meet. Political zionism is intrinsically antisemitic from the first as it’s predicated on the lie that Jews cannot be safe anywhere except in an ethnosupremacist entity, and yet in apartheid Israel, Jews who were persecuted in World War 2 are not safe. While Nutanyahoo exploits the Holocaust on Remembrance Day for political gain, drumming up fear of Iran, sloganising and extolling the fascist Jabotinsky, as Peres hypocritically preaches about antisemitism. the Kadish and ‘love thy neighbour’, some 2,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors are having their sustenance completely curtailed by the Israeli treasury.

Back in the Occupied Territories, it’s been just another week of monstrous Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity committed with impunity against Palestinians, brushed aside by the international elite since it collaborates with the zionist ruling class.

As the cycling Danish victim of Israeli military fascism who has received stellar international media coverage noted “What happened to me is nothing compared to the systematic violence carried out on Palestinians. This is not a single incident, it’s what we see every day. But it’s very difficult to move the focus from me to the issues of the Palestinian struggle in the West Bank.”

Out of sight, out of mind, 206 Palestinian children imprisoned by Israel languish in Israeli dungeons, often in solitary confinement.

Israel has increased its incarceration of Palestinian children by 53% since December 2011 according to Defence for Children International. In the full bulletin for March:

‘This month [March] saw a 10 percent increase
in the number of children prosecuted in
the Israeli military courts and
imprisoned. This is the third consecutive
month in which a rise in the number of
children in detention has been
recorded. There has been a 53 percent
increase in the number of children held
in military detention since December
2011. This month also saw a 29 percent
increase in the number of young
children (12-15 years) being detained.

On 26 March, DCI re-issued an Urgent
Appeal
on behalf of children held in
solitary confinement. In spite of a
number of UN agencies calling for a
complete prohibition on the use of
solitary confinement for children, the
Israeli Security Agency (ISA) and the
Israeli Prison Service (APS) continue to
hold children in isolation. The reason the
UN has called for a total prohibition on
the use of solitary confinement for
children, is because the psychological
impact can be severe, and in some
cases catastrophic. Since 2008, DCI has
documented 50 cases in which children
report being held in solitary
confinement at the Al Jalame and
Petah Tikva interrogation centres.

On 31 March, DCI submitted a report to
the UN Committee Against Torture. The
purpose of the report is to assist the
Committee in its preparation of a List of
Issues prior to the review of Israel?s fifth
Periodic Report under the Convention
Against Torture in 2013. All states that
have ratified the Convention are
reviewed by the Committee every four
years to assess compliance.’

How can a state which systematically and flagrantly abuses children be permitted impunity? Kony must be envious. Human rights are for all – but prosecution and censure for human rights abuses are limited to those disfavoured by the cruel, biased hegemon and its cronies. Israel singles itself out by its crimes and impunity for them.

Raed Salah commented this week in the Guardian:

The Palestinian issue can only be resolved if Israel and its supporters in Britain abandon the dogmas of supremacy and truly adhere to the universal values of justice and fairness. Britain has a special responsibility in this, because it is uniquely responsible for our suffering: our national tragedy began with the Balfour Declaration.

While Britain enforced the first part of the declaration, which promised Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people, but ignored the part that states: “It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

The US, UK and Israel are ruling class vehicles – Israel is the thorn in the side of the region to divide and rule on behalf of elites. Poisonous spells of conflict, racism and bigotry are woven and infused to disunite and attempt to make resistance futile. Resist anyway 🙂

Palestine / Israel Links

Habima’s cultural propaganda role exposed. Israeli Foreign Ministry will fund Habima’s Globe performance
Appeal to L. Subramaniam to boycott the Tel Aviv White City Music Festival 2012
Land thief Israel continues to thumb its nose at the Geneva Conventions … “the prefabricated permanent homes in the illegal outpost were built in lands officially recognized by Israel to be owned by Palestinians.”

Israeli soldiers and policemen expelled resident Khaled An-Natsha and his family from their home in Al-Ashqariyya area, in Beit Hanina, north of Israeli controlled East Jerusalem. The eviction came following a court order that granted Israeli settlers ownership over the property

A senior United Nations official has condemned the eviction today of two Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem and called for an end to such violations of international law.

Israeli undercover unit’s murder of Palestinian civilian was part of “training exercise” :

‘Conducting the operation was the Duvdevan Unit, a division of the Israeli military that is characterized chiefly by impersonating Palestinians and carrying out undercover operations and trainings. It appears that the training on 27 March, which incorporated a grave breach of international law, is an integral and systematic element of training this elite group.’

Find out how to support the US Methodist church major divestment initiative

1200 racist rabbis think Israel is not responsible for human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Raed Salah: “Despite the Israeli policy of “transfer” – another term for ethnic cleansing – the Palestinians will not go away. The Israeli state can occupy our lands, demolish our homes, drill tunnels under the old city of Jerusalem – but we will not disappear. Instead, we now aspire to a directly elected leadership for Palestinians in Israel; one that would truly represent our interests. We seek only the legal rights guaranteed to us by international conventions and laws.”

Ilan Pappe writes about the hysteria manufactured and marketed in Israel and elsewhere by the malignant narcissist, sociopathic ruling class.

So biting – on the hasbara of dialogue between unequals bringing ‘peace’. : Freedom Funnies: ‘The Angel of Dialogue, the Gift of Censorship, and the Power of Boycott’

Why a cultural boycott of Israel is justified

Campagne BDS France : Renaud Garcia-Fons, Don’t Play for Apartheid

French composer and double-bass player Renaud Garcia-Fons is scheduled at the White City festival in Tel Aviv, apartheid Israel on May 6th. This is the English translation of an open letter written to him by the French BDS Campaign, Campagne BDS France. Don’t Play Apartheid Israel (DPAI) has made a facebook calling on all the artists scheduled to perform at the festival to cancel: Don’t Play Tel Aviv White City – It’s Today’s Sun City.

Paris, 17 April 2012
Renaud Garcia-Fons
Dear Renaud Garcia-Fons,

On 6 May next, you plan to give a concert in Tel Aviv at the “White City music festival”.

We are surprised to learn that you, who are attached to the respect for human dignity, would perform in a country which has been mocking international law for more than sixty years. We recall your participation in an “Orchestra for Peace” at the “Human Solidarity Concert” in Paris in 2002.

Miguel Angel Estrella, who was at your side during that concert, is today a member of the support committee of the Russell Tribunal for Palestine. The conclusions* of that tribunal at its recent session in Cape Town, South Africa, are unambiguous: Israel is responsible for grave violations of international law and is guilty of the crime of apartheid.

Renaud Garcia-Fons, are you aware that, while hundreds of music-lovers would be able to enjoy your talent in Tel Aviv, thousands of others would be deprived of it, being relegated behind a separation wall?

For decades the Palestinian people have been victims of Israel’s apartheid policy, which scandalously curtails their most elementary rights: their access to water, to education, to medical care, their freedom of movement.

A people under colonolisation in the West Bank, a people under a blockade in Gaza, a people under discrimination in Israel, added to the refugees whose right to return was recognized by the United Nations but never implemented by Israel. The international community closes its eyes while the Israeli government behaves with total impunity: its killing of hundreds of civilians in 2009 during the “Cast Lead” attack on Gaza; its constant military incursions in the West Bank and its military check-points there; the numerous inequalities between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel regarding medical care, work, and public services; the thousands of uprooted Palestinians living as refugees all over the world; the peaceful activists participating in the Freedom Flotilla in 2010, killed in cold blood.

Faced with such injustice, Palestinian civil society decided in 2005 to launch the BDS campaign: boycott-divestment-sanctions against Israel as long as it does not respect international law. This movement, inspired by the struggle of the South Africans against apartheid, has now taken on international dimensions and the boycott of the State of Israel is growing everywhere.

Today, numerous artists have chosen not to perform in Israel as long as that state does not change its policies. In the film world, Ken Loach, Jean-Luc Godard, Meg Ryan, Dustin Hoffman and Mike Leigh, along with musicians such as Roger Waters, Brian Eno, Annie Lennox, Carlos Santana, Elvis Costllo, Gil Scott-Heron, Gorillaz, The Pixies, Massive Attack, Gilles Vigneault, Vanessa Paradis, have all cancelled their appearances which were scheduled in different Israeli cities.

By going to perform in Israel you would be participating in the normalisation of a colonial situation. Please don’t help to close the eyes of French citizens by acting as if nothing unacceptable is happening over there. We can readily imagine that you were unaware of the situation on the ground, but from now on you can no longer say “I didn’t know!”.

If you would like to have more details about the policies of the Israeli government, we would be glad to provide them.

Dear Renaud Garcia-Fons, we appeal to you to join the artists who are boycotting Israel as long as that state refuses to respect international law, and to cancel your concert at the festival in Tel Aviv.

With best wishes,

BDS French Campaign

CICP

21 ter rue Voltaire

75011 Paris

http://www.bdsfrance.org/

SOURCE

* http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/south-africa/south-africa-session-full-findings-french

Welcome to Palestine, Unless You Criticise Apartheid Israel

Handala on Air Flotilla 2One and a half thousand humanitarians are hoping to visit the West Bank to participate in a children’s education project. They are such a threat to the apartheid zionist entity that Israel is demanding airlines cancel tickets – so far Lufthansa, Jet2 and Air France have obliged, making them and other airlines who collaborate with Israel’s obscene demands legitimate boycott targets.

The activists have been invited by 25 Palestinian civil society organizations to spend next week in the Bethlehem area building an elementary school, planting trees, and repairing village wells that Palestinians say have been damaged by Israeli settlers.

Israel has a habit of barring those who critique its atrocious oppression and commit the sin of supporting Palestinian human rights, including Richard Falk, Noam Chomsky, Guenter Grass and Norman Finkelstein.

The bans on entering Israel are made on political grounds:

If you are a Likud supporter, flying into the Israeli airport should present no problem. But if you are a supporter of Palestinian rights, the Netanyahu government could stop you from going to Bethlehem on purely political grounds – even if you have never committed any crime and have no intention of ever committing one, even if you have never attended a Palestinian protest in the West Bank and have no intention of attending one. You could be barred by the Netanyahu government from going to Bethlehem simply for the thought crime of supporting Palestinian human rights.

Apparently, you can be deported by the Netanyahu government not because of what you do, but because of who you are. If you are an “activist”, then Palestinians welcome you to Bethlehem, but you may not be able to get there, because the Netanyahu government may deport you for being such an “activist”.

If Israel doesn’t want people to visit Palestine through the Tel Aviv airport, it should allow Palestinians to open their own and to administrate their own entries and departures – in other words, end the criminal Occupation enforced by Israel. After four and a half decades of brutal military Occupation by the apartheid zionist entity, the global community is stepping up boycotts, divestments and sanctions as punitive actions to end Israel’s criminal oppression and imprisonment of the Indigenous Palestinian population whose lands and resources Israel continues to thieve with impunity. Governments refuse or are unable to act responsibly to ensure Indigenous Palestinians have their full human rights and to enforce more than 30 UN Security Council resolutions of which Israel remains in breach.

UPDATE 15/4/12

How Israel orders your Airline around: The Letter which bars #Airflotilla2 activist from boarding (Update!)

Sami Kishawi marks the atrocious Israeli admonitions to humanitarians participating in the air flotilla and the hypocritical threat letter to airlines permitting them to fly.

News of detained WTP participants

Zionism is a *real* threat to 11 Israeli Jews now arrested at al-Lydd airport by the antisemitic #IOF for supporting #Fly2Palestine

Pro-Palestinian activists detained in Israel

Related Links

Like and share the Welcome to Palestine 2012 page
APPEAL FROM THE PALESTINIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE UK TO MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT
‘We have cancelled your booking’ — the criminalization of travel to the West Bank is laid bare to the world
Welcome to Palestine: ‘Even prisoners are allowed visits’
Israel in Europe: airlines cancel ‘flytilla’ passenger tickets
British airline bars 3 women traveling to Palestine
Airlines Cancel Tickets Of Dozens Of Flytilla Activists | #Airflotilla2
Airlines cancel activists’ flights to Israel

Palestine / Israel Links

Israeli forces raid West Bank civil defense office
Israeli fascist goonsquad attacks Palestinians and internationals. “Eight Palestinians and four internationals were arrested and at least three people were injured by the blows they suffered at the hands of police. One Italian woman suffered an injury to her shoulder that required hospitalization.”
Ben White on cultural boycott: “Boycott is a strategy, not a principle. And as such, it’s a response to a call from Palestinian civil society, which is seeking to mobilise international civil society as a way of realising their basic rights. It is a familiar tactic, used to resist local and global injustices. Are Palestinians prohibited from resisting colonial occupation – and looking for allies as they do so?”
Palestinians frustrated over Quartet statement ?

“Senior PLO official Hanan Ashrawi took a much harder line, saying the Quartet statement, which made no reference to Israel’s ongoing occupation of the territories, demonstrated “a lack of will” to establish a Palestinian state.

“Unfortunately, the Quartet did not propose any specific policy measures or means of engagement required to create a breakthrough in the current crisis,” she said in a statement.

“The real issue is not ‘negotiations’ but rather ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land,” Ashrawi said.

“The glaring absence of any reference to this occupation portrays a lack of will to bring an end to it and to establish a viable Palestinian state.”‘

OPT: Protection of civilians – OCHA Weekly report (28 March-3 April 2012) (3 April 2012) – Multiple war crimes, collective punishment, murders, mayhem, oppression – the apartheid zionist entity never fails to appall.

Israel’s Killing Spree on Verdun Street

Israel assassinated key strong Palestinian leaders in 1973 to assist continuance of its oppression and land theft. “each of the three slain men had singular qualities that made the Israelis want to eliminate them, says Maan Bashour, who was a member of the PLO information committee at the time as a representative of the Arab Liberation Front. “[They struck] Kamal Adwan because of his activities inside Palestine, and because he was the youngest of the resistance leaders and a major inspiration for youth; Abu Yousef because he was one of the main planners of the operations of the Black September organization; and Kamal Nasser, the freedom fighter from Ramallah, as a cultural and media star with his popular and especially Christian credentials,” says Bashour.”

Debating Palestine: Representation, Resistance, and Liberation – Abdulhadi argues: “We need to restore this sense of the indivisibility of justice and combat tendencies that present Palestine as an exceptional case of suffering and liberation.”

PACBI-Serrat and Sabina: Refrain from Entertaining Apartheid Israel until Freedom, Justice and Equality :

‘You both struggled under the oppressive and fascist regime of Franco in Spain, and must know what it means to resist oppression, and not to entertain it on its terms. We ask you in this spirit to stand with the oppressed Palestinians who are appealing to you to reconsider your performance. ‘

Ron Paul confirms his ziophilia, sucks up to conservative christan zionists
Oh oh, the zionist cover is blown – Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor knows Iran hasn’t threatened to wipe out Israel.
Rightwing zionist fleeces a poor Californian community and sends the profits to finance illegal settlements in Occupied East Jerusalem
How you know the PA collaborates with Israel: it shuts down the Palestinian Human Rights Foundation “claiming the group’s activities were not consistent with the interests of the Palestinian people.”
Don’t let the rightwing fanatics censor truth – Don’t let the Religious Right silence Desmond Tutu
The zionist SWC proceeds to attempt to obliterate Muslim culture – even the graves of dead Muslims are not exempt from annihilation. “Since the plans to construct the Museum of Tolerance on Mamilla Cemetery began in 2004, nearly 60 other descendants of those buried at the cemetery and I have made repeated appeals to try and stop the disinterring and destruction of the remains of our ancestors.
Israel’s Lawless Settlement Project ~ Fact Checks

Why Does the Occupation Continue – Max Ajl reviews Shir Hever’s “The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation”
We are privileged, say 2 Israeli refusers

Leave the Land Alone

Leave the Land Alone

We share this land of timeless dreams,
mysteries of tree and bone,
tribal journeys of dance and song
symbols painted on stone.

Songlines of the Indigenes,
they used to call it home,
broken by colonial greed
the land had never known.

We poison the lakes and dam up streams,
this land that is our home,
quarry the hills and cut down trees,
don’t know how to leave it alone.

Why do we break this fragile land
and bring it to its knees?
Our eyes are blind with dollar signs,
so much that we should see.

Do you fear the force of machinery
and big money lying?
it’s hard to live guilt-free
when the country’s dying,

All that’s part of you and me
laid waste by greed and scheming,
don’t you know we’ve taken enough,
Let the land lie dreaming.

Jinjirrie 2007

Senator Bob Brown, leader and founder of the Australian Greens from 1992 until April 2012, has departed politics suddenly, with his position to be filled by Senator Christine Milne. In a country where multi-party plurality is nigh on impossible, the Greens have benefited from growing awareness in the community of the limited nature of our most precious Australian resources – our native fauna and flora, and that on which we all depend for survival – water.

Bob’s charisma and record as an environmental campaigner led many ALP voters disillusioned with Labor’s neoliberalism and environmental compromises to jump ship. How will the Greens fare without Bob at the helm? will the flagging ALP be able to woo back voters and will the party machine have the foresight to incorporate more green promises in order to do so?

Salute, Bob – your common sense and values will be sorely missed in public life – your record as an exceptional advocate for the environment and humanity is unequalled in Australia’s history. I hope you have some happy years of bushwalking and photography and find time to record your memoirs.