Category: Australia

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Ilan Pappé on the Apartheid Israeli Regime

Here’s the podcast of Ilan Pappé, interviewed by Geraldine Doogue on Radio National. Ilan is speaking at several engagements in Australia and appeared at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney. He also appeared on Q and A. Accurately, Ilan stated: “Israel wants to remain a racist state and a democratic state – this is an oxymoron.”

Ilan Pappé on the National Press Club 19/9/12

Celebrated Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé whose landmark publication, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” documented the planned removal of 700,000 Palestinians from their lands in 1948, has written a new book “The Forgotten Palestinians”.

In the book, and at this September 16 community meeting at Sydney University, Pappé reveals the situation for the Palestinians who still live within Israel’s borders.

This was the first event of Professor Pappé’s 2012 Australian lecture tour. It was hosted by the Sydney Peace Foundation at the University of Sydney with the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine and Leichhardt Friends of Hebron. Professor Pappé is in Australia as the guest of AFOPA to deliver the annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture at the University of Adelaide.

Ilan Pappé’s Melbourne address.

The two state solution is an hegemonic Israeli plan … to incorporate the West Bank. Its time has passed … Israel will ghettoise the West Bank. You have to decolonise the land, the people, to liberate them, it’s too early to talk about peace, you have to end oppression first. Only then can people can sit down and talk about what comes after the oppressive reality. The horse sees things differently from the rider, the rider does not see things in the same way.

The first but not the only way of convincing political elites that their way is the wrong way is pressure from the outside. BDS is part of what we should do, to send a political message that what Israel is doing is unacceptable. Constructive dialogue with Israeli Jews, educating them to see what life would be like after the oppression ends is important.

You need all ingredients to be in place, you won’t do it solely through BDS.

…

Oslo was oppression by other means.

UPDATE 28/9/12

Desegregating The Conflict: The History Of Collaborative Struggle In Palestine, Collaborative Struggle Conference, 24.09.2012 at the University of Woollongong

2012 ESML Presented By Ilan Pappe

Israel’s bravest historian

UPDATE 23/9/12

Notes from Middle East Reality Check on Ilan Pappé’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas address on the subject Israel Is an Apartheid State:

Is this a dangerous idea? Many Israelis wouldn’t think so. Nor South Africans. Nor many journalists and progressive folk in the West. Liberal Zionists though find it dangerous, and for many years have been trying to square the circle in an attempt to justify Israel’s apartheid policies. Jewish communities, of course, are allergic to the very idea. No, it’s not the recognition that Israel is an apartheid state that’s dangerous, it’s Israel itself that is dangerous; dangerous to Palestinians, dangerous to Jews in Israel and abroad, and dangerous to the world beyond.

Apartheid is a generic term for a legal, economic, social and political regime based on dispossession, discrimination and segregation on the basis of race, religion or nationality. The early Zionists, who were prolific diarists, described the Palestinians as dangerous aliens and usurpers. Their resistance to Zionist colonisation led the colonisers to develop apartheid policies of self-segregation and gated communities, which they forced on the native population once they’d become a ruling majority in 1948.

They institutionalised segregation, forcing on the Palestinian minority in Israel an invisible apartheid based on restricted living spaces, double standards in the courts and reduced access to state benefits. The Palestinian Israelis are confined to enclaves, with no new Arab towns being built since 1948. In contrast, hundreds of Jewish settlements have been constructed. In the West Bank, apartheid is starkly visible. Gaza of course is a world on its own, a large ghetto. How ironic that the people who most suffered from policies based on demography and population control in Europe should be dishing it out to others in Palestine.

Update 19/9/12:

Ilan Pappé on QandA

Ilan Pappe likens Israel’s invasion of Palestine to Aboriginal dispossession

The premise of Terra Nullius, in which European settlers viewed Australia as an unoccupied space, is similar to the idea that the Palestinians willingly gave up their land.

Understanding and accepting this premise is one of the keys to reconciliation and forging a peaceful future, Professor Pappe says.

“Building reconciliation on the basis of these acknowledgments, understanding what kind of privilege you’re going to lose if you accept you are the dispossessor, and so many other issues that are really comparable. If you are an average Australian who accepts the basic narrative of what happened in Australia, the comparison is very clear.

“It is a problem of not accepting indigeneity, and claiming that it was either settled or disappeared or can be handled, instead of accepting it. Settlers and native people always have a complex relationship but the first step is acknowledging that this is the basic paradigm, the basic reality.”

Another historical comparison is that of apartheid South Africa, Professor Pappe says. Invoking the word “apartheid” is highly provocative; the term has legal implications as well as emotive ones, but he is resolute that the name is justified.

The ideology of apartheid – of separation, of segregation – is not dissimilar in the two countries, he says, arguing that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has also drawn the comparison between the two situations. “I don’t think it’s too strong a term. As a scholar I would like to go deeply into the comparison and see the similarities as well as the dissimilarities. But from the general perspective of what kind of attitude Jews have towards non-Jews in the state of Israel, I don’t know of a better term in a legal realm in that respect.”

South Africa did manage eventually to overcome the bitter policy of apartheid, and so too can Israel, Professor Pappe believes, but it must involve what he describes as “the three As”: acknowledgement, acceptance and accountability. Israeli, Jewish and Western acknowledgement that ethnic cleansing has occurred and that refugees want to return to their homeland; Israeli accountability for what has happened in the past; and an acceptance in the Arab world and among Palestinians that the Jewish nation is part of the Middle East.

It is not a completely hopeless prospect, he says, but accepts that it is very difficult for those with established standpoints to move beyond those and make a fundamental shift about how they view the problem before a solution can be found. And a solution is fundamental for the two nations, the region and the rest of the world.

“The future of Palestine is not just the future of Jews and Palestinians who live there, it’s the future of the relationship of the Arab and Muslim worlds with the west,” he said in an earlier lecture.

ABC Radio Conversation Hour with Jon Faine, Claire Bowditch & Greg Jericho Tuesday 18 Sep 2012

Related Links

Ilan Pappe in Australia at Coalition for Justice & Peace in Palestine (CJPP)
Radio National Breakfast makes Palestinians peripheral to their own dispossession, and invites zionist Morris to respond to Pappé
Danby’s petulant criticism of the ABC having Pappé on QandA

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Successful BDS Protest at Max Brenner, Parramatta

BDS rally at Max Brenner, Parramatta 19/9/12From the Palestine Action Group Sydney:

150 supporters of Palestine staged a rally in Parramatta in support of the global campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid today. The protest was timed to also commemorate the massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon 30 years ago.

The Police had yesterday requested the Palestine Action Group cancel the event, but organisers decided to proceed as planned.

Demonstrators were addressed by South African activist Kolin Thumbadoo, who was president of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Australia during the campaign against apartheid in South Africa.

In his speech Kolin stated, “As I was then, I am now, an implacable, unapologetic anti-racist. As I was opposed to a white minority regime in South Africa, so to am I opposed to a racist Zionist regime in occupied Palestine.”

The protest marched to the Max Brenner chocolate shop in Parramatta to highlight it’s connections with the Strauss Group, an Israeli corporation which publicly supports two of the most notorious brigades in the Israeli Defence Forces, the Golani and Gavati brigades.

“Just as in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, companies that support or profit from Israeli Apartheid should be boycotted,” said one of the protest organisers, Patrick Langosch.

The Palestine Action Group plans to hold more demonstrations in the future to continue to support the BDS campaign and the struggle of the Palestinians.

Related Links

BDS Action at Max Brenner, Parramatta – Photo Slideshow

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Noosa Moves Toward De-Amalgamation

Lake Cootharaba
Protecting our Noosa environmental assets from development is essential – both for their intrinsic ecological values and to ensure a prosperous future for Noosa’s major industry – green tourism.
As I contemplate the ongoing zionist invasion of Palestine against the popular will of Indigenous Palestinian people, this happy local event reminds me that privileged white people are winning in a predominantly white democracy where Indigenous people are marginalised.

On another level however, this first step toward Noosa’s de-amalgamation from the Sunshine Coast Regional Council represents what a community can do from the grassroots to redress undemocratic wrongs – the forced amalgamation by the Blight government and theft of our successful shire’s money to prop up two unfinancial southern shires ravaged by Councils complicit with developers’ unsustainable greed.

NOOSA’S bid to separate from the Sunshine Coast Regional Council is one step closer to success.

Local Government Minister David Crisafulli announced this morning he would progress Noosa’s application for de-amalgamation to the Boundaries Commissioner for further consideration.

Noosa is only one of five successful applicants.

Nineteen former shires applied for de-amalgamation.

Boundaries Commissioner Col Meng and the Queensland Treasury Corporation will work together over the next two and half months to consider the cases for de-amalgamation.

“This was always going to be a difficult process but if a proposal stacks up, the community will make the final decision at a referendum,” he said.

Free Noosa chairman Noel Playford says he’s delighted that Noosa has made the cut, although not surprised.

“Let’s be honest, if our submission had not made it to the next stage, then nothing would.”

Mr Playford took Noosa’s 70-page submission and a petition of residents to the Minister’s office late last month.

He says the Boundaries Commissioner and his staff will soon be heading for Noosa to speak with local people and gauge for himself just how deep is the passion for de-amalgamation.

The former Noosa mayor said it was a once-only shot at breaking away from the “giant Sunshine Coast Regional Council”.

“For those who want to protect our balance of low-key development, lifestyle and natural beauty, we will probably never get another chance.”

Mr Playford has urged local people to make a brief statement to the Boundaries Commissioner on the issue.

“We need people to tell him what they think, why they want their council back. He’s read about the passion for independence in Noosa, but now he needs to see if for himself.”

The Noosa area – a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve – represents an environment on which we humans and the animal and plant species with whom we share a habitat rely. Having respect for the land on which we all depend means having respect for Indigenous values. Noosa will be protected through de-amalgamation – and our environmental and democratic values will prevail.

Participate in the online poll – vote for de-amalgamation of Noosa.

Take action against Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and homes at Silwan.

Related Links

Mr Playford said “the money story” was that Noosa’s 15% of the population was paying 21% of the Coast’s bills.

“A Noosa businessman suggested to me the other day the SCRC is like a giant slug sucking the life out of Noosa. That may be a little over the top but you get the picture.”

Free Noosa
A Sustainable Australia
To vote or not to vote
In our Noosa garden
It’s a busted trike, not a Ferrari, Mr. Beattie

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Confronting Islamophobic Propaganda on Muslim Rage

Elise Hendrick [@translator_eli] takes a satirical look at the duplicitous efforts of mainstream privileged white media to promote bigotry and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s islamophobic, faux-feminist views.

Newsweek Muslim Rage

Related Links

Films Don’t Start Riots
Did Police Use ‘Proportionate Force’ On Film Protesters?

Tired of the violence and stupidity
Jeff Sparrow on the neoliberalism of ruling elites who denigrate democratic protest.

In Australia, neoliberalism is understood largely as an economic model, characterised by the sweeping privatisations that Carr championed in NSW. But, actually, it’s more than that. Neoliberalism differs from a classical free market orientation precisely because it extends beyond the economy to embrace the entire social world, which it then recasts on market lines. The neoliberal project doesn’t just assign to the market those roles previously understood as quintessentially responsibilities of government (such as, say, the provision of utilities); rather, it recasts governance itself as an entrepreneurial project, with productivity and profit increasingly normalised as the criteria to judge success and failure.

In other words, neoliberalism effects a thoroughgoing depoliticisation. Most obviously, this manifests itself in a belief, now shared by almost all mainstream politicians, that government should not intervene in the market. This conviction – a consensus about the role of politicians as simply economic caretakers – already renders out of bounds most of the policies that previous generations of social democrats would have taken for granted.

More importantly, neoliberalism also recasts governance and the democratic process in market terms. The resulting political culture casts citizens as autonomous economic agents, relating to each other and to the state as individual entrepreneurs. The politician no longer appeals to party members, unionists, religious believers or specific communities; instead, he or she addresses individual consumers, touting for their business in much the same way as any other corporation.

In the neoliberal polity, it makes no more sense for citizens to rally than in does for, say, users of Apple computers to hold a march. In both cases, their role is simply to consume, with the ballot box understood as an extension of the cash register. If the latest iPhone is a dud, buy an Android; if the Labor Party’s been in power too long, vote Liberal.

Because democracy is understood as a market, rallies, protests, demonstrations and strikes seem, to the neoliberal, not as expressions of the popular will but as outrageous assaults on the democratic system.

To be clear, we’re not seeing the end of the right to protest, so much as its hollowing out. In the neoliberal era, tightly-controlled top-down events are still considered legitimate – witness the staged spectacles at the recent Republican and Democratic conventions in the US.

He’s my brother – why angry Muslim youth are protesting in Sydney
13 Powerful Images of Muslim Rage
Newsweek’s ‘Muslim Rage’ Cover Mocked Online
White Australia – Nation of Bigoted Climate Savers
Offending Muslims is different: on the Sydney protests

Upcoming Events

Challenging anti Muslim Bigotry: Why the left needs to defend the Muslim protests
Anti-Muslim Racism, Police Brutality and Imperialism: Why we stand with Muslim protesters: Including EYEWITNESS accounts of what ACTUALLY happened at the demonstration
Stand up to Racism and Rally Against Islamophobia

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On Co-Resistance: Sahar Vardi and MIcha Kurz in Australia

Israeli activists, Sahar Vardi and MIcha Kurz recently completed a speaking tour of Australia. Sahar and Micha are among a growing number of young Israelis who are taking an active stand against their government’s occupation and policies of oppression against the Palestinian people.

Packed meeting to hear Vardi and Kurz
Some notes:

Kurz on Israeli politicians: ‘They are not interested in a peace resolution’.

Kurz: ‘Making up 40% of the population, Palestinian Jerusalemites are not allowed to vote’.

Vardi: ‘There’s a huge bigger picture there which has to do with foreign investment and who makes a profit out of this at the end of the line – definitely not Palestinians, but not necessarily Israeli citizens either. Israel’s biggest import today is arms, military technology – Israel can sell this stuff because it can prove it works. Israel builds the wall and they have the security systems set up, then when the US wants to build a wall between Mexico and the US it uses Israeli technology because it knows it works.’
Micha speaking
Kurz: ‘We saw G4S stickers all round Melbourne today. G4S runs the largest prison camp in the occupied territories … runs the largest private military in the world. They are active in other areas of urban warfare, in western cities everywhere. The question always has to be who is making a profit … that keeps it away from fear or anything to do with antisemitism or security, it has everything to do with global profit. What inspires me about the BDS movement is it has managed to suggest a grassroots movement where politicians have failed and has united people from the grassroots up … it’s something Israelis can support. I support the BDS movement.’

Kurz: ‘We work for justice and human rights … When I hear ‘peace’ I hear agreement between two equal parties. There are no two equal parties here. There is an Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people.’

Kurz: ‘I’ve given up on politicians. What it comes down to is strategically building a grassroots movements, both global and local. The global movement is growing and succeeding despite the mass media – we know not to trust them anyway. I’ve witnessed firsthand how things are succeeding.’