"Palestinians in Australia are Positioned as Settlers of Colour"

"The State of Israel was created on stolen land 72 years ago."

That's just one of the glaring canards contained in a recent statement (drafted by poet Sara M. Saleh along with academics Dr Micaela Sahhar and Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah) signed by innumerable Australian academics, artists and activists, well-known and obscure, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, Muslim and non-Muslim,  that appears in the radical left Australian literary journal Overland, created in 1954.

Signatories include academics Linda Briskman, Bassam Dally, John Docker and his son Ned Curthoys, Ann E. Fink, Gary Foley, Ghassan Hage, Jake Lynch,  Peter Manning, Stuart Rees, Nick Riemer, Peter Slezak, and Marcelo Svirsky; broadcaster and writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied; feminist Sara Dowse; playwright Samah Sabawi, journalist  Maher Mughrabi (features editor, The Age newspaper), and poet Sunniya Wajahat.

Bizarrely,  one high profile signatory, ABC and BBC media favourite Ms Abdel-Magied, who should need no introduction to most readers (see here if you need to), is a participant in this forthcoming "Festival of Jewish Arts and Music" forum!

But I digress.

Most of the  signatories' names will be instantly recognisable to watchers of anti-Israel initiatives in Australia.  If not, googling should pay dividends. It certainly did for me in the case of Susan Stryker, an American gender studies professor in the United States who, it turns out, is not currently based here but was a visiting professor on an Australia campus in 2004.

The statement, inter alia (emphasis added):

 ".... The State of Israel was created on stolen land 72 years ago. Its illegal military occupation of the West Bank – which imposes a punitive legal system on Palestinians in contrast to their Israeli settler counterparts, who enjoy the rights of full Israeli citizens – has been ongoing for 53 years. Throughout this time, Israel has continued to commit war crimes in breach of the Geneva Conventions, and to violate the most basic of Palestinian human rights, ultimately denying Palestinians the right to be sovereign in their own homeland.

Israel’s annexation plan will cement the apartheid reality that currently exists. It confines Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza within 115 bantustans that are physically, economically, socially, and politically cut off from each other. The Israeli state has subjected Palestinians to land confiscation, ethnic cleansing, forcible population transfer, home demolitions, settler violence, severe and discriminatory restrictions on their right to freedom of movement, excessive use of force, torture, and a racist legal system and state apparatus which explicitly operates by granting preferential political, legal, social, cultural and economic rights to Israeli Jews ....

We draw great inspiration from current global justice movements committed to the eradication of racism, fascism, imperialism, and apartheid — a collective and intersectional emancipatory process of decolonisation. As iconic civil rights campaigner Angela Davis writes, “When we are engaged in the struggle against racist violence…we can’t forget the connections with Palestine. In many ways, we have to engage in an exercise of intersectionality. Of always foregrounding those connections so that people remember that nothing happens in isolation.” As Davis makes clear, an unequivocal stance against all forms of racial oppression must include support of Palestinians.

From Minneapolis to Jerusalem to Gadigal land, all sites of recent state-sanctioned violence, we affirm the critical ongoing and historic solidarities between different movements against systemic and institutionalised state violence, systemic oppression, and brutality. Palestinians in Australia are positioned as settlers of colour and have proudly sought and affirmed solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our indivisible anti-colonial struggles....'

Coming hot on the heels of that statement in Overland is this piece in the same magazine.  By postgraduate student Tasnim Mahmoud Sammak, it evidently seeks a One State Solution, entailing the elimination of Israel, as the following extracts [emphasis added] indicate:

"It wasn’t long ago, in December of 2018, that Scott Morrison recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital while holding back on moving the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv (my colonised home city of Yaffa) to West Jerusalem. The move made Australia the only western nation to follow the United States in in supporting the expansion of the Zionist settler-colonial project across internationally-recognised Palestinian land ....

As a Palestinian, I consider it an insult that Western politicians summon the two-state solution in our support as though it were anything but a position of forced surrender....

 This lip-service to two-state solution is the premise for opposing the annexation across political parties in Australia. This includes the Greens, in spite of their more sympathetic record to Palestinian rights.... 

The Palestinian struggle is connected to the global BLM movement through an interlinked vision to dismantle racist settler-colonial structures and systems....

As Palestinians, we have suffered the consequences of the legitimisation of Zionism as a settler-colonial, ethno-nationalist project....

We should demand that our global protest against annexation be tied to our imaginaries [sic] of a Free Palestine. Committing to anything less is a racist’s peace and a racist’s justice.

It is not enough to expect pro-Palestinians to accept the utterance of words of support against annexation from politicians supporting Orwellian peace agreements. The time for feigned pro-Palestinian support should be over. Genuine support for the Palestinian struggle demands opposition to Israeli settler colonisation itself."

 It appears, since images of their logos (along with those of certain private bodies) appear at the base of its website, that Overland receives financial support from the Australian Government, from Creative Victoria (an agency of the Victorian state government), from the Melbourne City Council, and from the Australia Council for the Arts.  These four bodies are financed by the Australian taxpayer, including Jewish taxpayers. It is outrageous that taxpayers' money should be used to finance a magazine that publishes material opposing the existence of the state of Israel and which publishes material that is arguably antisemitic.  It is to be hoped that Australia's Jewish and Zionist representative organisations will strongly protest about the use of taxpayer's money to fund this magazine.

In Australia, a New Kid in the Anti-Israel Bloc

Elizabeth (Libby) Coker is the Australian Labor Party (ALP) member for the Victorian seat of Corangamite in the Australian Federal Parliament.  An ALP parliamentary hopeful for quite some time, Ms Coker achieved her aim of entering the federal House of Representatives at the 18 May 2019 federal election.

Her maiden speech, delivered on 10 September last year, was notable, inter alia, for its rambling length.  During it, she declared that

"One of the key challenges in making a better Australia for all of our children is to address the great contradiction that our success has been achieved in someone else’s land at their expense.... [K]nowing our history cannot be separated from the history of Aboriginal Australia, and that includes understanding what it means for all of us that Aboriginal land was stolen, never ceded...."

On 26 February this year she (below, in white dress) joined federal Greens leader Adam Bandt and hard left federal ALP member for Macquarie Susan Templeman in a public anti-"Apartheid" Israel fest under the auspices of APAN (the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, whose name she mangles here):

Note (squint at black box) her endorsement of this ludicrous comment (describing "the Palestinian people" as "possibly the most oppressed people in the world") below that post on Facebook!

More recently, on 4 March, Ms Coker delivered a squalid little Israel-demonising speech in the House, in which she showed her faith in a certain contentious kangaroo court:

"I want to talk about Palestine and Israel. The underpinning of a civilised world is not only Australian domestic law but also international law. The International Criminal Court was set up to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

 We were one of the first signatories to the treaty that established the court. The third most recent country to join the treaty was the State of Palestine. The ICC prosecutor has spent five years in a preliminary investigation looking at allegations, including that Israeli authorities have settled Israeli civilians into Palestinian territories, a clear breach of the Geneva Conventions; that Palestinian Security Services in the West Bank have committed torture against civilians under their control; and that there has been criminal behaviour by both the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups. The prosecutor wants to prosecute these alleged crimes.

 Given the territorial complexity, the pre-trial court has sought submissions to determine whether it has jurisdiction. The Australian government, along with only five other governments, has indicated it does not think that the court has jurisdiction—not because there are no crimes to answer but because we do not recognise Palestine as a state. I ask: why did Australia feel it necessary to make this observation and risk the capacity for the ICC to consider these possible crimes? Why should Australia not leave the umpire to do its job?

Ms Coker's support for the Palestinian Arabs, who of course have so successfully rebranded themselves as the "Palestinians", with its very unfortunate implication that they, not the Jews, are the indigenous people of Eretz Israel, reflects her support for the Australian aborigines.

Numerous Australian aborigines themselves know better, seeing the analogy between themselves and Jews as dispossessed First Nations, and support Israel for that reason. See, for instance, here and here

One who doesn't is long term activist  Gary Foley.  He, too, is a member of APAN, and that organisation, headed by retired Anglican prelate Dr George Browning, seems to be upping the ante of late.  Check it out.

In Australia, Nuts & Bolts of Bias Against Israel

There are some columnists who, if they did not exist, would have to be invented.

Australia's Andrew Bolt is one such.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPkR9mWGre4

(Hat tip: Ian)

Meanwhile, antisemitism hots up in Melbourne.

And, courtesy of the Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation (ACHPER), Victorian Branch, an anti-Israel libel appears on an exam paper:

'A Victorian  year 12 Health and Human Development practice exam included a question asking about religious discrimination and how it can influence mental health giving an example that the demolition of  homes by  Israel persecuted Arabs.

A sample answer stated, “An example of an individual being persecuted for their religion could be the Arab families living in Israel who practice the Islam religion rather the Jewish religion. Including unlawful demolition of homes and forced displacement and detainment of these families.”...'

Read more here

On Gaza, So Very Corbyn, So Very Bartolotti

The tissue of lies associated with the flare-ups on the Gaza-Israel border in recent days has been well-investigated by Honest Reporting, here.

That the usual suspects are making the most of the opportunity to demonise Israel is, of course, to be expected, and in Australia as well as in London and elsewhere anti-Israel activists, typically a strange yet familiar concoction of far leftists and their Islamic allies, have been on the march to demonstrate support for the so-called "Great Return March".

Through the lens of anti-Israel campaigner Alex Seymour (aka Seymour Alexander), a glimpse of the bourgeois Corbynista types who made common cause with Muslim defenders of Hamas to protest in London's Whitehall on Saturday at Israel's treatment of (ahem) "peaceful demonstrators" at "a family picnic":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVmY--vGTgQ

How very Corbynesque of Corbyn to leave an Israel-demonising message on Facebook to be read to the demonstrators, a message that maintained, inter alia, the extremist sentiment that the so-called "refugees" (the only hereditary refugees in the world) have a "right to return to their homes" (with all that would mean for the continuation of the state of Israel!) 

"The majority of the people of the Gaza Strip are stateless refugees, subject to a decade long blockade and the denial of basic human and political rights. More than two thirds are reliant on humanitarian assistance, with limited access to the most basic amenities, such as water and electricity.

They have a right to protest against their appalling conditions and the continuing blockade and occupation of Palestinian land, and in support of their right to return to their homes and their right to self-determination."  [Emphasis added]

How does the bit about Hamas go in Lord Sugar's delicious poetic tweet on Corbyn, that I reproduced  a few days ago?  Ah. yes!

Easier for the inhabitants of Gaza to blame Israel for real and imagined troubles than the fanatical bloodthirsty hard men to whom they are in thraldom. 

No sympathy at all for the Israelis, facing the threat of violation of their borders ("invasion" in plain language):

On the same day that demo was held in London, half a world away in Melbourne the usual contingents of Muslims and lefties demonstrated, affirming their support for

"the bravery and resilience of protesting Gazan refugees....

Residents of Gaza are demanding their Right of Return to these erased and ethnically cleansed cities in commemoration of 70 years of Nakba, or Catastrophe, which marks the beginning of genocide and zionist occupation.

We demand the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador of [sic] Australia. We call on Australian politicians to break political and economic ties and condemn the massacre in Gaza"

And chanting that old pregnant-with-meaning catch cry "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free".  Below: a small section of the marching crowd, ahead of the inevitable gaggle of "Socialist Alliance" placard-wavers.

More on the Melbourne demo here (from which I reproduce this photo of a brave bystander):

On Sunday a similar event occurred in downtown Sydney:

Recognise anyone?  Yes, behind the flag in the lower photo that's Stephen Sizer's soulmate, Father Dave Smith, in clerical garb and keffiyeh.  In the left foreground is academic Nick Riemer, next to Palestinian activist Shamikh Badra, and (far right) the far left's Pip Hinman.

Meanwhile, today by the verbose deputy leader of the Welsh Greens, an anti-Israel stalwart of an often eyebrow-raising kind (as regular readers of my blog will be aware):

How very green of that Green.

Does she not know?  Has she not heard? 

There are no Israeli troops occupying Gaza.  Nor, of course, Jewish "settlers".  None since 2005.

As for the legal status of Israel and the West Bank, an interesting interview with Professor Eugene Kontorovich here

An Israeli's petition regarding Hamas here

Stephen Sizer's Return (updated again)

Who can this be?  An actual or theoretical April Fool?

After a two-week propaganda tour of Australia, Peacemaker Trust's founder and CEO the Rev Dr Stephen Sizer, formerly vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water, has returned to Southampton. And so has his luggage, temporarily lost.

Despite his return, echoes of his visit live on, in the interviews that he gave while here.

A wily disingenuous campaigner, he said nothing, at least that I heard, about his support for the Right of Return, or about the support for a One State Solution that, as I showed here, he has avowed.

This screenshot dates to 2014.  But, at the time of typing this blogpost, our old mate is still listed as a "Liker" of "BDS for the Return", and when we click on the links provided on its Facebook page we find:

"This page is for Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) Actions that are directly relevant to the implementation of the Palestinian refugees right to return to their homes and lands of origin."

Screenshot in 2014

"Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is a broad-based, non-partisan, democratic, and charitable organization of grassroots activists and students committed to comprehensive public education on the rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands of origin, and to full restitution of all their confiscated and destroyed property in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International law and the numerous United Nations Resolutions upholding such rights."

If the original Arab generation which fled (and were invited back by Israel) and the so-called "refugees" who are their descendants (the only such people with inherited refugee status in the world) were to "return" we all know how long the sovereign state of Israel would last.

On Good Friday the ABC (Oz's answer to the BBC, and just as biased towards the left and against Israel, if anything more openly) Sizer was interviewed by regular presenter David Rutledge, a lapsed Christian with a theology doctorate, about Christian Zionism.  The entire program was saturated with leftist propaganda, some of it more egregious than the rest, and the interview with Sizer fitted seamlessly into that predictable agenda.

"Many evangelical Christians today are convinced that recent events in the Middle East herald the imminent return of Christ and the establishment of his kingdom on earth - and Israel is central to the whole plan. These are Christian Zionists, and according to Stephen Sizer they're misguided — and possibly dangerous", runs the website.

At the ABC studios Sizer, pictured below with his minder Father Dave Smith, an anti-Israel Sydney clergyman, looks like the proverbial cat who got the cream:

Rutledge, in a somewhat lighthearted tone, described him as "a rather controversial Anglican cleric" and at the start of the interview mentioned the polarising effect he has.  But Rutledge was soon sniggering in the background at some of the ex-vicar's descriptions of Christian Zionist thought.  Sizer's spiel was his usual one.

Rutledge assured him "I accept that you are not an antisemite" and Sizer quoted the Bishop of Guildford (the one who suspended him from social media for six months, though that was not spelled out) as privately telling him "Stephen, on the Middle East you're on the side of the angels".

Are you a glutton for punishment?  The program is here

This weekend was broadcast former South Australian premier-turned-clergyman Lynn Arnold's recorded radio interview with Sizer.  It opened with such a lot of discussion about Sizer's early life (our old mate was eventually obliged to spell out his birthplace, Lowestoft, for Arnold, who kept mispronouncing it Lowerstoke) that I was lulled into a false optimism that Sizer's propaganda would be timed out.  But alas.

"This evening my very special guest is Rev. Stephen Sizer" said Arnold by way of introduction, before reciting the biblical passage (no random choice, for it was cited again later on to deny the validity of Zionism) that Sizer had chosen to preface the interview, from Psalm 87.  Suddenly, the interview turned to Sizer's views on the usual Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  Our old mate's pleasant, plausible tones were heard declaring that the land is "occupied territory just as it was under the Romans" and that on the usual pilgrimage "On Day One you go to Yad Vashem ... because then you are not going to criticise the Israeli occupation of Palestine" and launched into his well-practised critique of Christian Zionism and support for BDS.

Overlooking Sizer's past excrescences (could he really have been ignorant of them?) the indulgent Arnold encouraged listeners to look at Sizer's website and the Peacemakers website to learn more about his views.  Deftly done. No word from Arnold about Sizer's chastisement by his bishop, his notorious 9/11 post, his reasons for quitting his pulpit ahead of schedule.  Nothing embarrassing to our old mate whatsoever was invoked.

I reckon Sizer left the studio well-satisfied.

Back in the 1980s and thereabouts, Radio 3CR, Melbourne, was one of the most virulent Australian  purveyors of anti-Israel propaganda, its most notorious anti-Israel voice being that of Bill Hartley, aka "Baghdad Bill", an extreme left-wing figure in the Victoria state ALP (Australian Labor Party) whose hagiographic obituary (2006) in Green Left Weekly notes:

"His dedication to the Palestinians, one of the most oppressed and mis represented people of the past 60 years, was well known, and his connections allowed many of us to visit the Middle East and gain access to refugee camps and contacts that allowed an invaluable insight into the issues."

While in Australia, Sizer was interviewed on 3CR by Robert Martin:

 'This week we are joined by Dr Rev [sic] Stephen Sizer with whom we have a discussion around Christian Zionism, its sway in America and the term “The Chosen People”.  We exchange thoughts about the Christians who are scared to criticize Israel in fear of being labelled as an Anti Semitie [sic], as well as Armageddon and the attacks by the Hasbara.'

 As Sizer posts triumphantly here, "Robert didn't need convincing":

No wonder he didn't.  Martin is a well-known anti-Israel activist:

In this video, which, like the above photo, can be found on his Facebook page, he buttonholes and then harangues a polite group of frum Israelis, including women and girls, his face growing contorted, and his voice strident, with rage:

"You're racist .... You don't care because you think it's God's will?.... I won't talk nicely, because you're a bunch of animals!"

A still from the video:

 Martin's Facebook page is littered with comments from feral antisemites.  For instance:
 

I listened to Part One of his interview with Sizer, here.

An Arabic-accented voice announced that the program, "Palestine Remembered", is brought to the listener by the only program in English "totally dedicated to the Palestinian cause", spoke of the program's honour and delight in having Dr Rev [sic] Stephen Sizer and Martin then declared: "I'm so honoured to be joined by Dr Rev [sic] Stephen Sizer today".

Sizer gave the usual spiel, preached to the converted that "Zionism is a form of racism", and answered Martin's eager questioning about the "Chosen" concept with an analogy to colonialism, observing that it is "used to justify the theft of land from the indigenous people, the Palestinians".  He declared that "the Bible affirms the one state solution", and told how the British government last year could not be persuaded to apologise for the Balfour Declaration ("the government were so in bed with the Zionist lobby").

Of the messianic hopes of religious Jewish settlers Martin remarked "Let's kill more Muslims, and kill more Christians — it doesn't matter does it?, and Sizer did not demur.

He identified five stages of reaction by "Zionists" to anti-Zionists such as he:

Update, 5 April.

1.  They try to buy you ...

2.  They try to intimidate you, with emails and articles.  People involved in Hasbara are paid to send emails, he alleged, before bemoaning this article in The Spectator by Melanie Phillips. It's "a shock" to be accused of antisemitism, he told Martin, when asked.

3.  They try to isolate you, turning publishers against you and causing people who have booked you to speak to cancel the event.

4.  They stalk and harass you, telling of his woes with the Seismic Shock blog (his interviewer makes some telling crack when told the blog owner's Jewish-sounding name) 

5.  They kill you. "They take people out."  (At this point the interview ended so abruptly that even the most pro-Israel of listeners could be forgiven for thinking Mossad had terminated it, but then came the Arabic-accented voice advising that Part Two will be coming soon.)

If Sizer doesn't want to be lumped among the antisemites, he could begin by defriending on Facebook people such as the prolifically-posting Derek Andrew Hands  (it would take him some time!):

And sever ties with this bloke:

Tony Gratrex, the PSC stalwart and  9/11truther, merits no fewer than ten pages in part one of David Collier's superb exposé of antisemitism in the Palestine Live Facebook group and is mentioned in part two of the same report.  Despite (surely not because of?) Gratrex's appalling record, Sizer has welcomed him into an exclusive Peacemakers (I'm sorry, I'll type that again, "Peacemakers") Facebook group.

As well as eschewing one of the commenters on this recent article:

In response to these comments on that article in Sight

Sizer has posted the following

and his pseudonymous Facebook buddy Harriet S Place chimes in

Anti-Zionist blogger Harriet, whoever he is, seems mighty tolerant of conspiracy theories.  Here's what I just found on his Facebook page, with no trouble at all:

Not a good look for a nice Christian boy, Harriet.

Not a good look at all.

Update: Australia's most-read columnist Andrew Bolt on Sizer and the ABC in press article  today (hat tip: Ian)  See also here and the next post but one.
With many followers, and given his intention to wean Christians, especially Third World Christians, away from support for Israel, I'm not so sure that Sizer is as comical-ish as this very useful article from AIJAC implies.

In Oz, Waters Drizzles & Sizer Sizzles

How odd it seems that old friend the ex-vicar of Virginia Water, now CEO of the so-called Peacemaker Mediators outfit, seems so unconcerned about the lack of churches in the land that's exported Wahhabism to the West:

But I digress.  A couple of days after posting the above, and about as long after my post here, Stephen Sizer flew into a rainy Sydney, to the delight of his Aussie counterpart, Father Dave Smith of Holy Trinity Church, Dulwich Hill, seen below at an Australia Palestine Advocacy Network function some time ago.

Incidentally, have you seen aged rocker Roger Waters's outrageous remarks at APAN's recent function, alleging Israel has never wanted peace with the Palestinian Arabs and was always intent on land grabbing?

Warning: the above's 72 minutes long, I'm given to understand.  This first still comes at around 1:30 if you want to see the outrageous bit to which I refer:

Needless to say, APAN is delighted that Sizer has come to Australia.

But again I digress.  Here are the two anti-Israel Anglican clerics all smiles at breakfast on Sizer's first day in town.

And our old friend, a seasoned traveller in spreading the anti-Christian Zionism cause, seems to have wasted little time in meeting people who matter and in attempting to widen a fan base here.

See what I mean?

And

(For Lynn Arnold see here)

I don't think this Sizer fan (below, one of the many evident antisemites among the vicar's Facebook friends) is Aussie, but he's delighted anyway:

Permit me a cynical, ironic smile while I recall that disgusting 9/11 post of Sizer's, and not only it, as so many images I've reproduced over the years indicate:

But we smile at Sizer's "Australian tour" at our peril.  In the anti-Israel propaganda stakes the urbane and softly spoken ex-vicar's a pro.  What he's spreading and who he's influencing during his time in the southern hemisphere should have friends of Israel worried.