Ben & Gideon Mark Their Diaries: Australian Israel-haters to fly in the big guns

Gideon Levy in full flood

Hot on the heels of the BDS Conference that has just taken place at the University of Sydney, with the usual suspects in place, comes notification by Israel-bashers and -haters Down Under of another chin-wagging onslaught against the Jewish State.

Under the auspices of AFOPA (the Australian Friends of Palestine Association), it's due to take place in Adelaide in late November:

'This year, 2017, marks important anniversaries pertaining to the issue of Palestine. It is the 100 year anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, 100 years of Australian involvement in Palestine, and 50 years of Israeli Occupation. The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement set the scene by carving up the region into the modern Middle East, and the 1956 Suez Crisis highlighted the geo-political importance of the region. Collectively these significant events have influenced the destiny of the Palestinians and the inhabitants of the region, shaped international and Australian involvement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

This three-day symposium seeks to examine Palestine and the West: History, Contemporary Realities and Challenges Ahead.

The focus of this academic symposium will be Palestine in the context of the West, and not the West in the context of Palestine. The central theme will be Palestine, its past, present, and its future.

Historical interventions and their impact on Palestinians will set the scene of the theme of this symposium. Experts in the field will examine the impact of these interventions on contemporary realities within the Palestinian territories and among Palestinians wherever they are found. The symposium will examine Palestine in context of the MENA region from both micro and macro levels. It will cover international and regional developments and their impact on Palestinians within the Palestinian territories, within Israel, those exiled or living in neighbouring countries, or the Diaspora. The impact of 50 years of Israeli occupation, or almost 70 years of Palestinian displacement since 1948 will also be addressed.

 The challenges ahead for Palestinians and the prospects of a just and peaceful resolution will be discussed, as will possible solutions to resolving this core international conflict. 

The Symposium will be inviting a number of Australian and international guests, each scholars or experts in their fields, including:

  Mr Gideon Levy, acclaimed journalist with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who will deliver the keynote annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture;

    Dr Mohammed Shtayyeh, member of the PLO Negotiation Team

    Dr Peter Slezak, University of New South Wales, Independent Australian Jewish Voices

    Dr Ahmad Shboul AM, University of Sydney

    Mr Ben White, writer, journalist, researcher and activist

    Ms Samah Sabawi, acclaimed Palestinian-Canadian-Australian writer, commentator, playwright and PhD candidate.

    Further speakers to be listed as they are confirmed.'  [Emphasis added]

As reported by Rachel Baxendale in The Australian on 19 July, 

A smiling Lynch looks on ...

'The University of Sydney has distanced itself from a controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions conference being hosted by its Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, after members of the Jewish community labelled the gathering an “anti-Israel hate-fest”.

The department is holding the conference on July 28-29 in conjunction with lobby group Sydney University Staff for BDS and a range of pro-Palestinian organisations. Conference events include a speech on Palestinian rights under Donald Trump by US Campaign for Palestinian Rights executive director Yousef ­Munayyer, a paper by pro-BDS academic Jake Lynch on the pro-Israel influence in Australia, and a panel discussing anti-Semitism with pro-BDS Jewish speakers Peter ­Slezak, Marcello Svirsky and Vivienne Porzsolt....

...and students take their seats while Hage awaits his cue

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff said the obsessive focus on BDS by the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies ignored the reality that it does nothing to advance a resolution to the conflict.

 “Then there is the irony that the organisers have scheduled a discussion on working with the Jewish community for a Saturday, automatically excluding ­observant Jews and demonstrating how tokenistic any attempts to understand the Jewish community actually are,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the University of Sydney said the institution was strongly committed to academic freedom and to being a forum for debate on a wide range of issues. “The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions policy is not a university-endorsed policy.”'

 If you're a glutton for punishment (Professor Ghassan Hage for one is a very boring speaker), you can read and see more about the conference here

"This is the Day of the Shahids ... The Sky is Pregnant With Rage, It is Time for a Downpour" (video)

In Melbourne, "the world's most liveable city" (so it's claimed), Palestinian flags fly from poles in the downtown area as well as being held by members of the large crowd marking "Palestinian National Day" on 15 November.

An eloquent image on a t-shirt in the crowd:

Is this what they mean by "Free Palestine" and comparable phrases, chalked by attendees, including quite young kids rigged out in keffiyehs, on a board provided for supportive messages and slogans?

In her speech, which amid whoops of delight heaped extravagant praise on BDS, poet and playwright Samah Sabawi, whose play City by the Sea  was accepted for inclusion in the Victorian Certificate of Education curriculum earlier this year (a development broken by li'l ol' Daphne here long before the press and Jewish communal big boys woke up to the fact), appeared to strike a martial note or two:

... [T]his flag we raise is not meant to represent Armani suits and Ramallah mansions.

It is not meant for powerless ministries and cowardly leaders who have reduced the ceiling of our aspirations to breadcrumbs and begging bowls....  

This here is our flag, the people’s flag,

This is the flag that wraps the countless coffins after the bombs fall,

This is the flag that dries the tears of mothers in hospital corridors,

This is the flag of the shahids, of the refugees, of the prisoners and the besieged....

The clouds have gathered over Palestine for so long,

The sky is pregnant with rage;

It is time for a downpour,

For there are not enough days left in the calendar for all the commemorations

Not enough minutes of silence for all our martyrs ....

That makes this earlier much-hyped but evidently not well attended event in Adelaide look positively child's play:

 Which indeed it seems to have been:

Australian Jewish Leaders Condemn Propagandistic Play

Being a well-brought up gal (and also very conscious of the old adage that "pride has a fall") I hate to boast and am not very fond of boastful types.

Nevertheless I'm quietly chuffed that in my blogging career I've had a couple of scoops, so that my keyboard warfare has not been entirely wasted!

One, happening to spot and screen-grab Stephen Sizer's despicable 9/11 tweet shortly after it was posted and sending it to the London  Jewish News after the Jewish Chronicle (caught inexplicably napping) in effect told me "Thanks but no thanks".

The rest, of course, thanks to the British Board of Deputies' current excellent president, is history!

Two, bringing this propagandistic play that's on the current VCE curriculum to readers' attention, having, to my amazement, failed to find any mention (much less condemnation) of it in the expected sources.

Now, The Age newspaper has picked up the story, owing to the admirable Dr Dvir Abramovich of the Anti-Defamation Commission in Victoria expressing real and justified concerns.

 

And the issue has been raised in State Parliament

Needless to say, the Israel-bashers are mounting a counter-attack, including some from, or linked with, a frightful group of leftist as-a-Jews that I won't bother to name.

Aussie Jewish Day School Students Enthuse Over Palestinian Propagandist's Poetry

Большой мой (as I was taught to exclaim, euphemistically, in Russian class) !!!

There's more literary anti-Israel propaganda circulating in Australia, and working its wicked way upon youth, even Jewish youth; yes, even in the community known as "the Shtetl on the Yarra" (Melbourne) and as one of the most Zionist in the Diaspora!

Last week, I blogged about how anti-Israel activist Samah Sabawi's  play set in Gaza is now on the 2016 curriculum for Years 11 and 12 in the state of Victoria and how the Australian Jewish community appears to have allowed this not insignificant propaganda victory for the foes of Israel go unchallenged.

Ms Sabawi spruiks BDSer Prof Stuart Rees's new book

Last week, too, Samah Sabawi appeared at an event called "Fightin Words: Poetry as a Means of Resistance" at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne, a venue for egghead discussions of various sorts.

I'm not quite sure which poem or poems Ms Sabawi recited at the event, but her bitterness towards Israel and the  nature of her poems can be seen here.

Here's a podcast of an interview Ms Sabawi gave a few days ago on the Australian public broadcasting channel SBS concerning the upcoming event: it begins in Arabic but if you stick with it until 3:18 you will hear Ms Sabawi reciting some of the following poem, almost spitting its bitter Israel-demonising phrases:

Words!
I stand dispossessed
No congress behind me
No statesmen surround me
No lobby to breathe hellfire
No media eager to appease
No three-ring circus
Of intellectual jesters
Academic clowns
And policy experts
Who truly do not see
the big elephant in the room
No legal acrobats
Dance for me
On a thin rope of decency
No politicians
Juggle oppression
And human rights
On my behalf
No trips to boost careers
For MPs and their wives
No propaganda movies
No radio broadcasts
No myths
No lies
No hasbara nights
No army,
No country
Not even one leader
To believe in
All I have are my words
To tell my story
My voice
To demand justice
But you tell me
My language is too strong
Nakba
Forced exile
Ethnic cleansing
Apartheid
Words
Carefully chosen
Purposely uttered
These are the words
That lay the foundation
Of the language of my liberation

It seems Samah Sabawi's works are having the desired effects.

I've just been sent an account, plus an accompanying group photo with Ms Sabawi in the middle, of four students from a leading Jewish day school in Melbourne imbuing the propaganda spewed out, seemingly with enthusiasm.

I won't reproduce the photo, since it's private, but I will quote the account (devoid of the names of the school, the students and the teacher mentioned, and of the Year 11 student who wrote it):

 "On a warm Thursday night [7 April], four Year 11 Literature students, made our way into the city, full of curiosity about what the night would bring. -----, ----, ------ and myself met up with our teacher ------- ------- to attend a poetry reading called “Fightin Words: Poetry as a means of resistance” at the esteemed Wheeler Centre. Since we are currently studying the significance and beauty of migrant poetry, this lecture was the perfect opportunity to immerse ourselves in diverse journeys through spoken word. So, amidst a group of sophisticated intellectuals, we listened to 3 wonderful poets, each with their own extraordinary tales to tell. We had the privilege of being enlightened and inspired by the words of Karl Lokko, a former gang leader who has turned his life around; indigenous poet Ali Cobby Eckerman who shared the story of her tragic childhood and touched our hearts, as well as Samah Sabawi an Australian Canadian poet, playwright and essayist, originally from Gaza, now residing in Australia. It was a truly engaging experience full of amazing poetry and insightful stories. We all feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to attend!"

This is quite shocking. 

A few years ago, the very able British blogger Edgar Davidson wrote:

'If you need to know the depth to which the British media has indoctrinated the public with anti-Israel feelings, then I can give no better example than the following: 

My daughter, who goes to an orthodox Jewish school, tells me that, when the subject of Israel is discussed in their Jewish studies GCSE class, students routinely state things like "the Jews have no right to Israel because they stole the land from the Palestinians".  

In making statements like that, those regular 15-16 year old Jewish kids, are simply repeating what they are told relentlessly in every part of the media (as I have regularly reported on this web). In the midst of the big story of revolution across the entire Arab world (funny how the media is suddenly realising that these Arab countries were abusing their citizens for decades - they have been telling us all along that Israel  is the pariah state in the region) the BBC and Channel 4 has gone into overdrive ... to demonize Israel.'  [Emphasis added here and above]

Meanwhile, I notice that on the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) English Literature curriculum this year is book by a certain Megan Stack.

If this video is any indication,  Every Man in This Village is a Liar contains controversial material regarding suicide bombings in Israel, and depicts America's War on Terror, together with "Islamophobia", as an "over-reaction" to 9/11.

Screenshot of one reader's impression of the book below:

Spreading propaganda amongst schoolkids is of course akin to penetrating the opponent's soft underbelly.

These trends must be watched, and vigorously protested and counterbalanced if necessary.

In Australia, Schoolkids Study Palestinian Activist's Play

Two months before their upcoming conference at Sydney University (13-15 May), entitled "Socialism for the 21st century," Aussie far leftists, who include Green Left activists and members of the Socialist Alliance, have just announced the line-up for their inevitable session bashing Israel.

Meanwhile, another Israel-undermining initiative, altogether smarter and more subtle, which has infiltrated the school system in the Aussie state of Victoria, appears to have gone relatively unnoticed. 

I refer to the fact that the play City by the Sea, by poet, writer and activist Samah Sabawi, a Gaza-born (1967) Australian/Canadian, is now on the 2016 playlist for school students taking the Victorian Certificate of Education.  It means that students in years 11 and 12 will be attending performances of the play at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne in May.

An official document listing the plays selected for study in 2016 states, inter alia:

'Students will undertake an assessment task based on the performance of a play on the Playlist. Question/s will also be set on the performances of the plays in the end-of-year Drama written examination.

While the VCAA [Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority] considers all plays on this list suitable for study, teachers should be aware that in some instances sensitivity might be needed where particular issues or themes that are explored may be challenging for students. Teachers are advised to familiarise themselves with the treatment of these issues and themes within the context and world of the play prior to students viewing the play and/or studying the playscript. This might involve reading the playscript, talking with the theatre company, researching the playscript, the work of the playwright, director and/or company, attending a preview performance and/or discussing the matter with the school administration. Information provided in this notice about themes and/or language used in specific plays is a guide only. In some plays, suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. This language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community' [Emphasis added]

Tailor-made, wouldn't you say, for teachers who may be left-wing anti-Zionists, and indeed any teacher who relies for information about the Middle East on such biased sources as the Fairfax Press (The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald), the ABC and SBS, wittingly or unwittingly to poison young minds?

The document continues:

"Tales of a City by the Sea explores life in Gaza through the lens of a generation who have grown up in a state under occupation. It tells a story of people who are experiencing very difficult life circumstances, but who are resisting being defined by their suffering. Before the play begins, the cast mingles with the audience and introduce themselves as actors who are there to share a story. There is no effort to create the illusion that they are their characters. The device of Brechtian alienation emotionally separates the audience from the story to allow them to take a critical view of the action. The actors are visible at all times, when onstage and offstage. Actors who play several characters transform in full view, through costume changes, gesture, and voice. While the story specifically takes place in 2008 during the siege of Gaza, the symbolic staging of the play does not include scenic elements that define place or time. The non-naturalistic set, composed of a set of white sheets on wires, has a makeshift sensibility. Time and place are indicated by transformations of lighting and set, which is operated by the actors as part of the action of the performance. A singer performs traditional songs a capella in Arabic throughout these changes, punctuating the action while connecting to the audience.The play combines scenes from life with conventions of epic theatre, including direct address, poetry, and breaking the fourth wall."

To quote the Sydney Morning Herald during 2014:

'The play tells the story of Jomana, a Palestinian woman living in the Shati' (beach) refugee camp in Gaza who falls in love with Rami, an American-Palestinian doctor who arrives on the Free Gaza boats in August 2008. Theirs is a relationship met with more challenges than most; at one point Rami makes the perilous journey through the underground tunnels that connect Gaza to Egypt.

The script – which was born out of poetry that Sabawi wrote during the first Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008-2009 – is based on real events, with fictionalised characters, taking the audience through "a year in the life of Gaza"....

 Liz Jones, artistic director of La Mama, said she was struck by what she calls a "beautiful work" when she first heard the script at a public reading two years ago.

"It's essentially a love story, as I see it, as well as a very passionate plea for compassion, harmony and a peaceful solution to all the troubles in the Middle East – an area that is seen as quite 'other' in this country," she says.

"It deals with the people involved as deeply human – as loving, as suffering, as caring, as we all aspire to be - and I think that's very important because it's not the way people from the Middle East are usually presented."

A longtime vocal advocate for Palestinian rights, Sabawi recently made headlines when she was taken off the panel at an Israel-Palestine debate at the Wheeler Centre, only to be promptly reinstated four hours later. At the time, Sabawi said that she thought her ejection from the panel was due to pressure from those who object to her support for the BDS [Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions] movement against Israel.

Tales of the City and the Sea is undeniably political, but Sabawi stresses that its message is a universal one. "It's looking at how human beings – not just Palestinians – at how human beings react in extraordinary circumstances and at times of war," she says.

"It's the idea of connectivity, it's the idea of defying the fragmentation of the Palestinian nationals ... before the last attack on Gaza began I was in constant contact with artists in Gaza and the West Bank preparing for this and everyone was saying, 'We're all one people.'"

Not convinced of the play's power as propaganda?  Then read this:

'Tales of a City by the Sea is the story of two people who meet and fall in love in the besieged Gaza strip, woven together from the actual experiences of people living under occupation.

Jomana, a Palestinian woman living in a Gaza refugee camp, falls in love with Rami, an American-born Palestinian doctor and activist who has just arrived on one of the first Free Gaza boats in 2008. Their love is met with relentless string of challenges. Ultimately, Rami must decide between returning to his comfortable life in Texas and staying in Palestine with Jomana. Choosing to stay means leaving his family and career behind for a life ravaged by war, while leaving means not only losing Jomana but also ignoring the plight of the Palestinians.

The play premiered in November 2014, with simultaneous productions at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne and the AlRowwad Cultural and Theatre Society, in Aida Refugee Camp in Palestine. La Mama saw a sold out season and both productions received passionate responses from audiences and critics alike. Hundreds posted on social media, encouraging their friends to see it and asking for remounts in other places.

Starting in May 2016, we want to take Tales of a City by the Sea on tour!....

We believe that sharing Palestinian stories is a key step towards a just and peaceful resolution, and that a view into the realities of life under occupation has the power to change hearts and minds.

“This gripping play is an act of resistance that implores its audience to take heed.”

— The Age'  [Emphasis added]

 Not for nothing have those connected with the play expressed their delight in its exposure to school students:

Congratulations to all of us!   Palestinian play highlighting challenges of life in Gaza during the war of 2008-2009 has been selected for the 2016 Victorian Certificate of Education Drama list.   The play Tales of a City by the Sea by Palestinian Australian playwright Samah Sabawi was one of 16 of more than 50 submissions selected for the 3 VCE Playlists.   As a result, it will be seen and studied by hundreds of year 11 & 12 Theatre students in Victoria and it will be published by Currency Press and disseminated among these students.

 There's more delight now:

Poetic Li[n]es

It's been quite a fortnight for lady poets intent on waxing devilishly lyrical about Israel.

Taking as her Muse that map of 1700 that never was (the map that I blogged about here and which is still being touted as the real McCoy on anti-Israel websites!) Palestinian poet Samah Sabawi, who was the keynote speaker at the BDS Conference in Byron Bay, has composed lines beginning:

"A word on a map

Offends

A reminder of

An original sin

Ethnic cleansing

People wiped off 

Like letters

Written in the sand ...."

On Al Quds Day in London Yemeni poet Sanasino railed thus against "the Zionist entity":

In an article published on the Sunday following the outrageous harassment of patrons and disruptions to the Batsheva Dance Company's performance at Edinburgh's Playhouse Theatre (thuggishness so graphically depicted here), Scotland's National Poet and avowed "liberal" Liz Lochhead chose the medium of prose to reiterate her support of BDS:

"I have always been the kind of liberal who believes in total artistic and intellectual freedom and the self-evident value of free cultural exchange – even naïve enough to think art and politics don't, and shouldn't, mix.

Yet I was glad to join other Scottish artists and writers in signing a letter protesting the appearance of the Israeli Batsheva Dance Company at the Edinburgh International Festival this week. Why? Because I have been profoundly changed by what I witnessed and experienced first hand during a short trip with a few student friends and some other poets and singers to Palestine this June.

We started off staying for a few nights as guests in Aida Camp in Bethlehem. This meant-to-be-temporary refugee camp of about 4000 people, some 650or so families, is exactly as old as me (and I'm 64) – having been established under a terrified flurry of canvas tents in 1948 as the grandparents and parents of the present generation either fled for their lives or were, at best, forcibly displaced from their homes and villages as the State of Israel was created...

 Israel denies human rights to Palestinians. Denies that they are human beings at all....

....We must use all means. Including protesting at a dance company. Including total cultural and academic boycott."

Among the rejoinders in the comments section of the newspaper website where the above appears are these:

[First]:"The Aida camp is completely within Area A, meaning that it is under the full administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority. It is under full Arab rule. The PA, with the funds it receives from the West, could choose to improve the camp, or build an adjacent town to move the residents there.

But it refuses to do so.

And the reason is because this camp, as well as all the other camps in the West Bank and Gaza, are propaganda tools, for useful idiots like Liz Lochhead to visit on carefully supervised dog-and-pony shows so she can write articles like this one bashing Israel. But Israel couldn't fix the camp if it wanted to. It is not allowed to!

Not one camp under PA or Hamas control has been dismantled since Oslo."

[Second]: "You pretend to have gone on a visit with an open mind and without an agenda; who are you kidding? Have you visited Sderot? No, because the Isreali [sic] children of are non[e] of your concern. It is not your concern that these children of Sderot have started the school year while rockets from Gaza keep landing in south Israel every day, inspite of Hamas signing a truce, while Israel has not yet responded to these attacks; instead it spent tens of millions of dollars on shelters in Sderot to allow the children there to go to school. Your description of the overall conditions in Gaza is false. The conditions in Gaza may not match those you are used to in your native Scotland, but there are no shortages in Gaza and the local merchants there (by their own words) can get anything they want from Egypt, except that the prefer Israeli products because they are of better quality. Why don't you tell your readers that Palestinians get more foreign aid per capita than any other group in the world? Why don't you tell your readers that a survey just found that there are 600 milionair[e]s in Gaza?...."

 [Third]: 'As Liz Lochhead proudly stands shoulder to shoulder with anti-Israel activists of Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the nearest thing Edinburgh gets to Nazi-style Brown Shirts, she conveniently omits to tell us about their anti-Semitic members that they "keep under control" or their leader's prized Hezbullah flag....

"I saw someone in this crowd with a Hizbullah flag....I wish I had brought mine!"- Mick Napier....

It's time tae "send her homeward tae think again"!'