En Passant

This is an updated version of an article I sent to to the editors of Woroni, the student newspaper of the Australian National University. They refused to publish an earlier version of what is written below. I have submitted a cut down version of this to the Canberra Times for their consideration.

Socialist Alternative makes no bones about our opposition to the apartheid state of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, just as we opposed apartheid South Africa. We make a clear distinction (for anyone willing to see it) between Zionism as a political justification for the state of Israel, and the Jewish religion. We are critical of Zionism. Religion is a private matter. There are Jews, proud of their heritage, among our membership.

The Australasian Union of Jewish Students and its campus affiliates very actively and publicly support the Israeli state and its policies.

But the reality of Israel’s brutal actions, from the death of more than 1,100 as Israel bombed Beirut in 2006 to the massacre of 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza in January 2009 (to name just two examples found unavoidably newsworthy by the mainstream media), makes it ever more difficult to present Israel in a positive light.

By resorting to fabrications of racial vilification against those who oppose Israel’s crimes, our accusers merely reveal that they are attempting to defend the indefensible.

EL MOVIMIENTO llamando al boicot, desinversión y sanciones (BDS) para presionar a Israel a otorgar derechos básicos a los palestinos ha repentinamente pasado de los márgenes al centro del escenario.

Scarlett Johansson is the new face of apartheid writes Kostas Rologas in Red Flag. Her very public decision to quit Oxfam and continue her role as Sodastream’s “global brand ambassador” is appallingly racist. Here’s why.

Tin soldiers and Zion’s coming,
Palestinians are on their own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Many dead in Palestine.

Many dead in Palestine.

Ariel Sharon’s death has prompted me to post this article by Hadas Thier from the International Socialist Review Issue 17, April-May 2001 called Ariel Sharon: War Criminal. ‘Sharon, nicknamed “The Bulldozer” for his preference for clearing Palestinians off their land, has one of the most extensive and brutal records of war crimes, spanning more than 50 years. To Palestinians, Sharon represents massacres at refugee camps, bulldozed homes, and a complete disregard for the rights and lives of Arabs in the region.’

Three key features characterize Israeli apartheid:

•Four million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories lack the right to vote for the government that controls their lives through a military occupation. In addition to controlling the borders, air space, water, tax revenues, and other vital matters pertaining to the Occupied Territories, Israel alone issues the identity cards that determine the ability of Palestinians to work and their freedom of movement.

•About 1.2 million Palestinian Israelis, who make up 20 percent, or one-fifth, of Israel’s population, have second-class citizenship within Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish state rather than a state for all its citizens. More than 20 provisions of Israel’s principal laws discriminate, either directly or indirectly, against non-Jews, according to Adalah: The Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel.

•Millions of Palestinians remain refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, unable to return to their former homes and land in present-day Israel, even though the right of return for refugees is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Pappe came to Melbourne not only to dispel the myths but also to realign the discussion. He presented a view that, until recent years, has been deemed either too radical or simply impossible: the view of a single democratic state in which both Jews and Palestinians may live as equal citizens, where the both can live free from injustice and oppression.

The only just solution in Palestine is to have one democratic state that offers equal rights for Arabs and Jews, and the right for Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. Achieving this “one state solution” would require dismantling the racist apartheid state of Israel and breaking the power of US imperialism in the region. But it is the only way Palestine can be free.