BDS Political Party – the Arab Spring Blossoms in Australia

A Rave to Stimulate Ideas/Discussion/Action/Civil Disobedience

The Apartheid Wall is Israel’s master plan to divide and rule Palestinians. The Wall, however, outside Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, does not comprise concrete and electrified razor wire, but it nevertheless exists, it is real in its effects.

The Wall I speak of circumscribes our print and electronic media, it is prejudice personified, it fences in acceptable discourse and banishes any narrative that criticises the Israeli state. Its watchtowers are the editorial boards of our major newspapers and media newsrooms, our political leaders, the Boards of Jewish Deputies, the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce, the deans of academia and a host of other entities Zionist and non-Zionist. Like the Palestinians, we are largely hogtied.
On May 15, Al Nakba Day, hundreds of Palestinians braved minefields and Israeli shoot-to-kill gunfire to breach Israel’s borders – fences were torn down. When are we going to emulate them? When are we going to agitate for the Great Refusal in direct civil disobedience? When are we going to block our political representatives in their offices with cardboard and styrofoam replicas of the Wall? When are we going to blockade the Israeli embassy? Festoon Capital Hill, Canberra, with Palestinian flags day in, day out? Bring down the Israeli embassy’s switchboard with a tsunami of calls? Simultaneously bombard our media with emails and letters? Bring on a new political party – The Australian BDS Party, for example? Sure it would be a single issue party but the Justice it stands on would have universal relevance. Nelson Mandela makes the claim that justice for the Palestinian people is the greatest moral issue of our time.

No doubt objections to the party’s nomination would be lodged with the AEC but that would generate more discussion than Marrickville. No doubt we would lose our deposit and the $1,000 registration fee, but this is peanuts compared with the amount of unignorable coverage the BDS campaign would get. We Australians could forge the world’s first BDS political party. Remember, we did it before with the Nuclear Disarmament Party. Let’s do it!

Gareth Smith
Byron Bay
NSW 2481
Australia
Tel: (61)02 66858410
MOB: 0422 298 165
Email: maxigar

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even tacitly take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.” –
Mario Savio, Student Leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, 1964

“The sleep of reason produces monsters” Goya
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” Voltaire
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Archbishop

One thought on “BDS Political Party – the Arab Spring Blossoms in Australia”

  1. Largest student union in Europe joins boycott of Israel
    | BDSmovement.netwww.bdsmovement.net

    The University of London Union (ULU) has voted 10-1 to institute and campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) in support of Palestine.

    The motion called for “thorough research into ULU investments and contracts” with companies guilty of “violating Palestinian human rights” as set out by …see http://www.facebook.com/l/d8b48d9pK_dhplmFnq6c6C1Vu7g/www.bdsmovement.net/2011/largest-ulu-7064

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