The First Intifada was triggered by (then) PM Sharon making a provocative visit into the mosque … today it (Israel’s government) has ministers in Cabinet and in key security positions — and has promised its followers to build the ‘Third Temple’. – Alaistair Crooke, English middle eastern correspondent and former British diplomat.
It is the early hours of the morning here in Brisbane as Israeli military prepare their entry into Gaza City, and the network of tunnels below. I began this website on 13 July 2006 “The July war” when Israel invaded Lebanon and started bombing Beirut International airport. The Palestinian resistance has featured on its pages ever since.
Forty-eight hours ago, on 13 October 2023, there was overwhelming support shown by Arab-Australians and whitefella solidarity groups in a march through Brisbane CBD of over 2,000 people. These people were not (I say NOT) mobilised by the mosques, they were not mobilised by Islam. They were mobilised by their concern for the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Sure, the demonstration was mentioned in the mosque at Friday morning prayer, but what Australian and world-wide media do not seem to understand is: Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is not a religious war … neither was the first al Nakba in 1948 … it is a secular war against all Palestinians by Israel to steal and colonise their land.
On Friday night, solidarity groups marched within a couple of hundred metres of Brisbane’s main synagogue. No one sought to go into it, no one attacked it, no one was even interested, no one burnt the flag of zion invented in the middle ages to represent the Jewish religion.
Allahu Akbar الله أكبر?
I did not hear one chant of Allahu Akbar (Arabic: الله أكبر) during two hours of protest, that is not to say it was not chanted it’s just that I didn’t hear It. They made a big deal of this in Sydney but I don’t see this as being very important.
Sure people were deeply affected by the show of support by Australian governments for the apartheid state of Israel. But Australia, like Israel, is a racist country that has been practicing apartheid against first nations people during my lifetime – the town camps, the shanty towns, the missions, the stealing of children, the deaths in custody, the gap. What can we expect in my home state of Queensland where racism is deeply entrenched in people? Where 2 in every 3 people bear racist attitudes towards first nations people as reflected in the resounding ‘No’ vote to recognise aboriginal people in the Australian constitution – already a racist document.
Palestine: the myth of the third Jewish temple
The media including the ABC have fed people here in Australia with a huge lie that the Palestinian resistance is a bunch of religious Islamic fanatics and our media swallow the Israeli propaganda that Hamas can be wiped from the face of the earth. What is Israel going to do? Kill all the supporters of Hamas? Kill the supporters of Hezbollah, of Fattah? Kill all the supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine? Kill all the christian Palestinians who reject the occupation?
Yes, what about the sizeable christian population of Palestinians both in the occupied territories and around the world? My oldest Palestinian friend was only 6 years old when his family were driven from their home in 1948 by the the Israeli militia – the Irgun and the Hagannah. His family were muslim but he converted to christianity … his family has been under direct attack in Nablus over the past few years, their house raided many times, his sister’s husband been taken into detention, his sister’s oldest son also taken, their children threatened by Israeli soldiers, one of their closest friends shot dead in Nablus.
Secular Struggle
Despite all the UN resolutions about self-determination, this Israeli war on Gaza is a land grab by the government in Tel Aviv and by settlers. Zionists are celebrating in front of their screens, on the streets of Tel Aviv, in New York, in London, in Melbourne, as a human tragedy unfolds before our eyes. The 1.7 million refugees of Gaza from 1948 have been forced off their home for a second time. Palestinians in Gaza are defending hospitals, schools, houses, apartment blocks, streets, their land. On our screens we are witnessing the third our Nakba (‘catastrophe’): the first was in 1948, the second in 1967 when without hope of return, Israel forcibly displaced Palestinians from the Latroun area, East Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley to Jordan., and the third is the killing and forcible displacement of people from northern Gaza and from the West Bank in 2023, 75 years after they were evicted from neighbouring towns and villages by Israeli militia.
Ian Curr
Editor Workers BushTelegraph
email – iancurr@bigpond.com
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‘… philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it …’ – Marx (1845)
