Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response.
And I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions.
But still, he asked me, Ms. Ziadah, don’t you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children? – Rafeef Ziadah
In the 1970s, the Australian Union of Students (AUS) was a viable union that campaigned for a living wage for students, free tertiary education and for International Solidarity with the global South (Vietnam, South Africa, Malaysia, Phillipines and Palestine). This all came tumbling down through the intervention of outsiders from the Zionist movement determined to oppose Palestinian calls for freedom and democracy. This national union with representatives from all universities from each state was split down the middle, half supporting Israel and the other half supporting Palestine. Zionists, Michael Danby (Labor), Tony Abbott (Lib), and John Herzog (Labor) waged a campaign to withdraw all funding from the Australian Union of Students . The Zionists opposed campaigns by AUS for annual increases in the Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme (TEAS). They shouted down any attempts to raise Palestinian concerns about Israeli occupation of their homeland.
In 1977 I was the education vice-president of the University of Qld, I did research for the Students Legal Aid Scheme and set up the Education Resource Office and the Civil Liberties room in the union building. I found myself in conflict with a Liberal (conservative) council. Together with people from the Civil Liberties Media Action group I wrote a booklet called “Live to Fight, Fight to Live” and toured Melbourne with Bernie Dowling espousing the need for struggle. At that time we were in the thick of a democratic rights struggle with the National Party government. We discovered that Melbourne, the capital of AUS, had its own struggle against Zionists led by Michael Danby (from the Labor Party).
The following excerpts in the student, Jewish and mainstream press tell part of the story.
Zionist campaign to destroy the Australian Union of Students
“In recent years these traditional right wing forces have found new allies in Zionists who are opposed to AUS (Australian Union of Students) debating the question of the mid-East in a systematic way on a national scale. Evidence that the Zionist forces are opposed not simply to adopting a pro-Palestinian policy, but to even debating the issue is plentiful. Perhaps the most striking ex- ample of this was in 1975 when a delegation from the General Union of Palestine students toured the country. On every campus where the Zionists had significant forces they organised demonstrations, not to indicate their disagreement with what the Palestinians had to say, but to stop them being heard. At meeting after meeting they shouted down the Palestinian speakers because they were terrified of what those speakers had to say.” – Peter Annear AUS rep at UQ, in Semple Floreat, 1977.
In Defence of AUS
In recent weeks something of a campaign against AUS has emerged nationally.
Two long articles attacking the union were carried in the feature pages of The Australian on August 23 and 24 (1976).
The content of these articles indicates that the source of the Australian’s interest in AUS was probably Michael Danby and his allies at Melbourne University who are trying to force AUS to change some of its policies under the threat that MU (Melbourne University) will withhold payment of its fees to AUS.
Danby, a Zionist, is president of MU SRC (student representative council). Unfortunately for him, he has been unable to obtain the agreement of the required majority of students to constitutionally carry out his threat. So, if he does go ahead and withhold fees from AUS he will be acting unconstitutionally. This may not faze Danby as his campaign shows a lot of similarities with a campaign to disaffiliate La Trobe University in Melbourne several years ago.
In that instance, DLP forces who temporarily gained control of the SRC stopped pay- ment of fees to AUS for a year. That issue was resolved in a referend- um in which 85 per cent of students voting opted for staying in AUS, The DLP was thrown out at the next student elections. Danby’s particular gripe against AUS is that he wants it to stop talking about the mid-East. – Peter Annear, 1977.
FORMER federal Labor MP Michael Danby has claimed the party broke its own rules by not giving him an opportunity to speak against the recent change in its platform on recognising a Palestinian state.
A 2018 conference motion “calling on the next Labor government to recognise a Palestinian state” was elevated at the party’s platform conference in March.
At the time, shadow foreign affairs minister Penny Wong gave assurances the platform change would not bind a future Albanese government. – Gareth Narunsky May 6, 2021 Australian Jewish news.
Penny Wong and her government certainly lived up to the promise she gave Michael Danby by refusing to vote for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza in October 2023 and is yet to acknowledge the state of Palestine staying lockstep with the US. All this despite the green light given to the genocide by the Secretary of State Blinken and the US President Joe Biden in support of the zionist thug, Netanyahu.
Ian Curr
1 Dec 2023