“We will not let Tony Burke talk about the arts & storytelling while Israel is murdering artists, creatives & journalists in Palestine. Tony refuses to admit we are witnessing a genocide” – Justice for Palestine (Meanjin).
Staunch solidarity action at Woodford Folk Festival
The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for the Arts, Tony Bourke, was interviewed at the 2023 Woodford Folk Festival by Press Gallery journo, Karen Middleton (author of Afghanistan: the unwinnable war). Her questions were lame until pressed by Justice for Palestine (Meanjin) activists to ask the Minister about his government’s response to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Karen Middleton: My final question is very, there’s concern that this conflict has gone beyond seeking to root out Hamas and that it has become something bigger and the word has been (interjection: genocide) that has been used here. What is your response to those concerns? Do you share those concerns?
Tony Bourke (squirming): “Okay, so first of all, there is a way that people are asked to interview where there is always a test of words, will you use the word genocide, we use the word apartheid. On the Israeli side, it’s how many times in the interview will you issue a condemnation of Hamas. And it’s as though ah, as though there’s, there’s all these tests, and anything short of that particular test that has been set for you is a complete fail. (Interjection: Answer the question) And what then, and what and what then happens? What then happens is we end up with a debate about the word and not a debate about what is happening on the ground. (Sam W interjects: the word is what’s happening).
So let me put it in these terms. Because I think they matter. The Israeli Defence Minister said, there will be no food, no water, no fuel. This is a complete siege and then describe the community in Gaza as human animals (interjection: Shame!) similarly, you had different claims being made about bombing about who was in fact being targeted.
It is very difficult to question who is being targeted when it is the action of the sniper. The reports we’ve seen of snipers had been shooting on a one unarmed woman, and then an older woman who went to help, the walk the woman who’d been shot. (Interjection: They are bombing hospitals) Similarly, similarly, the destruction of civilian infrastructure has been extraordinary.
The only time that I have seen an acknowledgment of a mistake was when a sniper shot someone holding a white flag, something which is meant to be protected under the rules of war.“
A fairy-tale of democracy
The Minister does not answer the question. He is running scared. The Arts Minister is part of a hopeless government that is an apologist for Israel’s unwinnable genocidal war against Palestine.
I did notice also that the crowd applauded the non-answer offered up by the Minister. Not one question from Karen Middleton when given the opportunity to point out that Israeli snipers are targetting journalists in Gaza, murdering through direct attacks over a hundred journalists. For example Yasser Abu Namous of Al-Sahel media organization was murdered in a strike on his family home in Khan Yunis in Gaza.
Surely not a reactionary folk festival?
And the organisers at Woodford, what were they thinking? The folk movement in Australia used to have associations with progressive politics: the Communist Party and left-wing unions like the Waterside Workers and the Seamen’s union were involved in the 60’s folk movement. There was once a Communist Arts Group in Brisbane on the south-side down by the bay. The Maleny Folk Festival fell within this tradition, I thought. In 1976, I attended a jazz and folk festival at the University of Queensland forum area and at the Schonell theatre. Margaret Roadknight was there, she sang across many genres and was always progressive with feminist songs like ‘Girls of our Town‘.
Did the current Woodford organisers consider asking the audience how best to proceed on a discussion where people would question the government Minister’s response to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. At one point, Karen Middleton made a perfunctory attempt. But, upon asking the crowd and receiving both applause to move on to the arts mixed with some vocal disapproval not to avoid the genocide, still the journalist from the Saturday Paper ploughed on regardless reserving her hostility for the Justice for Palestine (JFP) activists while sucking up to the Minister in classic Canberra Press Club style. The Australian Broadcasting Commission board would have been proud of her performance, ignoring the main issue and asking Tony Bourke about Mahler (a mid-nineteenth century composer).
Long gone are the days when organisers at Woodford had tents with sustained programmed political discussions, political music, the union tent, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island tent discussions with Lionel Fogarty, Denis Walker, Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter and many others …
Gaza is the Holocaust
Mind you, there has always been a token Member of Parliament at Woodford, Tony Abbott did a session many years ago. Hawke would go and press the flesh, and many pro-Israel politicians like him. That’s part of the reason I boycott Woodford, Zionists in sheep’s clothing.
Probably the worst thing Minister Bourke said at Woodford was warning us not compare what is happening in Gaza to the holocaust (at least that is what I think he was saying).
“I would rather keep the debate to what is in fact happening on the on the ground. Because very simply, if I had used the word that’s being asked of me, people would have gone away thinking and comparing … well is it identical to the Holocaust? That’s what would have happened. The discussion that I believe, that I believe makes a difference is in people hearing the facts of what is happening on the ground. And they will very quickly choose words to describe it.” – Chris Hedges in Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust.
Primo Levy was an Italian chemist who survived the Nazi death camps of World War II. He railed against the false, morally uplifting narrative of the holocaust that culminates in the creation of the state of Israel — a narrative embraced by the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The contemporary history of the Third Reich, he wrote, could be “reread as a war against memory, an Orwellian falsification of memory, falsification of reality, negation of reality.” He wonders if “we who have returned” have “been able to understand and make others understand our experience.” – Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust.
The Minister could well ask himself: if I am a man, how can I (or the government I am a part of) support Israel?
Yes Minister, a complete fail.
On Saturday, 30th December 2023, I was not at Woodford, I went to the West End Markets to display these two banners because the organisers, Goodwill Projects, banned our Palestine Fair Trade Stall after 7 October. It was the last day of our lease, a lease that PFTA had with Goodwill Projects. Because of the ban on our stall I kept vigil in the rain at the entrance thinking of Gaza and the words of the poem by Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish:
Tomorrow always heralds a worse situation. A person can only be born in one place.
Ian Curr
2 Jan 2024.