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Unionists take Palestine solidarity into schools and workplaces
Organising for Palestine in the unions continues to step up.
Union contingents at the Melbourne protests have drawn several hundred, including members of the ASU, health workers unions, AEU, PSA, NTEU, CFMEU and MUA. Cranes on many of city’s large construction sites are flying Palestinian flags.
Meetings for members of individual unions have included a Melbourne ASU meeting with 70 people, meetings at university campuses, and among teachers.
Healthcare workers have held vigils outside hospitals, including at Westmead in Sydney and a 200 strong protest in the Parkville hospital precinct in Melbourne. The NSW nurses union is now officially supporting a ceasefire and taking union flags to rallies.
Unionists for Palestine in Sydney is holding a protest at NSW Parliament, demanding Premier Chris Minns scrap the anti-protest laws that led to arrests at the Zim protest at Port Botany. ASU NSW Secretary Angus McFarland will address the rally.
Teachers and School Staff for Palestine in Sydney and Melbourne have held solidarity photos in schools and a vigil in Melbourne. Sixteen schools in Sydney have participated so far, and almost 200 teachers have now joined their Whatsapp organising group.
But the Victorian and NSW Education Departments sent circulars declaring schools were “neutral places” that could not be used to advance “controversial issues”.
The NSW government that imposed this policy on schools is not neutral. Premier Chris Minns lit the Opera House for Israel, and says Israel has a right to bomb Gaza. The policy is being used to suppress voices for Palestine and for peace. The Victorian Education Minister threatening teachers for being “inflammatory” flew to Israel earlier this year to promote weapons and development partnerships.
Gabby, a teacher at a school in Western Sydney, explained how she has pushed for action, “I mentioned that we’d be meeting and discussing rank-and-file action and ways of supporting the kids.
“I was told to go through the appropriate channels to get a meeting organised of Teachers Federation members, even though I tried to be clear that it was rank-and-file action.
“The meeting went ahead anyway, about ten teachers came, mainly concerned about how to approach the issue in the classroom.
“I work in a school where there’s heaps of Middle Eastern kids, and I’m frustrated with teachers shutting down conversations, saying it’s too political to talk about in a classroom.
“The way that it’s been shut down and the way that the school has chosen to address it is making teachers hesitant to say something out loud.”
Another teacher who works at a different school told Solidarity, “We’ve had some students wanting to draw flags or just write messages or letters, and one teacher who ripped up anything associated with Palestine, threw it in the bin and told the class off for even thinking about it during learning time. Everything has been blocked off.
“Everybody’s trying to stay neutral. Unfortunately to be able to do our jobs properly, we have to show compassion.
“Many of the students that we teach are of Palestinian background, very aware and very exposed to what is going on. Some students have family stuck in the West Bank and Gaza,” a colleague added.
For the week of action, “The principal told all the teachers wearing the Keffiyeh to remove it as she didn’t want it to become a political thing. There were quite a few teachers wearing it who were pretty upset.
“But we did take pictures and send them. There is fear because a lot of people need this job. So there only ended up being myself and three other ladies who went ahead to be in the photo.
Organising in schools has helped push the NSW Teachers Federation to take a stronger stand.
At its council meeting in November the executive proposed a motion on Palestine and education for peace in schools. There was overwhelming support and several amendments passed unanimously.
The union’s Senior Vice-President Natasha Watts argued that teachers should promote social justice and pointed to the union’s long anti-war history, including its support for teachers who wore “Vietnam War Moratorium” badges into classrooms against Department directives in the 1970s.
The motion committed the union to continue to encourage teacher contingents at the weekly Gaza rallies, where the union now regularly takes flags.
It also pledged to, “work with the Department to ensure that teachers will be free to work with, and show support to, their colleagues and students affected by the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza without fear of reprisal or code of conduct action” and “assert the right of members to wear the Palestinian scarf, the keffiyeh, at work”.
The same fight is taking place in unions across the country, as the rank-and-file takes the initiative to use our workers’ power for Palestinian liberation.
The post Unionists take Palestine solidarity into schools and workplaces first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Israeli state and settler violence grows in West Bank
The so-called truce did not end the violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers and troops are terrorising and killing with impunity.
Raids, arrests, murders and the destruction of life sustaining infrastructure shows Israel’s intent on ethnically cleansing not only Gaza but the West Bank as well.
“You wanted war, so wait for the Great Nakba,” read leaflets distributed by Israeli settlers in one West Bank village. Settlers are fulfilling their threat of a second Nakba, the catastrophe inflicted by Israel which displaced 850,000 Palestinians from their homes during the establishment of Israel.
While the media portray this as a war started by Hamas on 7 October, the effort to drive Palestinians off their land to make way for Israeli settlements started 75 years ago and has not stopped since.
Settler violence, which was already at record levels, has escalated dramatically to seven attacks a day according to Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In more than a third of these attacks, firearms were used.
Attacks have resulted in the murder of 239 Palestinians, including 52 children, since 7 October.
“Since 7 October, the Israeli army has arrested over 3000 people. We don’t know where they are. We don’t know if they are alive or tortured to death,” a Palestinian who lives near Jerusalem told Socialist Worker.
Nearly 800 Palestinians have been driven out of their homes and communities in the West Bank, according to UN monitoring group OCHA.
“Every night, the army is invading towns and cities. Nothing will stop it. We are under the complete control of the Israeli military. More people are being arrested, and it is killing people every day.”
Israeli forces have besieged the city of Jenin in the West Bank. In late November Israeli soldiers killed five Palestinians after they surrounded and raided the Jenin Governmental Hospital. Eight others were murdered the following day including a 14-year-old. Soldiers also demolished homes, uprooted Palestinians olive trees, destroyed water sources and bulldozed land in the village of Birin.
Settlers are also increasingly confident to attack Palestinians and drive them off the land. They have carried out nearly 170 attacks against Palestinians since 7 October, according to OCHA.
Two of those killed by Israeli settlers in the Qusra village in the West Bank were father Ibrahim Wadi and son Ahmed. They were attending the funeral of another person shot by settlers a few days earlier, when settlers blocked the funeral procession and shot them.
Netanyahu’s government has encouraged this violence. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has distributed 10,000 firearms to volunteer security squads and ordered the loosening of regulations on Israeli civilians acquiring firearms.
All this is aimed at pushing Palestinians from their land. In South Hebron Hills the Safi family has been just one of hundreds forced from their homes and farms in Khirbet al-Ratheem due to threat of settler violence. “We were threatened at gunpoint after they vandalised our properties,” Abu Safi, told OCHA. “Leaving was the only option for me to protect my family.”
Since 1967 700,000 settlers have taken up land through forced evictions and displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Apartheid policies mean Palestinians are not allowed to enter the heavily guarded settlements unless they have been pre-approved, usually as gardeners, cleaners and construction workers.
Criminalising resistance
The release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails as a result of hostage negotiations has created a brief moment of joy. Some families and friends were reunited after over seven years.
But at the same time Israel has arrested almost as many Palestinians in the occupied West Bank again. Around 8000 Palestinians remain in Israeli custody, including more than 2200 held without charge or trial, enduring cruelty and torture in detention.
In 1970 the Israeli government established military courts, essentially outlawing all forms of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation as “terrorism”. Since the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, Israel has detained more than 12,000 Palestinian children. The most common charge is throwing stones, punishable with a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
Israel is not acting in self-defence but attempting to realise the complete ethnic cleansing of all of historic Palestine.
But the Israeli army has come up against fierce Palestinian resistance in places like Jenin. The resistance planted homemade bombs on Israeli military vehicles that were being used to invade the town. The scale of the solidarity with Palestine must continue and grow in order to end the ethnic cleansing, end Israeli occupation and apartheid and win the right to return for all Palestinians to their homeland.
By Jordi Pardoel
The post Israeli state and settler violence grows in West Bank first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Why two states is no solution for Palestine
Israel has never been willing to allow any kind of Palestinian state. The solution is to fight for a single democratic state with equal rights for Jews and Arabs argues Luke Ottavi
Western politicians continue to pretend that a two-state solution can end Israel’s violence against the Palestinians.
US President Joe Biden talks of the “need to renew our resolve to pursue this two-state solution” and Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong tells us that the “two-state solution is the only way the Israel-Palestine conflict can be solved.”
But the US and the West have known for years that the two-state solution has been dead in the water.
In July this year Netanyahu told an Israeli parliamentary committee that Palestinian hopes of establishing a sovereign state “must be eliminated.”
The two-state solution is nothing but a fig leaf to cover for the West’s continuing support for the apartheid regime of Israel.
The Oslo Accords
Plans for a two-state solution emerged from the Oslo peace process, formalised with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 between the then leading resistance group, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel.
Many Palestinians hoped that after years of struggle and sacrifice, real progress was being made towards an independent state.
But as Palestinian academic Edward Said argued at the time, the Accords were “an instrument of Palestinian surrender.”
The only reason Israel began serious negotiations was because of the First Intifada in 1987, and because the following year the PLO made the major concession of recognising the state of Israel and its “right to exist.”
The First Intifada erupted after decades of occupation and oppression. The rebellion lasted nearly five years and inspired similar revolts across the Middle East.
Palestinians revolted against the misery of occupation, taking Israel, the US, and the PLO by surprise.
Palestinian youth threw stones against armoured cars, hundreds of thousands mobilised in the streets of the Occupied Territories, and networks of local committees sprung up to provide health care and education.
Palestinians inside Israel itself—those who had not been forced out during the Nakba—joined a general strike in solidarity with striking workers in the Occupied Territories.
The scenes of oppressed Palestinians rising up against their oppressor started to break Israel’s carefully cultivated image of being a plucky David facing an Arab Goliath. Israel continues to falsely claim that they are the victims as they massacre men, women, and children in Gaza with thousands of bombs and white phosphorous supplied by the West.
But the PLO would betray Palestinians’ hope for liberation by ceaselessly compromising with their oppressor.
Concessions
When the PLO recognised the Israeli state in 1988, it abandoned the goal of liberating the whole of Palestine.
This meant giving up the 80 per cent of Palestinian land occupied by Israel since 1948, and in return hoping for a Palestinian “mini state” alongside it based on the West Bank and Gaza, occupied by Israel since 1967.
But the Oslo Accords left fundamental questions unanswered, such as when Israel would withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank and when a Palestinian state might be formed.
There was merely a “declaration of principles” for future negotiations.
Israel never had any intention of allowing the establishment of a Palestinian state—no matter how small and powerless.
Israeli leaders have always wanted complete control of the West Bank and Jerusalem. Since 1967 Israel has been relentlessly moving settlers into the occupied territories and gradually driving Palestinians off the land.
Immediately after the “peace process” began in 1993 Israel rapidly built large city-like settlements in the West Bank, annexing the surrounding land.
In the following ten years Israel increased the number of settlers in the West Bank at twice the rate of the previous 20 years.
The Israeli settler population in the West Bank in 1993 was 110,000, but there are now over 700,000 settlers living in the West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem.
Israel defends the settlements with ruthless military force and controls roads and checkpoints across the West Bank. Palestinians have their freedom of movement restricted. They must pass Israeli military checkpoints to go to work, school, see family, or go to hospital.
The settlements and associated infrastructure, the Israeli-only highways, and the 700-kilometre concrete apartheid wall, means that Israel controls over 60 per cent of land in the West Bank.
Israel also controls the major aquifers in the West Bank and Gaza, completely determining
how much freshwater Palestinians have access to.
Israeli settlements and outposts are so widespread across the West Bank that, if left in place, they would guarantee a permanent Israeli military presence in any future Palestinian state.
The Palestinians would at best be left with a series of small, disconnected enclaves with Israel in complete control of movement between them.
The extent of Israeli control means it is impossible for an independent Palestinian economy to exist in the West Bank, let alone Gaza.
Before the Intifada, one third of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza worked in Israel. By 1996, as a result of Israeli restrictions, that had collapsed to 15 per cent. Earnings from work in Israel dropped from 25 per cent of Palestinian GDP to 6 per cent.
Israel can impose border closures to prevent Palestinians from exporting goods to regional and international markets.
In Gaza, periodic Israeli bombing has killed livestock, uprooted olive trees, and wiped food factories off the map.
The siege of Gaza meant half the population before October 7 were unemployed, and almost 70 per cent suffered food insecurity.
Israel and the West always claim that Hamas is the barrier to peace. But it is Israel that has sabotaged any “peace process”.
Hamas has made it known for years that it would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and was open to negotiations with Israel. It made this explicit when it updated its Charter in 2017, although it has never given up its commitment to resistance or recognised Israel’s legitimacy as a state.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) established under the “peace process” was given limited control in the West Bank and Gaza. This was presented as a step towards a Palestinian state. Instead Israel demanded the PA take on the role of policing Palestinian resistance in the West Bank on behalf of Israel and suppressing political protest and expression.
Accepting this has transformed the PLO into abject collaborators with Israeli occupation and apartheid.
The PA has arrested dozens of journalists and union organisers and beat to death the prominent Palestinian activist, Nizar Banat, due to his exposing of PA corruption.
A poll in June 2023 found that 63 per cent of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories considered the PA operated in Israel’s interests.
A recent poll conducted during the war on Gaza found that support for the PA amongst Palestinians in the Occupied Territories has plummeted to just 10 per cent.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas was elected once in 2005, but has refused to hold another election for the last 16 years. In 2006 his party, Fatah, lost an election to Hamas but managed to keep control in the West Bank with US and Israeli support, while Hamas took control in Gaza.
Israel regards the PA as a crucial mechanism for maintaining its apartheid system in the West Bank. Netanyahu says that Israel “needs the PA… we cannot allow it to collapse… It does our job for us.”
Attempting to impose the PA in Gaza once Israel’s direct military occupation and bombardment has finished would solve nothing, even if it were possible. Palestinians have no interest in supporting a collaborationist political body that enforces apartheid, and seeks favour with the US who gives Israel the bombs to massacre Palestinians.
One state
The impossibility of a two-state solution has meant there is greater interest in, and acceptance of, a one-state solution.
Israel is a fundamentally racist society. Its very existence is premised on the ethnic cleansing and oppression of the Palestinians, and its self-proclaimed status as an exclusively Jewish state.
The Zionist foundations of Israel require maintaining a state with an overwhelming Jewish demographic majority.
Virulent racism towards Palestinians—captured succinctly by Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s proclamation that Israel is fighting against “human animals”—is used to justify 75 years of occupation as well as the genocide presently unfolding before our eyes.
Any solution that does not entail the dismantling of Israeli apartheid and the right for Palestinians expelled from Israel in 1948 to return to their homes will not deliver justice.
The only real solution in Palestine is a single secular democratic state where Jews and Arabs live with equal rights and equality before the law.
This may seem like an impossible dream.
But the heroic fight against apartheid in South Africa shows how such a racist system can be dismantled.
However, unlike in South Africa where the Black working class held enough economic power to break apartheid, Israel systematically excludes Palestinians from its economy and is propped up by Western imperialism—principally the US. Palestinians, alone, do not have the economic or military strength to defeat Israel. But their resistance inspires struggle across the Middle East.
To break Israeli apartheid will require revolutionary struggle in the Arab countries surrounding Israel, particularly Egypt, to end the imperialist control of the region, alongside an international solidarity movement that breaks the US and Western governments’ support for Israel.
Anything less will mean the continued slaughter of Palestinians and the continuing of the occupation.
The breakout of Gaza on 7 October showed to the world that Israel is not invincible. Since then mass demonstrations around the world opposing the horror Israel is inflicting on Gaza, including in Israel’s key sponsor the US, have pointed to the power that makes revolution possible.
The post Why two states is no solution for Palestine first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Refugee activists win fines case: now give refugees permanent visas
Police have dropped charges against eight Refugee Action Collective Vic activists who were fined for taking part in a car cavalcade on Good Friday 2020.
Refugee supporters had formed a COVID-safe motorcade to show support for Medevac refugees held inside the Mantra Hotel in the northern Melbourne suburb of Preston.
RAC spokesperson Lucy Honan said, “These fines should never have been imposed in the first place. They were part of a draconian and authoritarian reaction to the pandemic that saw the quashing of protest and dissent.
“Refugee supporters argued consistently that the health and wellbeing of refugees in detention could not be ignored until the pandemic was over.
“Our protests, including the cavalcade, were always COVID-safe. And our campaign was justified, with the Morrison government eventually freeing all refugees from hotel detention.
“Our only ‘crime’ was to show solidarity with the refugees. It’s a disgrace that the fines were imposed and that it’s taken three and a half years for the police to drop the charges. But today we stand vindicated.”
Honan said the police had charged about 30 people with not having a reasonable excuse to be outside the hotel even though the refugees were saying they were in urgent need of community support. Some activists had paid their fines while others were put on diversion orders with no fines after guilty pleas.
She added, “There is a growing trend by governments across Australia to attack the right to protest and to stand up for solidarity and human rights.
“Our victory today shows that protest is legitimate and necessary. The shocking moves by the Albanese government to undermine the High Court’s ruling to abolish indefinite detention is just the latest indication that Labor wants to keep every facet of the Liberals’ inhuman anti-refugee policies in place.
“RAC will continue to be on the streets arguing for permanent visas for the Medevac refugees and for all victims of Australia’s cruel border control policies.”
For background on the case, visit here.
Organisations that backed the campaign to drop the charges included:
- Maritime Union of Australia
- United Workers Union
- Australian Education Union Victoria Branch
- Health and Community Services Union
- CFMEU Construction & General Division VIC/TAS Branch
- NTEU Victorian Division
- ETU Queensland and NT Branch
- Ballarat Regional Trades and Labour Council
- RMIT University NTEU branch committee
- Federation University NTEU branch committee
- The Victorian Greens
- Tamil Refugee Council
The post Refugee activists win fines case: now give refugees permanent visas first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Protest blocks Zim boat in action against Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Up to 500 people staged a snap protest at Port Botany in Sydney last night, significantly disrupting the Calandra owned by the Israeli shipping company, Zim.
Twenty-three people were arrested after they defied police orders to clear the port entrance to allow the late shift in to work on the Calandra.
The protest to “block the boat” was called by Unionists for Palestine and Palestine Justice Movement Sydney after triggering a rapid response text message list after the Calandra docked in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Protesters marched from the boat ramp and sat down on the road leading into the terminal where the ship was docked. One of the Hutchison MUA delegates spoke to the protesters. Paul Keating, Secretary of the MUA Sydney branch, also addressed the crowd offering the union’s support for the protest.
After about an hour, riot squad and mounted police moved violently against the crowd. Police punched, tackled and kicked protesters as they violently cleared the road.
One protester’s shirt was ripped and several were punched in the head. One child had to be lifted over the crowd to safety. Some of those arrested were charged with disrupting the use of a “major facility” under the NSW anti-protest laws introduced last year, which can attract maximum penalties of $22,000 or two years’ jail.
Police has been stationed on the wharf all day Tuesday, and trucks delivering for the Calandra had been told not to enter the port terminal in Sydney on Tuesday and Wednesday to avoid protests.
Zim fact sheets had been distributed inside the dock and the afternoon shift was prepared for the action in case there was disruption from the protest. On the night, all truck slots at 8pm and 9pm were cancelled, while earlier trucks used the emergency exit at the separate Patrick terminal to bypass the protest.
The protest sent the Palestinian dish Maqluba into the night shift as a solidarity gesture.
Rapid response
The attempt to “block the boat” was the second protest against Zim shipping at Port Botany in Sydney. A 1000-strong protest on 11 November, when the company had changed its schedule, laid the ground for the “rapid response” on the 21st and helped build awareness and support among wharfies on the dock.
The protests in Sydney and earlier in Melbourne have forced costly delays onto the Israeli shipping line. The Calandra was stuck at sea for days trying to avoid a protest in Melbourne on 8 November, which blocked trucks carrying Zim containers. It didn’t dock in Sydney until almost two weeks later, drifting and sitting out at anchor in an attempt to dodge further action.
In Sydney, one of the Calandra crew told wharfies that the ship’s captain had said he wanted to avoid protests and wanted to get out of Port Botany as soon as possible.
These disruptions are a major win for the campaign to impose Boycott Divestment and Sanctions on Israel, and for building union action in solidarity with Palestine. Workers in Spain, Italy and Belgium have also taken action against ships and planes transporting arms to Israel.
Disgracefully, Home Affairs Minister Claire O’Neil has viciously attacked the Sydney protest, ridiculously claiming that it was protesters who “targeted violence at police” and saying the protest against the ongoing massacres in Gaza was “utterly despicable”.
Zim is deeply implicated in Israel’s war crimes and occupation, including the current genocide in Gaza. The company immediately offered all its ships and infrastructure to serve the “national needs of Israel” when the current war began.
It is Israel’s oldest shipping line and has transported weapons including white phosphorous, which Israel uses against civilian areas in contravention of international law. Its commercial shipping operation regularly docks at Australian ports.
With more than 14,000 Palestinians killed and Israel preparing to further expand its assault into the south of Gaza more action is needed to oppose Israel’s genocidal war.
We need to keep building for even larger numbers at the rallies. We need stronger union action to target and build the boycott of Israeli companies, weapons manufacturers, to stop the bombing and break all ties with Israel.
The post Protest blocks Zim boat in action against Israel’s genocide in Gaza first appeared on Solidarity Online.
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