Six myths about unions, Palestine solidarity and the Israel boycott

Overland, 25 May 2021. Read the original here. On May 18, with Israeli missiles still raining over Gaza, Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank did something that the left in most parts of the world can only dream of: stage a widely-observed General Strike. Along with other organisations, Palestinian trade unions called on unionists…

Universities and Palestine: three kinds of silence

Arena online, April 8, 2021. Read the orriginal here. Edward Said’s 1979 book on the ongoing dispossession of his people was called The Question of Palestine. For Said, Palestine could be thought of as a ‘question’—an object of controversy. As such, it was something to which a variety of responses could be expected. In the…

Israel’s Dan David Prize and vaccine apartheid

Samah Sabawi and Nick Riemer, Al Jazeera English, 2 March 2021. Read the original here. When we circulated an open letter calling on Australian Professor Alison Bashford to reconsider accepting Israel’s Dan David Prize, we expected there would be overwhelming support for our call from academics around the world. We were right. More than 300…

The Attack on Palestinian Universities

Jacobin, 30 December 2018. Read the original here. Israel’s efforts to cripple higher education in occupied Palestine continued relentlessly in 2018, with Israeli universities acting as key tools of the occupation. The systematic punishment inflicted on Palestinian academics and students didn’t attract anything like the global attention of Gazans’ March of Return, but it deserves…

If Israel Was A School Shooter There Would Be A Moral Debate

New Matilda, May 19, 2018. Original here. Israel’s killing of at least 60 Palestinians at the Gaza boundary fence on Monday defied the 24-hour news cycle and stayed firmly in the headlines most of the week. For good reason: on its own, Monday’s death toll constituted over half of the one hundred and eleven people…

Nakba Day: The Palestinian Slaughter Goes On But A Path To Peace Is Still Possible

New Matilda, May 15, 2018. Original here. Today is Nakba (‘catastrophe’) Day, when Palestinians commemorate the cataclysm of their expulsion from their homes in 1948. The most important voices to hear today are theirs: before they read Western commentators, anyone who cares about the tragedy of the Middle East should read Palestinian ones. There could…

Boycotting Eurovision: Why Aren’t Progressives Doing More For Palestine?

New Matilda, 23 October 2018. Original here. Last week’s announcement that the government is open to moving Australia’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem caused consternation among progressives and, indeed, most reasonable people. As if Morrison’s irresponsible bid for the Zionist vote in Wentworth wasn’t enough, Australia last week also joined Israel and the US in…

BDS – a global intifada for justice and peace in Palestine

Israeli Apartheid Week protest, Sydney, March 18 2018. We’re standing today with millions of people in Palestine and around the world. Our demands are modest. We’re calling for the bare minimum that anyone committed to peace and justice should be demanding: an end to apartheid in Israel – now; the release of Ahed Tamimi and…

BDS creates the conditions for a real dialogue

The Australian, 26 July 2017. Originally published under the headline 'BDS encourages Israel to enter into a two-state dialogue', which misrepresented my position. Read the original here. A major national conference on the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign for Palestine will be held at the University of Sydney this week. Predictably, the conference has been…

A question of academic freedom

Jacobin, 31 July 2017. Read the original here. Many academics have objected to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel on the grounds that it violates academic freedom — an accusation that has been remarkably successful in gaining traction.Zionists denounce those who would disrespect the “free flow of ideas within the international scholarly…