The acclaimed Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd were invited to the Adelaide Writers’ Festival, South Australia, but have encountered a storm of false defamation from Zionists, pro-Zionist Mainstream media and pro-Zionist politicians. Susan Abulhawa has also been falsely defamed for her humane, pro-peace views on the appalling Ukraine War. The eminent anti-racist Jewish Australian Festival Director, publisher Louise Adler, is standing firm against this ferocious Zionist attack on free speech in Australia.
Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd have been falsely defamed for alleged “anti-Semitism” and “hate speech” for criticising the century-long genocidal abuse of indigenous Palestinians by Zionists. However anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism because a large body of anti-racist Jewish scholars condemn racist Zionism, Israeli Apartheid, Apartheid Israel, and the century-long and ongoing Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million Palestinians killed by violence, 0.1 million, and imposed deprivation, 2.1 million).
Thus anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman (New York University): “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis”. Likewise anti-racist Jewish Canadian writer Naomi Klein: “There is a debate among Jews – I’m a Jew by the way. The debate boils down to the question: “Never again to everyone, or never again to us?”… [Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free card…There is another strain in the Jewish tradition that say[s], “Never again to anyone.”
Famed anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish writers and scholars Tariq Ali, Russell Banks, John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Eduardo Galeano, Charles Glass, Naomi Klein, W.J.T. Mitchell, Harold Pinter, Arundhati Roy, Jose Saramago, Giuliana Sgrena, Gore Vidal, and Howard Zinn have condemned “[Israel’s] long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation” (Google “Jews against racist Zionism” and “Non-Jews against racist Zionism”). Indeed 25% of US Jews and 38% of those under 40 say that Israel is an apartheid state.
Despite a century-long Palestinian Genocide and successive mass population expulsions (800,000 in the 1948 Nakba or Catastrophe, and 400,000 in the 1967 Naksa or Setback), today 7.5 million Indigenous Palestinians represent 50% of the 15.0 million Subjects of Apartheid Israel (while 7.0 million Jewish Israelis represent only 47%), but 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians (73% of the Indigenous Palestinian Subjects of Apartheid Israel) cannot vote for the government ruling them i.e. they are subject to egregious Apartheid as recognized by major world and Israeli human rights organizations.
Each year Israel violently kills about 500 Palestinians and a further 4,000 die avoidably from imposed deprivation. Since 2000 about 10,000 Palestinians have been killed violently and about 90,000 have died from imposed deprivation. 4,000 Zionists have been killed since 1920, 40 by Gaza rockets since 2000. However about 4,500 Israelis have been murdered by fellow Israelis since 2000.
Apartheid Israel is committing Genocide, defined by Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The “GDP (nominal) per capita” is a deadly $3,500 for Occupied Palestinians and $54,400 for Occupier Israelis. Serial war criminal Apartheid Israel is grossly violating Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that demand that an Occupier is obliged to provide life-sustaining food and medical requisites to its Occupied Subjects “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”.
Of 15.5 million mostly impoverished Indigenous Palestinians: 8 million Exiled Palestinians are excluded from their homeland inhabited continuously by their forebears for over 3,000 years; 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians exist without human rights under Israeli guns in the West Bank (3.3 million) and the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp (2.2 million); and 2.0 million Israeli Palestinians can vote but exist as Third Class citizens under 60 Nazi-style, race-based laws.
The false defamation and attempted censorship of the acclaimed Palestinian writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd is repugnant and symptomatic of a wider malaise in Zionist-subverted, Zionist-perverted, and “look-the-other-way” Australia that is a craven lackey of an endlessly warmongering and Zionist-subverted America. US lackey Australia is second only to the US as a supporter of nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist and neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel.
Presently 3 out of 8 Australian State and Territory Governments (the Victorian, New South Wales, and South Australian State Governments), 2 out of 43 Australian universities (Melbourne University and Wollongong University), the Federal Labor Government, and the Coalition Federal Opposition endorse the anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, pro-Apartheid, genocide-ignoring and holocaust-ignoring International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of anti-Semitism that has been rejected by scholars and over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations around the world.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish critics of Israeli Apartheid as anti-Semites), anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Palestinian, Arab and Muslim critics of Israeli Apartheid as anti-Semites), and near-comprehensively genocide-ignoring and holocaust-ignoring (by falsely ignoring all WW2 holocausts and genocides other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, and indeed ignoring some 70 genocides and holocausts).
Australia is one of 35 members of the all-European and mostly NATO and EU IHRA. All but 4 IHRA members shockingly voted No with Australia, the US and Ukraine to the annual UN General Assembly Anti-Nazi Resolution in 2022 that condemns Nazism, neo-Nazism and related racist obscenities. Even neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel voted Yes for the UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution.
What can decent people do? People supporting Apartheid Israel and hence the vile crime of Apartheid must be exposed as utterly unfit for public life in one-person-one-vote democracies like Australia. The world must apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its racist supporters. Decent anti-racist and anti-Apartheid Australians simply cannot vote 1 for either Labor or the Coalition in Australia’s compulsory and preferential voting system. Abolition of any foreign ownership of Australian media would stop the present mendacious subversion of Murdochracy Australia by the dominant and fervently Zionist US Murdoch media empire.
Free speech and truth are core values of decent universities, and academic staff and students around Australia are protesting this worsening threat to Australian democracy and academic free speech. No decent overseas students will study at Zionist-subverted Australian institutions committed to Racism and Lies instead of the academic and humanitarian ethos of Kindness and Truth. Please inform everyone you can. For detailed analysis and documentation see Gideon Polya, “Abulhawa, El-Kurd, Palestine & Ukraine: Zionists Attack Australian Free Speech,” Countercurrents.