Palestinians and Israelis are breathing sighs of relief that after fifteen months of killing, famine, torture and destruction across Gaza, the Israeli Netanyahu government and representatives of Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire. (more…)
Stuart Rees
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Sudan: Beyond pessimism
In numerous journals and newspapers, death and destruction in Sudan is described as probably the greatest, certainly the most neglected, humanitarian catastrophe in existence.
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Noam Chomsky, the voice silenced, the legacy unending
Voted many times by UK and US magazines as the most important public intellectual in the world, Noam Chomsky, scientist, linguist, human rights activist, suffered a stroke at age 95 and can no longer speak. Yet as 2025 begins, Chomsky at 96 gifts the world his examples of inquiry and dissent. These qualities he might say, remain the much needed means to strive for freedom, justice and peace. (more…)
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Goodbye democracy: Labor’s rank and file of no consequence
In the 2022 federal election, Labor members in the supposedly safe seat of Fowler were not allowed to choose their candidate. Instead, head office parachuted star performer Kristina Keneally into the seat and were rewarded with a huge “up yours” by voters. The seat was lost with an 18% swing against Keneally, a punishment which prompted a senior Labor member’s comment, “I bloody hope we’ve learned that imposition from on high is deeply resented”. (more…)
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Anti-Semitism, a pandemic of concocted claims
In response to arson on a Melbourne synagogue, ill informed politicians, ignorant media commentators and a bully Israeli Prime Minister have rushed to declare this crime is not only anti-Semitic but an act of terrorism. A year of pandemic like claims about a rise in anti-Semitism has reached a climax in interpretations of the meaning of this synagogue fire. (more…)
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Canberra’s cowardice leaves Australian women and children stranded in Syria
US diplomat Peter Galbraith insists the Australian Government and Opposition are exaggerating the dangers of even trying to bring 10 Australian women and 30 children home from Syrian camps. In an affidavit to the Australian High Court, Galbraith explained he had made 20 visits to camps in north-east Syria and had helped to extract several women and 29 children. (more…)
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Survival of a people: Threats to Palestine’s existence as Israel kills 45,000
Israeli leaders insist that all the people of Gaza are Hamas. In the same breath, Prime Minister Netanyahu boasts that victory in his war depends on the complete annihilation of Hamas, by which he presumably means a whole people? (more…)
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Poetry in times of despair
In a search for light in the tunnels of previous dark times, poets responded with lines depicting cruelties yet leavened with resilience and hope. The English romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley and the Russian resistance poet Osip Mandelstam cherished what they judged to be a panacea like quality in poetry. Shelley forecast that by crafting images of humanity, poets could become the unacknowledged legislators of the world. (more…)
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A fighter for Palestinians’ freedom: Ali Kazak
Exceptional courage and commitment is needed to spend decades pursuing freedom for your people and to do so with few resources against considerable odds. (more…)
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From Fowler to Barton, Labor HQ ignores the rank and file
With a Federal election early next year, and opinion polls showing Labor at best only level with the Coalition, it would seem wise for Labor HQ to ensure that no mistake is made in the choice of candidates even in supposed safe seats. But head office need to control, which in 2022 led to parachuting Kristina Keneally into the Sydney western suburbs seat of Fowler, looks like being repeated in Barton, where MP Linda Burney is not contesting the next election. (more…)
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Anomie: Enabled by Western media, Israel’s lies have become a galloping cancer
Israel’s unholy policy trinity – destroy, kill, lie – has been underway for decades. But since October 2023 it has reached horrific levels. The horror of Israeli destruction, torture and slaughter is apparently taken for granted by Israeli citizens and by supporters in western countries, largely because telling lies as a feature of warfare is not challenged. (more…)
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Coping with despair: Palestine, Lebanon and beyond
Israel’s atrocities for which they are not held accountable, leaves a world feeling powerless to do more than watch and protest. Intervention to cope with a pandemic of despair, requires life enhancing responses to foster peace and revive respect for international humanitarian law. (more…)
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Dutton thuggery, coalition compliance
In the October 13 edition of P&I, George Browning gave substantial, comprehensive analysis as to why Coalition leader Peter Dutton is ‘dishonest, self deluding and dangerous.’ That appraisal is so important that I do not want to let it rest, not least because there are Australians who support the Dutton viciousness; and his colleagues like to repeat the claim that Australia holds the same values as the Israeli government. A government which is intent on slaughter in Lebanon and in Gaza, and continues its passion for destruction, murder, torture and famine. (more…)
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Life in Gaza and on the West Bank: Political leaders invited to interpret humanity
In the current global turmoil of revenge and war, Australians want to see political leaders speaking about humanity and negotiation, not the old rhetoric which chooses winners and losers. In the following letter to party leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate, we urge all parliamentarians to support their leaders by making their own “Personal Statements of Humanity” in their communities as well as in the Parliament or on their websites. (more…)
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Lebanese and Palestinian lives mean nothing to Western politicians
The deaths of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians killed by Israel can be ignored, so too the misery of millions. Small wonder that protesters want to register disgust and despair.
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Campus protests: A view from a seasoned observer
A letter sent by the author to Mark Scott, vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, after he apologised during a Senate hearing for not cracking down on alleged anti-Semitism during protests on the university campus in support of Palestinians in Gaza. (more…)
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Pager slaughter in Lebanon, humanity of no consequence
Thousands of Lebanese citizens, injured or murdered by apparent Israeli planted explosives in pagers and other communications devices, are referred to as Hezbollah operatives, even though victims have included small children. (more…)
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Pearls and Irritations awarded an Ink & Impact award
At a lavish ceremony at the Highline Venue in Bankstown, NSW on Sunday, 15 September, the independent Australian Muslim Times newspaper celebrated its 10th anniversary. (more…)
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Sudan’s nightmare: 150,000 civilians killed
UN estimates suggest 2.5 million people will die by the end of 2024 and six million by 2027. World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called on the world to “wake up and help Sudan out of the nightmare it is living through”. (more…)
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Antisemitism tangle: Can ridicule depict reality?
Current responses to the Gaza “war” would seem to suggest that antisemitism is the priority issue, not the unending slaughter of Palestinians. (more…)
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Israeli hostages, Palestinian prisoners: the worthy and unworthy
Israeli citizens’ demand to bring home an estimated 100 Israeli hostages still held captive by Hamas is assumed to depend on a Gaza ceasefire which would include a Palestinian prisoner release. (more…)
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Replacing Dutton’s bottom of the barrel ideas about leadership
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton seems bereft of the qualities required in a leader, so it’s worth pondering how he and those who support him could show leadership. (more…)
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Politicians browbeaten and brainwashed by Zionism
Duly browbeaten by Zionists and Zionism, many Australian politicians fear to question Israeli terror. Evidence for that assertion has accumulated over years but was displayed last week in the lukewarm regrets expressed when an estimated 100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs dropped on a school in northern Gaza. (more…)
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Zionist bullying distorts politics, media and education
In addition to physical or psychological abuse, bullies use power in relationships to pressure others to adopt their world views. The bullying may appear in letters, lobbying, radio and television interviews, secret meetings with politicians and business leaders and even in legal action against those who criticise the bullies’ points of view. (more…)
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Bangladesh’s inspiring new leader: inaugural Sydney Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus
In the last several years, democracies around the world have been led by leaders of low calibre, who displayed little vision, not much courage and in whom voters had shown no confidence. But in strife torn Bangladesh, a country of over 174 million people, the inaugural (1998) Sydney Peace Prize recipient Professor Muhammad Yunus, a man of courage, imagination and integrity, has just been chosen to head an interim government. (more…)
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The language of right wing thuggery in British cities
In response to riots, attacks on police, and destruction of property in numerous British cities, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says ‘I utterly condemn the right wing thuggery we have witnessed this week-end.’ (more…)
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Australian Leadership to end the war on Gaza: open letter to the Prime Minister
We write to express our extreme concern that Senator Payman has resigned from the Labor Government. (more…)
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Israeli hasbara wants to silence Mary Kostakidis
Regarding recent social media posts by journalist, former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis, the CEO of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) has lodged a complaint with the Australia Human Rights Commission. Under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, Mr. Alon Cassuto, a dual Australian Israeli citizen, claims that by sharing a speech by Hassan Nasrullah, the leader of Lebanese based Hezbollah, Mary has been ‘sharing extreme propaganda and hateful material.’
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“No ceasefire” in Israel’s Gaza genocide, says ‘Anti-Semitism’ envoy
The appointment of Jillian Segal, immediate past president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s new ‘Anti-Semitism Envoy‘ is a response to the demands of a powerful lobby, designed to conceal Australia’s collusion with the beyond belief cruelties imposed by Israel on the Palestinian people. “There can be no ceasefire until every hostage has been released,” Segal stated in November; joining with the Zionist Federation of Australia to criticise the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, for saying “we all want to take the next steps towards a ceasefire” in Gaza. (more…)
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For Labor, Payman breaching caucus rules is worse than Israel committing genocide
Instead of concern about continuing slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank, the major controversy surrounding Senator Payman’s support for a Palestinian state and for Palestinians’ lives has focused on her non-compliance with rules and discipline in the Labor caucus. That seems astounding. (more…)