Soon after Sydney’s Marrickville council announced in December to embrace boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel to force the Jewish to abide by international law — Greens and Labor councillors supported the move — federal Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese entered the debate.
In a news story in The Australian and an opinion piece in the same paper, the supposedly left-wing politician damned Marrickville’s decision as “unfortunate and misguided”.
But neither he nor the Murdoch broadsheet saw it relevant to mention a key part of the story; Albanese’s wife, New South Wales deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt, is running in the upcoming election against the Greens mayor of Marrickville and Greens Marrickville candidate Fiona Byrne.
It was the kind of dishonesty all too apparent in this very public debate. Crikey has investigated the story and uncovered a litany of untruths told by the Labor Party, Jewish youth groups, the local Zionist lobby and the NSW Liberal Party against Byrne in a campaign she may well win on the March 26 election.
Opponents have stooped to using push polling and fake phone surveys to discredit Byrne.
Putting aside the fact that BDS is a non-violent tactic increasingly adopted by civil society groups across the world, including in Australia, in the face of ongoing Zionist colonisation in the West Bank, a key criticism of Marrickville has been the supposed cost of debating and implementing the move. Wild figures have been thrown around.
NSW Liberal MP Chris Hartcher, the shadow special minister of state, issued a press release on March 3 that alleged Marrickville council “has wasted up to $40,000 on this silly, offensive endeavour. That is simply staggering.” He pledged, if his party won government, to use state legislation to stop local councils “wasting ratepayers’ money on this sort of thing”.
Crikey asked Hartcher for the source of his figure and he said that it was “an informed estimate given to us privately by council staff who have been involved in implementing the BDS”.
In fact, Marrickville council haven’t yet enforced BDS with its staff currently writing a report to be released in April on ways the council can implement the policy.
NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos tweeted the $40,000 amount in mid-February, letter writers to the Daily Telegraph repeated the number, a Telegraph columnist smeared Greens mayors for daring to care about issues beyond fixing potholes, and the Australian Jewish News simply rehashed Hartcher’s number.
However, there was a slight problem; the figure wasn’t true. Crikey has spoken to a Marrickville councillor and I attended this week’s council meeting to hear from the general manager about the issue. The general manager said that there has been “no expenditure spent on BDS, just a little staff time but it’s impossible to put a figure on it. The local media has made up any figures”.
When Crikey asked Hartcher about Marrickville’s previous embrace of a boycott against Burma, and whether he found this “offensive” as well, he told me that “Australia’s foreign affairs are the responsibility of the federal government, not local councils”.
During the dark days of apartheid South Africa, local, state and federal levels of government eventually took a stand against the regime there and nobody complained. Nor when Burma was targeted for its gross abuses.
The issue here is the perceived democratic nature of the Zionist state, despite its increasingly fascist actions against Arabs and Palestinians. This reality is ignored in the corridors of mainstream power. And the power of the Zionist lobby is legendary in the halls of power.
During Tuesday night’s Marrickville council meeting, when councillors considered an application for a new, local Jewish group to hire a space in the area to host an Australian Rules football team with connections to Israel, several Jewish speakers spoke passionately against Marrickville’s embrace of BDS.
One woman, an Israeli, said that she felt “threatened in my own community” and urged the council to “chose a more positive path” towards backing Middle East peace. Another women, also an Israeli, claimed that BDS was a “festering, infectious wound” and the council had to rescind BDS immediately.
Such comments suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of BDS. The local Zionist lobby has been spreading distortions against the policy, claiming Marrickville was anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel. They fear the threat of a good example in Marrickville may catch with other councils (a real possibility in NSW and other states, Crikey has heard).
Federal Labor MP Michael Danby damned the BDS motion — he refused to answer questions from Crikey — and I understand that AUJS (the Australian Union of Jewish Students) were behind anti-Greens posters seen during Mardi Gras around Sydney.
One message read, “‘Do the NSW Greens oppose gay rights? By boycotting Israel, the NSW Greens are boycotting the only country in the Middle East where homos-xuality is not a capital offence or even a crime. Choose Freedom — Don’t Vote Greens on 26 March”.
Other signs included: “Do the Greens support terror?” “Do the Greens hate Christians?” “Do the Greens hate gays?”
These messages are condemned by many queer Israeli and Palestinian groups in Israel and Palestine, which accuse Zionist groups and Israel of attempting to normalise the Israeli occupation and anti-Arab discrimination.
Furthermore, anti-Muslim groups in Australia have joined in attacking Marrickville council over BDS and the Jewish establishment apparently has no issue siding with the far-right because the common love is Israel. No Zionist organisation has publicly condemned these anti-Muslim activists. One website calls Fiona Byrne a “Hamas harlot“.
This fits perfectly with the growing trend of Europe’s fascist parties being warmly embraced by Israel’s Zionist mainstream.
Against the backdrop of a vocal and bigoted minority, who demand local councils don’t take sides in the Middle East then back Zionist policies themselves, citizens across the world have backed Marrickville’s BDS decision and signed a petition in great numbers. Crikey has seen a list of signatories and supporting statements and they include key unionists, lawyers, writers and many residents of Marrickville.
Just this week it was announced that security firm G4S will no longer supply gear in occupied Palestinian territory. That’s because of consistent BDS pressure in Denmark.
During the Marrickville council meeting this week, prominent public campaigner Father Dave told the assembled crowd that BDS was essential in enabling justice and “when peace comes to the Middle East, with Jews and Palestinians living together, let us remember that Marrickville council took an early stand, not the political leaders who will take credit”.
*Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution.
All credit to Fiona Byrne for her principled stand. As Father Dave said, when peace finally does come to Palestine/Israel (the name of the future combined State), Marrickville Council will stand proudly as one of the first public institutions who stood up to far right wing Australian Zionists oppositiion to the BDS.
I really had trouble finding where that headline came from, until finally, right at the end, some idiot’s blog… Not for the first time this week, I am starting to worry about dear old Crikey… But full marks to your sub for inventive heads. He/she deserves a job on The Sun.
What a really badly written rant using all the cliched language of the Islamic fundamental world: “fascist Zionist State” Zionist conspiracies…
This is a really ludicrous example of where the raving left meets the extreme right to find they have a lot in common.
Doesn’t Crikey have any editorial policy at all?
I too was at the meeting and your words sensationalise what was said. The word “little” was certainly not mentioned when looking at staff time. The manager said that they do not break down how staff time is spent. Father Dave made allusions to the holocaust to make his point and if a woman who is both Israeli and Australian feels alienated then that is not to be ridiculed. Also note that this issue has engendered all sorts of vitriolic anti-Semitic comments on online blogs. In the council meeting a man sitting next to me hissed, ”you guys are revolting, you are all the same”.
The mayor acknowledged that there needed to be community consultation where all voices could be heard prior to deciding on how the boycott would be implemented. I have had a prominent local Greens member who has sat on council tell me that under BDS, my son would be unable to participate in a Marrickville Council Folk Dancing festival with his Jewish Youth Group, and that this would be “the price I pay”. Whether his perspective is true or not, it is not surprising that this type of response engenders fear of exclusion in members of the Jewish community. Please note that most of the Jewish people I’ve met living in the inner west are left leaning & critical of many Israeli government policies. Don’t demonise us it’s tacky journalism! Try appreciating that when you carefully read the academic and cultural guidelines of the global BDS, it is not hard to see how if enforced strictly it could whither away your rights to participate in community life. Like it or not, Jewish cultural and communal life is intrinsically linked with Israeli institutions. Anyone who says BDS is purely aimed at institutions must live in a world where institutions and people do not cross path.
So how about allowing that a report like this should not have been passed without significant stakeholder consultation in the space of less than an hour. Nobody-has been able to say which stakeholders raised this issue with council other than one individual activist and 2 small “friends of” groups that 1-2 greens and a labor councilor are members of.
Now lets move it away from the scary “Zionist Lobby (read local community) for a moment and note that most people I’ve spoken to in the local area are furious about the boycott. I’d very much like to see the results of a “real” survey. For a policy that is meant to be engendering Peace so far BDS has brought out the worst in many people. Lets have some real journalism about how it came to be introduced in Marrickville, how it could effect peoples lives, it’s impact on the local community, whether council should be dealing with these issues and whether it is the best way to help Palestinian people or detrimental to a peace process in the long term. Stop the spin!
Antony Loewenstein is to the Jewish community what scientists who deny climate change are to science. Both have one or two valid points which they obsessively hammer ad nauseam until they become laughing-stocks. Who knows, they may even be right. Maybe there is no global warming, and maybe the “Zionists” really are pure evil, or perhaps Martians in disguise wanting to take over the world. But the odds of either of these hypotheses being true are pretty slim.
Love the way he labelled as “Zionists” all the Inner Westies, both Jews and non-Jews, who turned up to implore Fiona Byrne et al, (and the renegade Laborites, O’Sullivan, and Iskandar,) to reconsider this divisive action in favour of supporting one of the 100’s of grass roots movements of Jews and Palestinians working together to build bridges for a future civil society. Most of those people were actually green/left types…
Loewenstein is the thorn in the Jewish left’s side that we had to have. Well, he and his 3 mates, Porzsolt, Slezak, and the other little guy who’s name I cant recall. I wish the Greens joy of them, but they represent noone but their own need for attention.
Crikey, get some real journalists down to the next Mville Council meeting next time, and see for yourself, if you have ambitions to be more than a rumour mill.