War on Gaza: In Australia pro-Palestinian voices face a frenzy of Zionist McCarthyism
Since 7 October 2023, across every profession and social realm in Australia - teachers, students, doctors, nurses, academics, public servants, lawyers, journalists, artists, food and hospitality workers, protesters and politicians - speaking out against Israel’s genocide and the Zionist political project has been met with blatant anti-Palestinian racism.
This has manifested in repressive silencing campaigns, disciplinary processes and lawfare.
As coercive repression of anti-Zionist voices escalates at a frenzied pace in western society, what is at stake extends beyond individuals’ livelihoods and mental health, for these ultimately constitute collateral damage.
The real target and objective of anti-Palestinian racism is discursive disarmament, specifically, disarming the Palestinian movement of its capacity to critique and resist Zionism and hold Israel to account.
This disarmament campaign - the immobilising of our discursive and explanatory frameworks, our analysis and commentary, our slogans, protest language and chants - is emboldened and empowered by the collusion and complicity of institutions, media outlets and employers.
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The past fortnight alone has seen a frenzy of Zionist McCarthyism. Both I and Special Broadcasting Service veteran journalist, Mary Kostakidis, were defamed as "7 October deniers" and rape apologists, and as being on a par with Holocaust deniers.
A week later, the Zionist Federation of Australia announced it had lodged a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) against Kostakidis, alleging racial vilification for her social media posts on Gaza.
On 11 July, Australian-Palestinian activist and businessman Hash Tayeh was notified of arrest for allegedly inciting hatred of Jewish people over protest chants including “all Zionists are terrorists” and other statements equating Zionism with terrorism.
The same day, right-wing shock jock radio host Ray Hadley interrogated the AHRC about Australian-Palestinian Sara Saleh, employed as legal and research adviser to the AHRC’s president.
In violation of Saleh’s privacy, the AHRC went on the defensive and revealed that Saleh had resigned. Saleh had been subjected to months of anti-Palestinian racism and marginalisation at the commission.
On 15 July, documents released under a freedom of information request revealed that the State Library of Victoria was actively surveilling the social media activity of four writers and poets - Arab and Muslim poet Omar Sakr, Jinghua Qian, Alison Evans and Ariel Slamet Ries, specifically around Palestine.
The documents provided more evidence that the writers’ pro-Palestine social media posts were the likely reason for the state library cancelling a series of online creative writing workshops for teens which the writers had been contracted to host - corroborating what library staff whistleblowers had revealed earlier this year.
Political ideology
It is impossible to overstate how the repression we are witnessing is occurring because governments, media, institutions and employers are legitimating disingenuous complaints and blatant hit-jobs by acquiescing to the egregious and false equivalence between Zionism and Judaism.
Despite pro-Palestine voices explicitly critiquing and targeting Zionist ideology and practice in clear distinction to Judaism and Jewish identity, and despite standing alongside anti-Zionist Jews, we are accused of antisemitism.
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Zionism is a political ideology that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century. It explicitly argued for settler colonialism to replace the majority indigenous population of Palestine. Zionism is not a religious, racial, ethnic or cultural identity. It is a political doctrine that a member of any culture, religion, race or ethnic category can subscribe to.
Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. Jews and Judaism existed for thousands of years before Zionism. These are not controversial contentions. They are borne out by almost a century of academic scholarship and have been adopted by anti-Zionist Jewish scholars, lawyers, human rights organisations and clerics.
They are supported by facts. Consider, for example, that the largest pro-Israel organisation in the United States is Christians United for Israel.
A Zionist can be an adherent of any religion and come from any ethnic or racial background. US President Joe Biden is an Irish-American Catholic and a Zionist. Australia’s former prime minister, Scott Morrison, is an evangelical Christian and a Zionist. Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, is an Australian-Malay Christian and a Zionist.
Zionist ideology is recognised as inherently racist because it denies the inalienable right of indigenous Palestinian people to self-determination, and the right to live free of genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism and domination.
Palestinian subjugation is an existential necessity for the supremacist goal of Israel’s political project. This is not even contested. Israel’s 2018 nation-state law explicitly states that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people” and established “Jewish settlement as a national value”, mandating that the state “will labour to encourage and promote its establishment and development”.
Anti-Zionism is directed at a state-building project and a political regime. Rather than protect people’s right to subject Zionism to normative interrogation, as is the case with all political ideologies, institutions panic at complaints and uncritically legitimate the false claim that anti-Zionism equals antisemitism.
Protected cultural identity
Indulging vexatious claims and dishonest conflations is why we are seeing extraordinary coercive repression and anti-Palestinian racism across institutions.
To posit Zionism as a religious or ethnic identity is like saying white supremacy, Marxism, socialism or settler colonialism are all categories of identity. The perverse logic we are being asked to indulge is essentially this: Zionism equals Judaism therefore a white Christian Zionist is a protected cultural identity category.
Indulging the notion that the ideology of Zionism is a protected cultural identity sets a precedent that would be absurd if it were not so dangerous.
By this logic, communists can claim the status of a protected category of identity on the basis that there are Chinese communists who feel threatened by critiques of communism. Adherents of doctrines and ideologies including white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, socialism, liberalism and communism could claim to be protected identities.
Adherents of doctrines and ideologies including white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, socialism, liberalism and communism could claim to be protected identities
Further, if Zionism is a protected cultural identity, what does this mean for anti-Zionist Jews? And what is Zionism from the standpoint of its victims, as Edward Said famously said?
What does it mean for Palestinians whose lives are marked by dispossession, exile, refugee camps, land theft and now, as I write, genocide explicitly enacted in the name of Zionism?
In the context of a genocide that has so far, on a recent conservative by the Lancet, one of the world's highest-impact academic journals, caused an estimated 186,000 deaths and counting, governments, institutions and mainstream media are prepared to effectively destroy any vestige of democratic principles, fundamental rights and intellectual rigour in order to exceptionalise Zionism and Israel and shield a political ideology and a state from critique.
While institutions stand with Israel, the vast majority of the public, witnessing the massacres, are daring to question Israel’s actions. This includes questioning the Zionist ideology that underpins that state.
Institutions and employers may choose to discipline and sack those calling out Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in this moment, but will be held to account for their complicity in the political suppression of our collective protest against crimes against humanity.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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