Josh Lees has been a socialist activist in Sydney for more than two decades and is a well-known organiser of the Palestine Action Group. Australia’s ruling establishment—from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns, to the mainstream media and high-ranking police officers—have sought to slander and discredit him, particularly following the violent police crackdown at a Palestine rally on Monday, 9 February. Red Flag recently sat down with Lees to discuss the Palestine movement, socialist activism and why we need to keep fighting for a better world.
Most of us will have seen the shocking footage of savage police violence meted out to peaceful protesters at last week’s Palestine Action Group demonstration against Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Sydney. Could you explain what happened that night?
Well, we had 20,000 or 30,000 people come out in Sydney in defiance of a scare campaign that’s been waged in recent weeks by our politicians and the media who have argued, or at least implied, that it would be illegal to protest. Instead, we had a massive turnout of people power to say that the people of Sydney stand against genocide, we stand against Herzog’s visit, and we’re determined to keep protesting for a free Palestine. In response to that, Chris Minns sent in his police force to violently and brutally attack a mass, peaceful protest.
I don't think we’ve witnessed such scenes, possibly since the 1978 Mardi Gras, in terms of the scale of police brutality against a protest. They were bashing people, pepper spraying everyone, riding horses into people and sending people to hospital. A group of Muslim men—including a number of PAG marshals—were violently thrown to the ground as they prayed, elderly men and women were hospitalised with broken and fractured bones. At one point, the riot police thugs were sprinting after protesters, hunting them down, pinning them in place while spraying chemical weapons directly in their faces and slamming them to the pavement.
So that’s what we saw in Sydney this week, as a clear indication of what side our government is on—the side of genocide and police brutality against the people.
The government seems to have moved from trying to spin the genocide in Gaza as defensible towards simply repressing anyone who says otherwise. How do we defend the right to protest in this context?
I think the key thing is that we have to just keep mobilising in huge numbers. We have to keep talking about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. That’s what this is all about. We can’t allow ourselves to be frightened and intimidated—that’s what repression is all about; it’s an attempt to shut us up and shut us down.
I think the response of most people to the police violence has been a sense of defiance and determination that we are not going to let them silence us and that this only strengthens our resolve to fight for a better world. When the system resorts to this kind of brutality, that’s because they can’t win over the mass of people to their view.
On Tuesday, 10 February, the night after the Herzog rally, we organised a rally against police brutality outside the Surry Hills police station, calling on Premier Chris Minns and police commissioner Mal Lanyon to resign. A few thousand, mostly young, people showed up, refusing to be scared into submission.
It’s also important to recognise that society can’t be compartmentalised into discrete, disconnected issues. If we want to speak out for Palestine, we now also must be civil rights activists. The way that the rich and powerful attack us forces us to have a broader agenda than the single issue we might initially have been motivated by.
The now very serious repression against the right to protest in NSW is a reminder that our rulers only really allow protests when they’re not having a significant impact. But the whole point is to make an impact. We’re not just saying we’re sad about genocide; we’re saying that we want it to stop, immediately, and we want our government to stop supporting it, immediately. We do that by making our government’s support come at a cost, like workers began to do in Italy late last year, and like workers did in this country against South African apartheid.
Labor is in power at a state and federal level, so throughout the genocide has been leading Australia’s continued support for Israel, including the recent invitation to President Isaac Herzog, who personally signed Israeli bombs that were dropped on Palestinians. Why does the ALP support Israel?
This is an important question because a lot of people immediately assume that this is because of the Israel lobby. The Israel lobby for sure is a well-funded lobby, which does exercise power and influence in this country. But I think that the Labor Party’s support for Israel goes much deeper than this. It’s ultimately tied to the fact that the Labor Party wants to manage and serve Australian capitalism and its bigger goals in the world, including its geopolitical goals.
The imperialist alliance between Australia and the United States is essential for our ruling class. We can see it in the $370 billion that our government is handing to the US to secure the AUKUS alliance. Israel in turn is an essential ally of the United States, as it facilitates American domination of the Middle East and its crucial oil reserves and trade routes.
That’s why Israel was created in the first place by the imperialist powers. And that’s why countries like Australia and the United States continue to support Israel. To this day, they want a violent, militarised, staunch ally to police the region and do exactly what Israel has done in recent years, which is marauding around and killing a lot of people in the interests of imperialism.
The right-wing media are promoting the idea that your support for Palestine is about personal gain. Quoting NSW Premier Chris Minns, Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph described you as “a ‘professional dissident’ who has ‘hijacked’ the cause of Palestinians for his own ends”. What do you say to that?
Thankfully, this movement is a lot bigger than me. We’ve had over the last two and a half years hundreds of thousands of people mobilise consistently in a really inspiring way to keep standing up for a better world, for a world in which genocide does not become normalised and for a world where leaders who continue to arm and fund that genocide are held to account.
Obviously I’ve been part of this movement, and I’m proud to have been part of it for twenty years. But it’s not about me, it’s about the hundreds of thousands of people who have continued to mobilise against genocide, and ultimately it’s about the Palestinians.
It’s also pretty laughable to suggest anyone would enter this movement for the reasons the Murdoch rags state. Speaking out for Palestine—which means speaking out against the entire political establishment, opening yourself up to slander from the media and making yourself a target of pro-Israel employers and trolls—does not confer all these advantages or favours. Just look at all the people who have been victimised because of their opposition to genocide: Randa Abdel-Fattah, Antoinette Lattouf, Peter Lalor, Louise Adler, all the artists, musicians and actors sacked by their institutions. The list goes on. Yet still people take a stand, because it is the right thing to do.
The right-wing press hates the idea that anyone acts out of principle rather than self-interest, because they think doing whatever it takes to get ahead at the expense of others is the highest human virtue. The safe thing to do if you want favours, power and advancement in this society is to stay silent or, worse, support what Australia’s ally Israel is doing.
The effort that these gutter journalists have put into trying to assassinate my character, particularly over the last week, is shameful. Hundreds of journalists have been killed by Israel in Gaza, more than in any conflict since the American civil war, but the media here don’t care. They’re too busy hiding in bushes outside my house and whipping up people to send me death threats. The whole spectacle is just another example of the disgraceful priorities that underpin “respectable” media and politics.
Despite the gotcha tone of the mainstream media this week, it’s no secret that you are a socialist. What has motivated your socialist activism for the last twenty years?
It’s pretty simple really. The desire for a world based on the principles of equality and genuine democracy. That’s the positive side of it. Then there’s the horror at the billionaires and their lackeys in the political establishment and the media, who instead just serve up a world of never-ending wars and barbarism, of racism and attacks on working-class people, all around the world. The genocide in Gaza has only further revealed what a sick, disgusting system capitalism is.
I believe very strongly that the world does not have to look like this. It does not have to look like starving children in Gaza, climate catastrophe, widespread poverty and fascist ICE agents. But it will look like all of those things for as long as a self-interested tiny minority of billionaire parasites are calling the shots.
This is why I have been an activist and a socialist for most of my adult life. The media keep printing these lists of all the social justice campaigns I’ve been involved in, as though it’s, like you said, some “gotcha” against me. But I’m proud of this history. Socialists understand that all the ills of this world are interconnected: we can’t just be single issue activists or we’ll never get to the root of the problem, which is capitalism.
So yes, I have campaigned for refugee rights, for marriage equality, against the mega-rich, against the sacrifice of our health and lives to the altar of profits during the COVID pandemic, against runaway climate change, for workers’ rights and more. This does not negate mine or anyone’s activism in the Palestine solidarity movement. Strong movements enhance and can build on one another.
What would you say to someone thinking about getting involved in activism today?
Everyone needs to get involved in the fight for a better world. Because the alternative is Donald Trump, the alternative is Pauline Hanson. The alternative is Chris Minns’ riot police, beating us into submission again and again and again, unless we stand up and fight back in much bigger numbers. The world is only getting nastier, but the hope for the future lies in those masses of people who refuse to be silent, whether it’s standing up against genocide, whether it’s standing up to protect immigrants in their communities or whatever else it may be.
All around the world people are bravely rising up, whether it’s against Trump in Minneapolis, workers in Italy, the Gen Z youth uprisings that swept the Global South at the end of last year, or the millions who have taken part in the Palestine solidarity movement. Take inspiration from all of that, because another world is possible if we get involved and fight for it.
