The University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) student council has passed a historic motion in support of Palestine. The motion, “UMSU stands with Palestine—BDS and Solidarity Policy”, was moved by people of colour officer Hiba Adam and seconded by POC council representative Mohamed Hadi.
The Israeli High Court has approved the expulsion of between 1,200 and 1,800 Palestinians from eight villages in the Masafer Yatta region of the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank. Should the expulsions go ahead, it will be the one of the largest incidents of ethnic cleansing in the area since 1967.
After a rout of Russian forces in the first week of its Ukraine invasion, Vladimir Putin abandoned his initial strategy of overthrowing the Zelensky government with minimum casualties. He ordered the Russian military to revert to what it knows best— imposing its will through the slaughter of thousands of civilians.
Sympathy for Ukrainian refugees is promoted in the Western media as unquestionable—as it should be. This is exactly how refugees from every conflict and crisis should be treated. Yet it is impossible to ignore the stark contrast between the treatment of refugees from Ukraine and those from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has not been the cake walk that Vladimir Putin seems to have expected. Putin appears to have believed that Ukrainian resistance would quickly collapse; that he could simply roll his tanks in, seize Kyiv and install a puppet government. Indeed he seems to have believed many Ukrainians would welcome the Russian forces as liberators.
As Russian troops enter Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions in eastern Ukraine dominated by forces hostile to the Ukrainian government, the threat of a Russian invasion of the whole of Ukraine is becoming even more acute.