Israel has spent the past two years on a relentless, extremely violent, calculated rampage of slaughter and destruction throughout the Middle East. And yet, we are still told, it is the real victim. 
The supposedly ever-present existential threat faced by Israel has been a core part of the ideological justification for every Israeli atrocity since the creation of the state in 1948. Supporters of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/27/israel-gaza-propaganda">from President Isaac Herzog down</a>, claim that every Palestinian, including children, is a legitimate target to be expelled or killed, because every Gazan is either a current or future “terrorist”. 
Recently, Israeli Prime Minister and wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Iran was imminently going to acquire nuclear weapons and use them on Israel in a “nuclear holocaust”—the same claim he has been making for more than 30 years. Of course, the only nuclear-armed states that actually bombed anyone were Israel and the US, which killed nearly 1,000 Iranians in 12 days of strikes.
The mainstream media and politicians’ constant attempts to spin the story that Israel is the victim, the underdog, the state “defending itself”, are so out of touch with reality that they are becoming increasingly desperate and farcical. The UK Labour government is perhaps leading the Western world into this Orwellian abyss by its charging of the band Kneecap with terrorism offences due to their support for the Palestinian people, its attempts to censor artists at the Glastonbury music festival and now its proscription of non-violent protest group Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation, all while the UK continues to arm and support Israel’s genocidal terror in Gaza. But if you were to listen to the UK political establishment, you’d think it was the IDF that was the victim.
Welcome to the upside-down world of 2025, where the daily mass murder and starvation of children is fine and normal, but speaking against that is extremism, violence and hate speech.
Israel is the dominant military power in the Middle East, a position considerably strengthened in recent years. It is the only nuclear-armed power in the region, and is thought to have as many as 400 nuclear warheads. It is backed to the hilt, armed and given favourable intelligence-sharing and economic deals by all the Western imperialist powers, while also enjoying friendly relations and trade deals with other major powers like China, Russia and India. The US State Department boasts: “Since its founding in 1948, the United States has provided Israel with over $130 billion in bilateral assistance ...This assistance has helped transform the Israel Defense Forces into one of the world’s most capable, effective militaries and turned the Israeli military industry and technology sector into one of the largest exporters of military capabilities worldwide”.
Israel has, since October 2023, laid waste to Gaza, dropping the equivalent of six nuclear weapons’ worth of explosives on the tiny enclave, while also bombing Yemen, Iran, Syria and Lebanon, the latter two which it also invaded and continues to occupy. Much of this carnage has been bankrolled by the US, with more than US$30 billion delivered in aid and other financial and military assistance packages in the past two years. Since its creation, Israel has begun wars with every one of its neighbours, some on multiple occasions.
Israel has turned Gaza into a killing field, where soldiers are <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000">ordered to shoot</a> starving civilians seeking aid. Many Israeli soldiers don’t need orders; they understand their mission is genocide, and they <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-12-23/ty-article-opinion/.premium/when-you-enter-gaza-you-are-god-inside-the-minds-of-idf-soldiers-who-commit-war-crimes/00000193-f2a4-dc18-a3db-fee62b540000">shoot and torture</a> Palestinians for fun, while taking selfies, singing and dancing, in line with their extreme ethno-nationalist ideology, in which they are god’s chosen people and the Palestinians are not even human beings. 
Within the rest of the historic land of Palestine, Israel has constructed a suffocating apparatus of military occupation and control, built on the principles of apartheid, exclusion, constant surveillance, checkpoints, mass incarceration, torture, terror, impoverishment and humiliation of the Palestinian population. All this is conducted with cutting-edge technology and in conjunction with the collaborationist Palestinian Authority. Israel’s ambition for the millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank, or within what is now called Israel, is ultimately similar to Gaza: expulsion, death and the complete destruction of any Palestinian identity.
The state of Israel is manifestly not under any current existential threat. It is Israel that is the existential threat: to Palestinians and millions of others in the region. Despite the absurdity of the claim, it persists because the powerful repeat it over and over again, without regard for evidence. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently explained why: “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us”. He doesn’t mean the billions of people, including the majority of Germans, who oppose Israel’s rampage, but the billionaires, bureaucrats and military chiefs who run the system. For them, seeing their Middle East proxy wage death and destruction is satisfying proof of a good investment.

Josh Lees

Won’t somebody think of poor Israel?

I have been suspended from my high school for challenging a federal minister about his continued support for Israel and the genocide in Palestine.
I am a year 11 student at Coburg High in Melbourne, and Assistant Minister for Defence Peter Khalil visited our school this week. When I saw him on my way to class, I asked him about the government’s continued support for the Israeli government as it carries out genocide. As I did so, staff members told me that “there is a time and a place” for such questions.
Khalil nevertheless stopped for a moment to defend himself. He went on about how much he cares for the Palestinians. His evidence for this was that his father was in the Egyptian army, he is an immigrant, has been to Palestine and has “spoken with Penny Wong on many occasions”.
How is any of that relevant?
As I continued asking questions, Khalil began to walk away. A year-12 student joined me, and we chanted as Kahlil entered the school building: “Free Palestine, Peter!” Another student then joined us in this short protest.
My classmates and I have a history of protesting for Palestine. A contingent of us left school to join the School Strikes for Palestine and the demonstration against the Land Forces arms expo in Melbourne. While we were discouraged from attending, we were not disciplined for doing so.
On this occasion, our vice principal stopped us and told us not to yell at Khalil, who was the school’s guest. But we wanted to make it abundantly clear that we didn’t view him as a “guest”. Kahlil walked past us again, so we continued to chant “Free Palestine!” I also shouted: “Fucking scum!”
After this, I was barred from returning to class. I spent an hour with the vice principal, who told me what I had done was wrong and that I should have had “a civilised conversation” rather than shouting abuse.
But if what my classmates and I did was “uncivilised”, what do you call the genocide in Gaza that Khalil and Labor have supported?
Two days later, I was told I could do “community service” to avoid multiple days of suspension. But I believe that protesting for Gaza and holding politicians to account are the best services I can perform for my community.
Maybe Peter Khalil should be doing some global community service by ending Australia’s ties with apartheid Israel.
Khalil later posted on his social media: “On Monday I answered questions from some really politically passionate year 10 students ... We discussed youth health issues ...” Actually, he completely avoided talking about the health of Gaza’s children, who have been systematically bombed and starved.
I have been told that my suspension is due to my yelling at a school guest. But that guest is a federal government minister who has sat by and done nothing as Israel has destroyed every school and university in Gaza. I felt obliged to stand up and shout when he decided to parade himself through our school grounds.
Many students and staff have since expressed support for my actions. Although I have been suspended for doing what was right and being on the right side of history, this will not stop our fight for a free Palestine—because none of us is free until Palestine is free.
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Editor’s note: This article was resubmitted with amendments on 12 July. The original version did not include a reference to the author publicly calling Peter Khalil “fucking scum”. The editors regret that this information was not contained in the original piece and acknowledge that it is relevant context to the disciplinary case against Callum. 
However, we also congratulate Callum for forcefully confronting Peter Khalil and think his actions are politically defensible—indeed, justifiable. The political atmosphere in 2025 has been defined by a total failure on the part of the “adults in the room”—particularly politicians and journalists with national platforms—to adequately respond to what is arguably the moral question of our time: the wholesale destruction of Gaza and the mass murder and starvation of its population by a key international ally of the Australian government. 
Instead, we have witnessed sickening displays of obsequiousness and deference by Australian politicians to US President Donald Trump and Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. The world would be a better place if there were fewer Peter Khalils and more Callum Bells—people prepared to throw caution to the wind and just fight for what’s right.

Callum Bell

Suspended for confronting Peter Khalil

Mo Chara, aka Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, is facing terrorism charges in the UK for the supposed crime of supporting Palestine. Part of the rap trio Kneecap, Mo Chara is one of a new wave of musicians and artists who are using their work to protest the genocide in Gaza, risking their careers in the process. 
Speaking to the Guardian, Mo Chara said of his stand: “Maybe visas get revoked, you’re not allowed in America again, it’s not ideal—but Jesus Christ, there’s people being bombed from the fucking skies, and people being starved to death”. 
This defiant attitude has captured the attention of young people everywhere. Thirty thousand flocked to Kneecap’s set at the Glastonbury festival, waving Palestinian and Irish flags and chanting “Free Palestine” and “Free Mo Chara”. When the BBC refused to stream the set online, “Helen from Wales” stepped in, streaming the entire thing via TikTok. <a href="https://www.thejournal.ie/woman-who-live-streamed-kneecaps-glastonbury-performance-to-millions-says-fans-had-a-right-to-see-it-6748037-Jun2025/">Explaining</a>
why she did it, Helen said, “Anyone who was in that field for that Kneecap gig knows that there was something very special happening there, that people outside of Glastonbury festival have a right to see”. 
In a twist of fate, the BBC instead streamed Bob Vylan’s set. The punk rap duo was not the safest bet. Tens of thousands of people watching were treated to chants of “Free Palestine” and “Death, death to the IDF”, led enthusiastically by Bobby Vylan. 
The response of governments and the media has been hysterical. A torrent of denunciations has followed, along with calls for Bob Vylan’s shows to be cancelled, accusations that they’re inciting hate and violence and calls for sanctions against them. Their US visas have also been revoked. “Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country”, wrote Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau. Unless, of course, you’re a violent, hateful foreigner from Israel, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 
Kneecap has been attacked as “not appropriate” by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, while the leader of the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party in Ireland, Gavin Robinson, said, “These gentlemen don't need to be on a stage; they need to be in a courtroom because it is a hate crime what they are doing”. 
Artists like Kneecap and Bob Vylan who are speaking up for Palestine are a bright spot in a dark two years of Israeli genocide carried out under the approving eye of the Western establishment. They’ve linked up with a protest movement that has persisted despite appalling repression and slander, and a broader mood of disgust with a society in which this could happen. 
Fuelling this has been Western governments’ determination to justify the unjustifiable, treating anyone who demurs as a bigot, terrorist or worse. Here in Australia, simply posting a report from a reputable human rights organisation on social media was enough to get journalist Antoinette Latouff fired from the ABC, the broadcaster aggressively defending its actions in court. 
Media outlets everywhere refuse to use words like “genocide” that Israel objects to, while Palestinians are dehumanised routinely. Students have been disciplined by universities for protesting for Palestine. Pianist Jayson Gillham had his performance cancelled by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra after dedicating a piece to journalists killed in Gaza. 
Celebrities, musicians and actors have the ability to give expression to what masses of other people are feeling. This challenges the consensus pro-Israel governments are trying to establish that it is legitimate to do nothing in the face of a genocide. Posting on social media, lead singer of Amyl and the Sniffers, Amy Taylor, pointed out that the repression of Kneecap and Bob Vylan is about “trying to make it look like a couple of isolated incidents and a couple of ‘bad bands’ so that it appears the public isn’t as anti-genocide as it is, and trying to make it look like Bob and Kneecap are one offs, instead of that the status quo has shifted majorly and that people are concerned and desperate for our gov[ernment]s to listen”. 
Artists played a similar role in the movement against the war in Vietnam, as they have in most anti-war and civil rights movements. In the 1960s, actors such as Jane Fonda and Don Sutherland organised anti-war speaking tours across the US and Canada, and even went to Vietnam to speak to US troops. Fonda was targeted by the FBI and arrested on trumped-up drug charges, an order that reportedly came directly from the Nixon White House. 
Their treatment was similar to that of pro-Palestine activists today. Fonda’s phone was tapped, American politicians called her activism treasonous, her films were banned, and William Burkhead, a Democrat, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/09/18/how-jane-fondas-1972-trip-to-north-vietnam-earned-her-the-nickname-hanoi-jane/">said</a>,
“I wouldn’t want to kill her, but I wouldn’t mind if you cut her tongue off”. This all mirrors the outrage directed towards modern pro-Palestinian artists.
Young people today are again at the forefront of challenging the inhuman policies and practices of their rulers, most prominently through the university encampments in solidarity with Palestine. And they are increasingly making connections between forms of oppression, and demanding a different type of society altogether, one in which innocent people aren’t murdered by powerful militaries and, closer to home, billionaires aren’t prioritised over the rest of us. 
Kneecap reflect this: when they visited Melbourne, they made connections with Aretha Brown, an Indigenous artist whose father was in the left-wing rock band Painters and Dockers. Brown painted a mural for the band to take on stage in her striking black and white style reading “Blak and Irish solidarity”. 
Another expression of this is the victory of Zohran Mamdani in the New York Democratic primary race for mayor. Young people voted in the primary in record numbers, helping to deliver Mamdani a resounding victory. It wasn’t lost on many of these people that Mamdani spoke up for Palestine and pledged, if elected mayor, to arrest Netanyahu if he came to New York. 
While it’s not enough to stop the genocide in Gaza or other injustices of capitalism, the fact that young people are increasingly challenging the ideological hegemony of the ruling class is a hopeful sign for the future, and clearly of concern to the authorities. It highlights why taking a stand and attempting to cohere opposition are important, even if you are in a minority. The alternative is resignation to a morally intolerable status quo. 
As Mo Chara has put it, “we knew that the Israeli lobbyists and the American government weren’t going to stand by idly while we spoke to thousands of young Americans who agree with us. They don’t want us coming to the American festivals, because they don’t want videos of young Americans chanting ‘free Palestine’ [even though] that is the actual belief in America. They just want to suppress it”.

Anneke Demanuele

Culture shift: pro-Palestine rappers say what everyone is thinking

Robert Dale, writing at <a href="https://www.counterfire.org/article/at-last-50000-march-for-palestine-in-berlin/">Counterfire</a>, a socialist website in Britain, reports that a Palestinian solidarity protest in Berlin on 21 June was a breakthrough for Germany's Gaza solidarity movement.
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The centre of Berlin was a sea of Palestinian flags and keffiyehs on Saturday 21 June. Banned slogans were held aloft and chanted loud. At least 50,000 turned out to show solidarity with Gaza. The mobilisation was national, the crowd largely young. They chanted slogans that would have had them arrested only weeks ago. The police were powerless to stop them.
Unusually, the protest was not called by an organisation or coalition, nor were organisations visibly present. It was initiated by two German-Palestinian online influencers, whose appeal spread by word of mouth. They expected 5,000. At least 50,000 came from all across Germany.
Ferocious repression
The German authorities have stamped on Gaza protests harder than any other government in Europe. In October 2023, demonstrations for Gaza were initially banned altogether. So the right to protest at all literally had to be won on the streets. An early candlelit vigil by Jewish Voice for Peace created a protest form that the authorities hesitated to crush. By 21 October 2023, it was possible to hold a proper demonstration, with about 5,000 attending in Berlin.
Ever since, there have been regular marches across the country, but attendance has rarely exceeded a couple of thousand. Rallies often begin with the organiser reading a long list of statements that the police have banned. No “From the River to the Sea”, no expression of support for Hamas or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, no comparisons with the German Holocaust. Brutal physical force has been used to arrest protesters for repeating them. Participants at a protest camp at the Reichstag [parliament] were forbidden to speak Hebrew, Arabic or Irish Gaelic, for fear that they might speak or sing illegal words without the police knowing.
The authorities have tightly policed public discussion altogether. Until very recently, essentially any form of solidarity has been beyond the pale. Prominent Jewish artists have had exhibitions cancelled for speaking out. A conference in Berlin in April 2024 was closed down by the police just as it began. People have been sacked for statements of support, including at least one civil servant. There has been a lot of discussion about withdrawing residency status or requiring applicants for citizenship to declare their support for Israel.
One indication of the severity of the suppression is that the authorities even targeted Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. When she came to Berlin, the city government ensured that her meeting at a university was cancelled and alternative venues were denied. She eventually spoke in a small room provided by the left-wing Junge Welt newspaper, where she said she was utterly shocked by the level of repression here. All this naturally has had an absolutely chilling effect.
Why the clampdown?
Germany’s political leaders had the same reaction as their Western colleagues: support Israel come what may. And they were certainly not alone in wanting to suppress any dissent. The legacy of the Holocaust gave them an additional—and heavy—cudgel to swing. Anyone who criticises Israel is an antisemite. But what allowed them to get away with it was the weakness of the German hard left and the complicity of the parliamentary parties. The German Social Democrats and Greens back Israel to the hilt. The Greens have been particularly vicious; apparently, it’s fine to deport people for saying the wrong thing about Gaza.
The Left Party has seen debate over the issue, but its leaders at all levels have ensured that it does not get tarred with solidarity or anything like that. The few individuals and a couple of branches that put their heads above the parapet took a lot of flak, and at least one prominent activist was expelled from the party. In recent weeks, the party’s tone has softened a little, though, mirroring the slight shift in the rhetoric of major Western leaders. The Left Party officially supported Saturday’s demonstration. This was, I believe, the first time it has done so since October 2023. They were visibly present too, though only with a dozen flags.
The trade unions have been completely absent from the solidarity movement. Given the general atmosphere, that is not entirely surprising. The nearest comparison I can think of would be support for Irish Republicanism in England in the 1980s. However, the immigrants’ caucus at the public service union Verdi put its name to a demo call recently and turned up with union flags. Apparently, the national leadership was not amused.
If public discussion is verboten [forbidden] and no organisation or coalition has the strength to push back, it can quickly become a vicious circle. Speaking out is felt to be a real personal risk, making it hard to organise protests. And the lack of protests discourages speaking out.
That is what makes 21 June such a breakthrough. Not only was the demonstration too large for the police to crush or harass. It also broke through the speech bans. Participants chanted the banned slogans, sometimes directly towards the police, keenly aware that this was their victory.
First published at <a href="https://www.counterfire.org/article/at-last-50000-march-for-palestine-in-berlin/">Counterfire</a>.

Robert Dale

At last! 50,000 march for Palestine in Berlin

It tells you a lot about the system we live under that twelve activists on a small yacht called Madleen have done more to try to halt the famine being suffered by 2 million people in Gaza than all the rich and powerful governments of the world. The attempts by Israel’s defenders to attack and discredit Greta Thunberg and her crew mates—Suayb, Sergio, Baptiste, Rima, Yasemin, Thiago, Reva, Marco, Omar, Yanis and Pascal—only speak to the power of their brave protest against the most profound moral crime of this century. 
When Greta was abducted by the IDF on Monday, the Israeli foreign ministry was quick to deride as a mere joyride on a “selfie yacht” her and her eleven mates’ heroic attempt at delivering aid to the Gazans the Israeli state is systematically starving. Switched-on observers might wonder how this tallies with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz’ previous attempts to paint Greta as a menacing antisemite and “Hamas propagandist”. The Israeli government wants to have it both ways: the Madleen crew are dangerous terrorists while they’re trying to deliver baby formula to the infants of Gaza, then foolish Instagram activists whom it’s best not to pay too much attention to once the IDF has forcibly prevented them from doing so. 
The contradiction hasn’t bothered the centrist commentariat, who have swiftly latched on to the “selfie yacht” line to dismiss the Madleen crew’s stand against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Perhaps the most nauseating of these was Suzanne Moore’s <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/activists-like-greta-thunberg-care-more-about-fame-than-facts-20250610-p5m674.html">article</a> “Activists like Greta Thunberg care more about fame than facts”, initially published by the London Telegraph and subsequently reprinted by the Sydney Morning Herald

As far as Moore is concerned, Greta is a light-minded attention seeker, hopping from cause to cause in search of exposure. Never mind that Greta’s principled stance in support of Palestine has cost her support from the liberal establishment, caused<a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/10/16/greta-thunberg-became-a-danger-when-she-began-to-speak-up-for-palestine/"> her to be</a><a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/10/16/greta-thunberg-became-a-danger-when-she-began-to-speak-up-for-palestine/"></a><a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/10/16/greta-thunberg-became-a-danger-when-she-began-to-speak-up-for-palestine/"> </a>classified as a “danger” and banned from pro-Palestine events by police in Germany, and now moved her to risk life and limb in the name of breaking Gaza’s deadly siege. 
Some of the attacks in Moore’s article are rehashes of familiar old arguments any Palestine activist would be familiar with—for instance, sneering that Greta’s progressive politics “would not be tolerated by Hamas”. What would Moore prefer? We all stay silent about the shooting, bombing and starvation of Palestinians? Some are examples of the stock sexist belittlement that Greta is no stranger to, like Moore’s description of her as a “cute eco-warrior in shorts”. (Moore <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/01/greta-thunbergs-defiance-upsets-the-patriarchy-and-its-wonderful">once celebrated Greta for unapologetically rebuking</a> the very same sexist belittlement in a 2019 Guardian article.) And some are facile accusations of hypocrisy of the hackneyed “you criticise capitalism, yet use an iPhone” variety. 
But the worst is Moore’s assault on the very concept of solidarity between struggles. The problem with Greta and the left today, Moore argues, is that we campaign around too many “disparate causes”, like “eco stuff, trans rights and Free Palestine”. Ignoring the supposed “contradictions” between them, these different issues become “bundled together as an omnicause ... a moronic vacuum where analysis goes to die”. It’s a view that denigrates the instinct towards solidarity and collective resistance as crude “tribal loyalty”.
Precisely what makes Greta such a hero is that she has embodied the principled politics of solidarity, even when it has meant risking her popularity, her career prospects, or her personal safety.
It’s not true, as Moore claims, that there is no strategy or internal logic to showing solidarity. One of the great strengths of socialist politics is that it allows us to identify the through line between the fights for a liberated Palestine, for climate action, against oppression and for workers’ rights. The common thread is that an advance on any of these fronts strengthens the collective fight of workers and the oppressed against whose who rule over and profit from our sick social order. 
It’s the ruling class whose control over trade routes and valuable commodities in the Middle East is being guaranteed through their no-holds-barred support for the genocidal Israeli state. It’s the ruling class who profit from steadily expanding the fossil fuel industry, even as the evidence mounts that the climate crisis is already destroying the lives of thousands of ordinary people. It’s the ruling class whose unjust and unequal social order is propped up by structures of brutal violence and oppression. And it’s our side of the class divide who pay the price as we are collectively dehumanised every time they’re allowed to get away with these crimes.
Greta has never let the bastards get away with it. That is what makes her, as has been remarked previously in Red Flag, <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/why-greta-thunberg-cooler-you">cooler than almost all of us</a>. Whether it’s the climate criminals copping a glorious Greta serve at their greenwashing conferences, or the world’s pro-Israel governments copping an excoriating moral reckoning at her hands, her refusal to shut up and let the ruling class get on with business as usual has reliably produced fist-pumping moments of political vindication and inspiration for lefties around the world for years. 
Moore isn’t the first to criticise or question her pro-Palestine stance. Why not just keep quiet and stay in the pigeonhole of everyone’s favourite teen eco-warrior? Greta put it best herself: “It’s so weird to me that people are separating caring about the environment with caring about humans. I care about the environment and the climate because I care about human and planetary wellbeing. Those are the same thing in my view”. 
Greta also said it best when explaining the vitriolic campaign marshalled against her by Israel and its supporters in politics and the media. Asked why so many governments are ignoring Gaza, fresh off her deportation flight from Israel, her argument was clear: they are “desperately trying to defend a destructive deadly system that puts short-term economic profit and maximis[ing] geopolitical power over the wellbeing of humans and the planet ... right now it’s very, very difficult to morally defend that, it is impossible, but still they are desperately trying”.
Of course, Greta and the Madleen crew were not naive. Of course they knew that one small boat’s worth of supplies could not on its own end Israel’s starvation of Gaza. Of course they knew that they were likely to be attacked by the IDF before they made it to Gaza—like the crew of the Mavi Marmara before them, ten of whom were murdered by the IDF in 2010 while en route to Gaza. As Greta has endlessly reiterated, their action was not just a humanitarian mission, but a protest against the complicity of the world’s governments in the Gaza genocide, and a call to action against it. 
And the world’s Palestine supporters, following our own strong commitment to solidarity, answered the call. Tens of thousands of us were once again inspired by Greta Thunberg to hit the streets, demanding freedom for the crew of the Madleen and an end to the horror in Gaza. If we’re serious about the fight for a liberated world, it’s acts of mass solidarity like that—and many more of them—that are going to pave the way.

Eddie Stephenson

Her critics may sneer, but standing in solidarity is what makes Greta a hero

The internet adage “pics or it didn’t happen” refers to the fact that, since about 2010, almost nothing important has happened in a public space without someone pulling out their phone and taking a photo or video of it. 
And yet, if we are to believe a SafeWork NSW report, details of which were published by the Australian, pro-Palestine activists at Sydney University managed to burst into lecture halls chanting antisemitic slogans and carrying banners that read “Jews not allowed”, without a single photo or video of these alleged incidents in existence. 
Similarly, no-one thought to snap a pic and post about the time when, according to the report, Sydney University student activists “put up a billboard with all the names of Hamas terrorists on it” at a protest.
The report also claims that the eight-week Gaza solidarity encampment, which began last May, created “a workplace of fear, anxiousness and a fear of retribution towards Jewish workers and students because they were Jewish people”. Multiple reports and investigations into the encampment, including this one, have failed to provide any evidence of this. But if you repeat something often enough, it can start to seem true. 
The SafeWork NSW report is the result of an investigation instigated by a complaint from 23 staff and students claiming that Sydney University had breached its responsibility to provide a safe working environment for Jewish employees. SafeWork, the government agency tasked with regulating workplace health and safety, concluded based on interviews with the complainants and two site visits that the university “failed to take reasonable actions to manage, reduce, and eliminate active antisemitic conduct on campus”. 
But the report contains no credible evidence of antisemitic activism linked to the Palestine solidarity campaign. The main examples from the report, which the media have used to try to slander pro-Palestine activists at Sydney University, fail to provide this. Some are clearly fabricated, as in the above examples, which have not been corroborated with any evidence. Others are stock standard features of the campaign to support Palestine: posters and flyers advertising rallies and campus meetings, “Gaza will be free” tagged in the campus graffiti tunnel and the slogan “Palestine will be free” being chanted at a campus protest. There is not a shred of antisemitism in any of this.
That these gestures of staff and student support for the Palestinians form the basis for “psychosocial harm” to employees at Sydney University is a politically charged false assertion. 
In putting together this report, SafeWork makes a mockery of the idea of workplace health and safety. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that the agency is known for taking a soft touch approach to bosses who endanger their employees’ lives at work. In 2022, SafeWork NSW was <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/workplace-safety-scandal-auditor-general-launches-six-month-investigation-into-failings-20221013-p5bphh.html">investigated</a> over allegations that workers had experienced injury and even death on sites where inspectors failed to follow up complaints adequately due to political interference.
While serious infringements of workplace health and safety have gone unpunished, and the number of workers fatally injured at work continues to <a href="https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/media-centre/news/key-work-health-and-safety-statistics-2024">rise</a>, the government agency tasked with regulating this is instead being misused as a weapon to come after pro-Palestine activism on university campuses. 
On this front, SafeWork is only following the lead of many other institutions that have tried to stifle Palestine solidarity under the guise of combating antisemitism. 
State Labor Premier Chris Minns spent months linking a “<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/the-great-antisemitism-con-job">great tsunami of high-profile antisemitic attacks</a>“ to weekly pro-Palestine street marches in Sydney, passing repressive anti-protest laws on the back of these claims. The NSW Police later revealed that these incidents had been almost entirely the work of petty criminals, linked to the same common source as the Dural caravan hoax. 
Universities have also used “concern for antisemitism” as justification to introduce anti-protest policies and procedures. Indeed, despite what the SafeWork report alleges, Sydney University has been leading the charge on quashing pro-Palestine activism. Over the last year, Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott has pushed through multiple policies designed to crack down on student and staff rights to protest and express political dissent. The new <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/free-speech-under-attack-at-sydney-university">Campus Access Policy</a> bans forms of protest that have been part of university life since the campaign against the Vietnam War, while policies introduced just this month impose punitive rules regarding posters on campus and total bans on students making lecture announcements before their classes. 
As Israel intensifies the genocide in Gaza and the war crimes pile up, the pro-Israel camp continues to find new ways to slander and silence the activists standing up for justice. But we won’t stop campaigning for Palestine.
Shovan Bhattarai is the vice-president of the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council and a coordinator of the campus Students for Palestine collective

Shovan Bhattarai

SafeWork NSW’s report on antisemitism at Sydney University is fake news

The University of Melbourne has expelled two student activists and indefinitely suspended two more for a 2024 occupation of the office of university academic and pro-Israel campaigner Steven Prawer. The expulsions follow a pattern of management attacks on Palestine solidarity activism. 
Since 3 March, the administration has banned indoor protests, those at building entrances and any that are “unreasonably disruptive”. The university previously tried to intimidate nineteen students by issuing misconduct notices after the Gaza Solidarity Encampment last year. When students camped out in the Arts West building to demand divestment from Israel and arms manufacturers, the university secretly spied on their movements via the Wi-Fi system. 
Management also threatened to defund the student union if it paid Palestinian speakers at a forum raising awareness about conditions in the West Bank. As well, in 2022, the university condemned the union for adopting a pro-Palestine and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions position. 
To legitimise its crackdown on campus free speech and activism, the administration has cynically weaponised the issue of antisemitism. In 2023, the university adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism. The definition is hotly contested because it includes, as an example of antisemitism, “criticism of the state of Israel”. 
Like the government and media, the university deliberately conflates support for Palestine and an end to the war in Gaza with hatred of Jewish people. There are several anti-Zionist Jewish organisations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace in the United States, that vocally oppose Israel’s war in Gaza. Indeed, JVP’s slogan at demonstrations is “not in our name”; a pointed rejection of the idea that Israel acts in the interests of Jewish people when it starves and massacres Palestinians. 
Recently, the university published an “Anti-Racism Action Plan”, supposedly to combat antisemitism on campus. Twelve complaints of antisemitism were lodged with the university, it says, “concentrated in Semester 1 2024 ... during the period of the encampment and occupation [and] largely related to posters, slogans and stickers which could not be attributed to a specific person”. 
The only evidence provided of antisemitism is pro-Palestine slogans and protests calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Under the guise of fighting racism, the university has punitively targeted anti-war and anti-genocide student campaigners. 
Universities are attacking freedom of speech and anti-war protesters in part because they are a key pillar of defence research in Australia. The University of Melbourne alone collaborates with thirteen weapons companies, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and BAE Systems. 
It aims to cement its place in weapons research by establishing a <a href="https://www.thecitizen.org.au/articles/at-fishermans-bend-university-of-melbourne-angling-for-defence-contracts-relationships">weapons research hub at the new Fisherman’s Bend campu</a>s, currently under construction in Port Melbourne. The university will partner with Boeing, Siemens, and the Australian Department of Defence. The administration has already spent $2 billion on the project and is attempting to establish more contracts with other weapons companies. 
The decision to discipline students coincides with the devastating escalation in Israel’s war. Israel is systematically starving Gazans. In the past week, a US “aid” organisation, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has repeatedly gunned down Palestinians desperately seeking food at distribution sites. Israeli politicians boast openly of making the Gaza Strip so unliveable that Palestinians will “voluntarily” leave. It’s open ethnic cleansing. And at this moment, the university administration has come out stridently on Israel’s side. 
The expulsions set a dangerous precedent for free speech and the right to protest on campus. But they can be challenged. Last year, <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/how-deakin-university-tried-to-trample-on-students-rights-and-failed">a Deakin student was suspended</a> for her involvement in the Deakin Gaza Encampment, but was reinstated on appeal. Similarly, <a href="https://honisoit.com/2024/09/pro-palestinian-anu-student-wins-expulsion-appeal/">an ANU student won their expulsion appeal</a> after being disciplined. Those cases show that it’s possible to challenge university discipline and win civil liberties on campuses. The movement won’t be cowed or intimidated by those trying to silence us.

Emma Dynes

Melbourne University expels Palestine solidarity activists

Reconciliation Day in Canberra last year was ice cold, the air thick with fog. For 232 days, Israel had been indiscriminately bombing the people of Gaza. For 28 days, hundreds of students and staff had maintained a protest encampment on Kambri lawns, the heart of the Australian National University campus, demanding that the administration cut ties with Israel and condemn the genocide. ANU managers had spent the month slandering the protest and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-16/act-palestine-anu-gaza-encampment-members-ordered-to-vacate/103858184">suspending student activists</a> involved in the encampment. 
It was Monday morning, 27 May; the university bosses finally decided that they could no longer tolerate the encampment in such a prominent position. Their official justification was that we were blocking a fire evacuation point, and the backup evacuation point just would not do. In truth, they wanted the protest out of sight. 
Dozens of security guards and a handful of police officers arrived to serve the students with an evacuation notice. Those awakened by this order initially complied. Ambushed and outnumbered at 7am, they began dismantling the tents. The media soon arrived to witness the supervised self-destruction. 
Yet, as the morning fog cleared and the sun came out, a handful of students sat down in defiance and began chanting: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!” More spontaneously joined, sitting around the camping gear, which had now been packed down, linking arms and chanting. The circle of hi-vis security guards retreated as supporters surged closer to the first movers and joined in the chanting. 
More police arrived. Blue and white chequered vans, cars and motorbikes pulled up across the creek to establish a “command centre” about a hundred metres away. Security was no longer fit for the task, so ANU had called in the cavalry. 
Meanwhile, the students had now convened a meeting. Did we want to stare down the police, risking arrest, to defend the camp? After a brief discussion, we took a vote. The decision was close to unanimous—we would not move. 
Some volunteers sifted through the crowd to write the phone number of a supportive lawyer on the arms of everyone willing to get arrested. Those who preferred not to face arrest stepped off the grass and formed a human chain around the camp. About a hundred sat ready to be dragged off in a divvy van, and a few hundred more stood with their arms linked in an unbroken chain around the perimeter. People with megaphones were stationed throughout the picket line, leading songs and chants to keep spirits high. 
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s planted by the water
We shall not be moved.
But after several hours, the ultimatum finally came. Two of us were given the job of police liaisons. We walked to their “command centre” next to the creek and were told that the university was prepared to offer a second location for the camp, a few hundred metres up the path. If we refused to move there by 3pm, we would be arrested. We went back to the camp and relayed what the officer had said. We took another vote. “Knowing what we just told you, who is committed to staying?” Everyone cheered. I passed their message back to the officer. 
The deadline came and went. We kept checking our watches. Eventually, at 4pm or so, an officer marched to a spot across from the camp and placed a small speaker on the ground to announce an official directive: that everyone must vacate Kambri lawns by 11am Tuesday or face arrest. 
We had forced the police to back down—for now. Every cop van, car and bike left the campus, and we were left to debrief. We fought the law and, for a moment, we won. 
Later, we heard that the university had issued a directive to all students to avoid the Kambri precinct the following day, and that businesses in the precinct were instructed to shut down in preparation for a major police operation. But we also heard from some unionists that workers on ANU construction sites were organising to walk off the job in solidarity with us. 
We put a call out to every community group we could think of to mobilise the next day and support us against mass arrests. The university managers were preparing to escalate the situation—but we had won once, and the mood was that we could win again. 
Yet, after hours of debate, several votes and a thinning out of people in the camp, the scared and tired few who remained at around midnight finally voted to accept the university’s directive. The anticipated showdown never came. Construction workers still walked off the job. Students, community members and reporters still showed up the next day in expectation. But the police didn’t need to return—they scored their victory through intimidation. 
This wasn’t the end, however. The camp continued in its new location for 83 more days. By the end of the year, there had been several general meetings, countless rallies, a referendum and one of the longest campus protest encampments in the country—all demanding divestment from Israel and weapons companies supplying the Israeli military. 
Under pressure, the university reversed the suspensions and expulsions of student activists and <a href="https://www.woroni.com.au/news/anu-to-divest-from-controversial-weapons-manufacturers-but-questions-remain/">promised to divest</a> from “controversial weapons companies”. Exactly which companies were “controversial” was never clarified, and no updates have been provided since that promise was made. They have not yet condemned the genocide in Gaza or cut ties with Israel.
The fight for a free Palestine continues, but the strength of our side is nourished by small acts of defiance and partial victories like the one we scored last year on Kambri lawns.

Nick Reich

When Palestine solidarity protesters defied police at the ANU

To stifle growing pro-Palestinian activities on Australian campuses, university authorities are developing and applying disparate techniques of control. Consequently, the university as a place of free speech, political activism and the right to protest is under attack.
The universities of<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/21/university-of-sydney-criticised-for-plan-to-ban-protest-banners-being-displayed-without-prior-permission"> Sydney</a>,<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jun/03/university-of-melbourne-two-students-expelled-pro-palestine-protest-ntwnfb?utm_term=683e574093202591af7057f2c5ad560f&amp;utm_campaign=GuardianTodayAUS&amp;utm_source=esp&amp;utm_medium=Email&amp;CMP=GTAU_email"> Melbourne</a> and<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/university-of-wa-bans-statements-that-cause-harm-disciplines-student-for-defending-free-speech"> Western Australia</a> are particularly punitive. The intricate intrusiveness and hyper-vigilance of their techniques of control are well known and widely criticised. 
All these techniques have been identified by members of Educational Researchers for Palestine—a group I belong to. Such patterns are evident in the views and material we have gathered from universities and from our own experiences, observations and communications with other staff and students. While the following techniques are not equally evident in all universities, various combinations are evident in many.
1. Control through double-speak
Universities claim to uphold free speech and academic freedom. But on matters related to Israel/Palestine they shut both down. They also claim to balance free speech with their anti-racism agendas. But these agendas are selective. Antisemitism is their focus. Anti-Palestinian racism, including their own, is not. Anti-<a href="https://apan.org.au/media_release/apan-aman-report/">Palestinian</a> racism involves “actions that silence, exclude, erase, stereotype, defame, or dehumanise Palestinians and their narratives”. 
They say they balance free speech with ensuring a safe environment. But their main concern is the political backlash associated with purported complaints about the safety of Jewish students and staff. In contrast, the university itself creates an unsafe environment for Palestinian staff, students and their allies including their Jewish allies. 
2. Control through distraction
By focusing on antisemitism, universities distract attention from anti-Palestinian racism on campus and from Israel’s dreadful treatment of the Palestinian people. This distraction involves endless debates about what constitutes antisemitism. And universities’ ambiguous definitions of antisemitism allow them flexibility in classifying hateful and threatening speech. 
In February 2025, Universities Australia released its highly ambiguous “working definition of<a href="https://universitiesaustralia.edu.au/media-item/statement-on-racism/"> antisemitism</a>”. This was endorsed by all 39 members. How individual universities will embed their endorsement is not yet clear but further distraction is guaranteed. 
3. Spatial control
Restrictions are placed on the spaces where Palestinian supporters might gather to prepare banners and posters, distribute materials and hold events. Students are not allowed to announce events in classrooms or lecture theatres, to leave fliers on desks or posters on walls. These who don’t “belong” to the university are prohibited from involvement in protests on university grounds and threatened with trespass. 
4. Language and image control
The campus is to be cleansed of posters, fliers, flags, chalked messages. Almost any image, phrase or slogan may be deemed antisemitic. Hence, all images of Palestine or messages of Palestine advocacy or solidarity can be defined as contravening university rules. 
5. Political control
Student and staff activities relating to Palestine are strongly discouraged—clubs, film screenings, speakers’ forums, petitioning, distributing leaflets, chalking—even fundraising. University approval can be sought but such approval is largely a delaying and censorship ploy involving microscopic bureaucratic hurdles. 
Some academic staff are expected to become agents of the university’s political control in their classrooms. They must ensure that nothing is said or seen that is unrelated to their immediate teaching topic. 
When linked to Palestine/Israel, certain research, teaching and learning are considered dangerous—justice and ethics, human rights, international law, settler colonialism, apartheid, imperialism and the history and geopolitics of the Middle East. Those pursuing such “dangerous knowledge” may feel the need to water down their curriculum and research. 
6. Technological surveillance
In some cases, if they are to use a university account, staff and students must agree to being monitored. Whether they agree or not, technology is used to monitor pro-Palestinian activities, to identify “ring leaders” and participants. Pro-Palestinian activists may also have their technology use restricted, thus making it difficult to share information. Certainly, over time, universities have increased their surveillance of all staff and students—usually with little or no follow-up. However, their surveillance and follow-up have intensified in response to pro-Palestinian activism.
7. Discipline and punishment
Students and staff are subjected to various forms. Their self-defence is time-consuming, costly and emotionally draining. 
Peaceful events are often redefined as potentially threatening and violent. Hence security staff and police are used to “keep the peace” and to identify and report “leaders” and “troublemakers”. They have been used to shut down encampments and protests. At encampments, they have not protected students from violent attacks by extreme right-wing groups. Their presence is implicitly threatening, and their behaviour is sometimes physically violent. 
Undergraduate and graduate students have been “spoken to”, warned, suspended, fined and expelled. Staff have also been “spoken to” and warned, had their teaching and other activities monitored and reported by pro-Israeli/Zionist students and other staff. They have had their research questioned and some have had their grants suspended. 
8. Climate control
A climate of fear and distrust is created. It has a chilling effect on everyday university activities and relationships. Fear causes self-censorship. Events are relocated or re-badged. 
Staff feel their opportunities for jobs, tenure, promotion and academic leave are at risk. Students feel at risk of suspension and expulsion. They often don’t know if their peers, lecturers or supervisors will support or report them. Palestinian, Muslim and Arab staff feel extra visible and vulnerable. 
The result: universities of bad faith and ethical emptiness.
They have allowed themselves to be intimidated by politicians and special interest groups. They have tried to bury the discussion of an inexcusable tragedy involving genocide. They have sacrificed the notion that knowledge must be free and fearless—corrupting truth and undermining trust and collegiality. Timid and small-minded, they implicitly encourage staff and students to be the same. 
Were they not so ethically empty, universities could have practised an ethic of care, courage and compassion in response to the ongoing horrors visited by Israel on Gaza and the West Bank. They could have developed this into a sector-wide ethos. They could have responded to the desperate <a href="https://www.gazauniversities.org/">calls</a> for help from universities in Gaza. They could have explored, with staff and students, ways to help Gaza recover from the educational obliteration of <a href="https://euppublishingblog.com/2025/05/27/scholasticide-memory-power-of-pedagogy/">scholasticide</a>. They could have mobilised their knowledge and expertise to contribute to an understanding of the issues and to consider how university members might help alleviate the Palestinian people’s terrible suffering. 
Could have? Should have.
First published by the <a href="https://blog.aare.edu.au/these-are-deeply-disturbing-patterns-of-censorship-across-australian-universities/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup">Australian Association for Research in Education</a>. Jane Kenway is an elected fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia, emeritus professor at Monash University and professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Jane Kenway

The patterns of censorship across Australian universities

Starving Palestinians forced to walk kilometres under scorching heat in a desperate search for food are crowded into metal cages. Drone broadcasts direct civilians to aid distribution points, where Israeli forces open fire on them. The situation is so desperate that many decide to brave the gunfire and attempt to gather food for their families.
“People fought over five pallets. They told us to take food—then they fired from every direction”, Mansour Sami Abdi, a father of four, <a href="https://msf.org.au/article/project-news/gaza-dozens-massacred-us-israel-backed-food-distribution-sites">told Doctors without Borders</a>, a humanitarian organisation, earlier this week. “I ran 200 metres before realising I’d been shot. This isn’t aid, it’s a lie.”
Massacres occur almost daily. On 1 June, at least 30 Palestinians were murdered like this. On 3 June, there were another 27. Who can now deny that Israel is waging a war of extermination? As the horrific results of the Zionist state’s project are laid bare, the collaborators—politicians, media organisations and “respectable” capitalist institutions—are searching for alibis. 
Last month, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Canada for the first time <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-from-the-leaders-of-the-united-kingdom-france-and-canada-on-the-situation-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank">issued a joint statement</a> criticising Israel’s “disproportionate” escalation in Gaza. The asymmetry has been discovered just 600 days into a “war” between one of the world’s best-equipped militaries and a starved civilian population. They should not be allowed to feign ignorance. The architects of these crimes could hardly have been clearer in their intentions. 
At the invasion’s outset, Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cze5w2wd4x0o">wrote on X</a>: “Now we all have one common goal—erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth”. Two days after 7 October, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was “<a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/we-are-fighting-human-animals-dehumanization-of-palestinians/">fighting human animals</a>” as he announced a complete siege of the territory.
“It’s time to kiss doomsday”, Israeli MP Revital Gotliv wrote, also on X. “Shooting powerful missiles without limit. Not flattening a neighbourhood. Crushing and flattening Gaza ... with penetrating bombs. Without mercy! Without mercy!” 
Ariel Kallner, another member of parliament, wrote: “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join!”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suddenly finds distasteful the use of starvation as a weapon of war. On 26 May, he told a press conference: “It is outrageous that there be a blockade of food and supplies to people who are in need”. But UNICEF began warning that all children under five were at risk of death from starvation in December 2023. And Israel has blockaded Gaza for almost twenty months. 
Albanese knew exactly what Israel’s endgame was when he refused to criticise US President Donald Trump’s plan for forced relocation back in February. “I’m not going to have a running commentary on statements by the president of the United States”, is all he had to say. Foreign Minister Penny Wong knew that access to food and water in Gaza had been cut off when she said on 10 October 2023: “I think it’s always very difficult from over here to make judgements about what security approach other countries take”. 
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s recent statement that he “no longer understands” what Israel is doing has been <a href="https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/05/27/no-longer-comprehensible-german-chancellor-slams-israels-gaza-strikes/">hyped in some quarters</a> as an “unprecedented criticism of Israel’s Gaza operations”. But, like the rest of the world, Merz does understand. He understood it in February when he invited Netanyahu to Berlin, promising to find a way around the prime minister’s <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu">International Criminal Court arrest warrant</a> for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He understood it last year, when his party approved €161 million (A$284 million) of arms shipments to Israel. The entire German establishment understood it as they closed ranks to have opponents of the genocide <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250304-german-ministry-dismisses-lawyer-for-supporting-gaza-rejecting-genocide/">fired</a>, <a href="https://hyphenonline.com/2024/10/04/ava-moayeri-germany-pro-palestine-protest-free-speech-police-arrest-violence/">raided, arrested</a> and <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/germany-palestine-activists-deportation-state-repression">deported</a>. 
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy recently labelled Israel’s actions “abominable”. But he’s comfortable with UK-manufactured drones being used by the Israeli army. According to testimony from a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7893vpy2gqo">retired British surgeon</a>, those drones target and shoot children who survive air strikes. Palestine solidarity activists who attempted to disrupt drone production have been <a href="https://thebristolcable.org/2025/02/filton-18-palestine-action-activists-treated-like-terrorists-elbit-israeli-arms-factory-action/">arrested</a> by “counter-terrorism” police and are imprisoned awaiting prosecution by Lammy’s government. 
Politicians in the West have united to defend their states’ economic and political relationships with Israel, a vital ally for projecting their power and influence in the Middle East. This has been more important to them than the 2 million people whose lives have been devastated in the Gaza Strip. Now that they have proven their loyalty, now that the job is nearly done, now that nobody is standing in Israel’s way, these politicians want to wash their hands of the inevitable results. 
For the same reason, a slight shift is occurring in media coverage. The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post publishes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/22/israel-gaza-ethnic-cleansing-genocide-2/">opinion pieces</a> decrying genocide. The BBC runs humanising stories on families decimated by Israeli airstrikes. Everyone, it seems, is starting to get the memo that a bit of equivocation and “balance” might be in order, if for no other reason than to begin scrubbing the stains from their reputations. 
But it doesn’t change the fact that corporate and state media outlets have spent 600 days acting as loyal agents for the Israeli military. They’ve treated Israeli accounts of events as facts, silenced dissenting voices and embedded their journalists with Israeli units to be taken on North Korea-style propaganda tours.
One of the most notorious examples occurred at the beginning of the war, when CNN international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson accompanied the Israeli army to Gaza’s bombed-out al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital. The network broadcast “evidence” that Hamas was using the hospital to hide Israeli captives. Military spokesperson Daniel Hagari showed CNN a document on the wall written in Arabic, which he said was a roster of Hamas guards. “Every terrorist has his own shift”, Hagari told Robertson. 
The problem was that it wasn’t a Hamas roster—it was just an Arabic calendar. Despite the footage already being debunked by Arabic speakers and a protest being lodged by a Palestinian producer at the network, the lie was broadcast, giving the Israeli state cover for war crimes it may have committed at the hospital. 
The systematic bias against Palestinians and their supporters has been so overwhelming that many normally apolitical journalists at major news outlets—from American CNN to the BBC in Britain—have felt compelled to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/5/failing-gaza-pro-israel-bias-uncovered-behind-the-lens-of-western-media">blow the whistle</a>. In Australia, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/26/australias-abc-staffs-concerns-over-gaza-bias-revealed">journalists have complained</a> that editors have effectively banned the use of the word “Palestine” in reports.
It’s not until the damage is done that the rewriting of history begins. Wars that can no longer be defended are re-framed by their perpetrators as unforeseeable and unfortunate mishaps. 
During the US invasion of Vietnam, opponents of the war faced a solid wall of capitalist institutions committed to its prosecution. Intellectuals overwhelmingly supported the war as a defence of freedom against communist tyranny. University heads called the police on protesters targeting their defence ties. American journalists identified with the objectives of “their side”, repeated government justifications for war crimes and assisted in their cover-up. Anybody who stood against this consensus was slandered as a “communist sympathiser”.
When as many as 3 million Vietnamese were dead, the occupation collapsed and opponents of the war were proved right. Then the war was rewritten self-servingly as a “tragedy of good intentions”, a noble mission gone awry. 
It was similar with Iraq. Sponsors of the war falsified evidence to justify the invasion, and suppressed, monitored and smeared opponents. Then, when it all fell apart, they shrugged it off as an intelligence failure. Hillary Clinton brushed aside her support for the war during her first presidential bid, saying: “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have voted that way”.
As in Vietnam and Iraq, so now in Gaza. From the beginning, the left and the Palestine solidarity movement have argued that Israel’s aims are clear: an extension of their decades-long project of ethnic cleansing and expansion. From the beginning, we argued that if Israel wasn’t forced to stop, the war would end with the brutal forced depopulation of Gaza. For telling the truth, we were sacked, suspended, slandered and put on trial. 
Israel’s backers now admit the reality of this war, yet they continue to persecute those who oppose it. Now that our leaders mouth rhetorical criticisms, we should demand real action. 
All political prisoners who have been demonised as “terrorist sympathisers” and threats to “social cohesion” should be released. All bogus charges of antisemitism against anti-war and anti-racist activists should be withdrawn. 
States should impose real sanctions on Israel. The “sanctions” announced by the UK government are nothing of the sort, consisting of the pausing of free trade talks and travel bans on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/22/violent-israeli-settlers-under-uk-sanctions-join-west-bank-outpost">a handful of West Bank “settlers”</a>. The government will continue to send weapons and share intelligence from surveillance flights over Gaza, assisting Israel in its targeting of civilians. 
As world leaders try to distance themselves from Israel’s crimes, we must continue to hold them accountable. They’ve been accomplices in this atrocity and implacable enemies of those who have tried to stop it. They must never be forgiven.

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