A rank-and-file meeting of freelance journalists, perhaps the largest ever in the history of the Media Entertainment &amp; Arts Alliance, has voted overwhelmingly (without dissent) to stand up for Palestine.
MEAA members from the Victorian Socialists drafted a series of motions to support journalists being slandered by Israel’s supporters in Australia and to honour more than 270 news workers killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. The meeting, held on Wednesday, also endorsed the nationwide March for Palestine on Sunday, 24 August.
The meeting had been called to discuss an important MEAA campaign to raise freelancer rates and job conditions. Some good work has been done here. The union is trying to get individual employers to agree to a <a href="https://freelancers.org.au/charter/">Freelance Charter of Rights</a> with minimum pay rates for writers and photographers and clauses about intellectual copyright. A couple of media companies have signed on, but many more, including so-called progressive outlets, have not.
It was an important step in the MEAA campaign to have a members’ meeting endorse the freelance campaign. However, the meeting was notable for two other reasons.
First, its size. More than 300 people RSVP’d (the most ever for a freelancers’ meeting), and at least 162 people participated. Second, the timing of the meeting coincided with the historic collapse in Israel’s legitimacy in the eyes of millions of people and as public opinion has shifted firmly in favour of the Palestinians, as illustrated by the history-making March for Humanity on 3 August.
Wednesday’s meeting was an opportunity too good to miss. But it wasn’t easy. There was a significant conservative “do nothing” pushback from the freelancers’ de facto delegate committee. Despite every member of the committee saying that they supported the Palestinians and were regular attendees of Palestine solidarity rallies, they argued that union members weren’t ready to take action, that the union’s “official channels” were working on their own campaign plan and that putting up motions for Palestine would be divisive.
On the day of the meeting, I argued with the committee all day in our WhatsApp chat group. They didn’t like it. But we were confident that MEAA members were ready to take action. We were right.
The MEAA leadership has already taken a public position on Gaza. Federal officials endorsed the March for Humanity on 3 August and the 24 August nationwide March for Palestine. And they had already <a href="https://www.meaa.org/mediaroom/stop-killing-journalists-australian-media-figures-take-a-stand-as-death-toll-continues-to-rise/">issued a media release condemning the murder of journalists by Israel</a> and calling on the killing to stop. That should have given committee members the confidence to support us, but it wasn’t enough.
I argued to the committee that if they supported some formal motions—in line with their private opinions—the meeting could be handled simply with a couple of speakers for and against and then a vote. This is exactly what happened in the end. There was no fuss, no drama, no blowup. It was just a simple exercise in union democracy and letting the membership voice an opinion.
We had three motions prepared for the meeting.
First, we made a public statement that freelance members of the MEAA support our colleague Mary Kostakidis, who is fighting the Zionist Federation of Australia in the federal court after the pro-Israel group accused her of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. The federation’s attack on Mary was made at a time when Israel’s supporters felt emboldened and were attacking journalists, artists and academics daily with false accusations of antisemitism.
The MEAA head office has been sitting on Mary’s case and has refused to make any public statements for months. Mary told after the meeting that union officials were basically trawling through her social media feed to make their own determination about antisemitism. This is an appalling and stupid thing for MEAA officials to be doing. Now the union and the public know that Mary has the overwhelming support of her freelance colleagues.
Second, we added our voices to the union’s public position of opposing the genocide and the murder of news workers in Gaza. By doing so, we want to signal that there is a ground swell of pro-Palestinian sentiment inside the union.
Third, we endorsed the 24 August national Palestine solidarity demonstrations. By doing so, we’ve signalled that we don’t want to only talk about Palestine, but act.
This was a great outcome. And, like everything related to Palestine solidarity, it required a fight to get the right result.

Marty Hirst

Freelance journalists in Australia vote for Palestine solidarity

Countless mass demonstrations in cities around the world over the last two years have shown the residents of Gaza that, while governments everywhere have abandoned them, “the people” on every continent nevertheless are with them in spirit. Reports from on the ground in Palestine have confirmed that this has been important for morale, if nothing else. 
The several hundred thousand people who marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge this month changed the political narrative in Australia, opening the space for more activism and less state repression and dealing a political blow to both the state government and the police. It showed that mass mobilisation is more powerful than the most radical-sounding phrases shouted by only a few people. 
Ultimately, however, nothing we have done thus far has challenged Israel’s resolve. This is not a denigration of the effort but an acknowledgement of reality: the opposition is simply not powerful enough. 
The previously widely touted Axis of Resistance—Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran—when they even bothered with a show of military force in support of the Palestinians, have proven to be, at best, minor irritants to Israel. Activists in the West still placing their hopes in these groups are deluded. 
If Israel were simply an outlier state—some middling, independent settler colonial project—stopping its grotesque violence might be easier. But Israel is not that. It is an integral part of the US-led global imperialist order. Membership in that order defines its character more than anything else and is the basis of its power and impunity. 
The global imperialist order has long since ceased to be defined by race or colonialism. It includes not only “white” Western states but also a range of regional powers and previously colonised nations. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt all play key roles in the Middle East as part of the US-led order (just as Japan, the Philippines and Thailand do in Asia). 
The ruling classes of various countries—those who control the states and most economic resources—have shared interests in being integrated into the US-led nexus of power. Some states might appear dependent or servile. But the global capitalist order is more akin to a series of exclusive golf clubs. Ruling classes sign up for the prestige, privileges, networks and deal making opportunities membership offers. In return, they agree to all the “gentlemanly” dress and decorum codes—and not to rock the boat of existing relationships. 
It doesn’t matter whether the rulers are Arab, Asian, African or Latino—what matters is that they run a capitalist state in the interests of one of the competing imperialist blocs. Indeed, the United States ruling elite for decades has been a practitioner of “affirmative action”, with a keen sense that its informal empire needs to be as multiracial as possible if it is to have any popular legitimacy in a postcolonial imperial order in which white people make up maybe 15 percent of the globe’s population. 
States like Israel and Australia need to be viewed in this light: components of the larger capitalist whole. Their governments cannot easily be disentangled from empire, which means that to defeat them, the entire edifice of global ruling class alliances must also be challenged. 
There is either victory for all the oppressed and exploited worldwide, or any victory will be short-lived as the ruling classes coordinate to nullify the gains of any one group of people. And genocide, mass slaughter, oppression and exploitation will continue, just as they did throughout the twentieth century. 
Because the abolition of capitalist imperialism is essential for securing fundamental and lasting social change, Marxists try to build revolutionary political organisations in every country. We need to build a counter-power to the elite imperialist clubs of the ruling classes—a global anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist network of revolutionary parties.
The last 150 years of left-wing political activism have shown that anything else either fails on its own terms, exhausts itself or is undermined, incorporated or smashed by the capitalist ruling classes. 
It’s true that building a revolutionary party today, as Socialist Alternative is attempting, has not stopped the carnage in Palestine (or anywhere else for that matter). But once the scale of the task is recognised, it becomes clear that simply taking a stand or bearing moral witness, though an important step in the right direction, will never be enough to defeat imperialism. 
Without the smashing of the global capitalist order, history will repeat itself again and again. If there were an easier or more realistic path, we’d take it. Unfortunately, there isn’t. We have to rebuild an international socialist movement—a network of mass revolutionary parties in opposition to the ruling classes in every country. 
We have no other choice. Join us—we have a world to win.

Editors

How can we stop the carnage?

The National Union of Students has endorsed a call by Students for Palestine to hold a national student referendum on Palestine. Across the country, university campuses will hold mass meetings at which students will vote on the following motions:
1. Students censure the Australian government for its complicity in the genocide in Gaza. We demand an end to all weapons sales to Israel by Australia and Australian companies, and call for sanctions on Israel. 
2. Students call on all Australian universities to end their complicity with Israel’s genocide by ceasing all partnerships with weapons companies.
The votes on each campus will be reported as they come in and collated into a national result. The intention is to send a clear message to the government and Australian universities that students will not stay silent in the face of their complicity in the Gaza genocide. 
The Albanese government has all but admitted that Australia is arming Israel through the export of crucial weapons components. As the Guardian
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/15/is-australia-supplying-weapons-to-bomb-gaza-heres-what-we-know-about-fighter-jet-parts-in-the-f-35-program">recently reported</a>, the company RUAG Australia is the only global supplier of a key part of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets used by Israel in Gaza. According to <a href="https://asiapacificdefencereporter.com/ruag-australia-achieves-manufacturing-milestone-on-uplock-actuator-system-for-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-program/">an Australian defence industry website</a>, the “uplock actuator system” opens and closes bay doors “to enable the F-35 to drop its payload more quickly and maintain its stealth capability”.
Australian universities enjoy research partnerships with and scholarship funding from major weapons companies, including Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the F-35. This is what Defence Minister Richard Marles meant when he told David Speers on ABC’s Insiders that Australia is “<a href="https://youtu.be/uxUntSTXpGc?si=Yfo31D11IP3N1aK2">an F-35 country</a>”. 
The Labor government’s and universities’ complicity in the genocide is at odds with public sentiment, which continues to grow in favour of the besieged and starved Palestinians and for an end to Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza. A <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/03/most-people-across-24-surveyed-countries-have-negative-views-of-israel-and-netanyahu/">recent poll</a> conducted by Pew Research found that about three-quarters of Australians now have an unfavourable view of Israel. 
And why wouldn’t they? Anyone with eyes and a heart should feel outrage and horror at the images of one-year-old children dying of hunger while food sits in trucks only kilometres away. Or footage of American and Israeli soldiers using breadlines in Gaza for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKpkZNAFwkc&amp;ab_channel=SenatorBernieSanders">target practice</a>. 
That broader public sentiment is echoed on university campuses, which continue to be major sites of protest and dissent on Gaza. The referendum is an opportunity for students across the country to send a vote of no confidence to our universities and our government, a mass and defiant gesture of dissent in the face of their complicity. 
It is important that the National Union of Students, the peak union body for university students across the country, supports and promotes the referendum. Members of Socialist Alternative on the NUS national executive have largely done this, pushing for the union to publicly condemn the genocide and support student protests. 
Across the country, student unions are generally run by different factions of Young Labor, meaning that the NUS operates as little more than an anaemic cheer squad for the ALP and a career stepping stone for Labor students. 
Members of Socialist Alternative in the NUS and in student unions across the country have consistently argued that our unions should not limit their horizons to those of a right-wing neoliberal Labor government that has stood steadfastly by Israel <a href="https://x.com/AlboMP/status/1710737658362876219">from the start</a>. It is not only our moral responsibility to stand against the crimes of our government and of Israel, but a vital question for the relevance and continued existence of student unionism in this country.
The national student referendum is an example of precisely the sort of thing student unions should be throwing themselves into, giving a lead to students who are sickened by the live-streamed images of mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and outraged at the role the Labor government and our universities are playing in it. 
To join other students standing up and demanding to be counted, register at <a href="https://palestinereferendum.org/">palestinereferendum.org</a>.

James McVicar

Students to hold nationwide vote on Gaza

The University of Melbourne has begun construction on a new $2 billion “defence” research campus at Fishermans Bend. The campus will allow the university to further its collaboration with international arms manufacturers to design new weapons. 
Last year, students demanded that the university divest from partnerships with more than thirteen weapons companies. But now, the university is angling for even closer connections with the defence sector. This is despite at least two of the companies, Boeing and BAE Systems, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/06/states-and-companies-must-end-arms-transfers-israel-immediately-or-risk">being warned last year by the UN</a> that their transfers to Israel could make them complicit in war crimes. 
Now, UoM students are demanding that the university halt the construction of this “weapons campus” and end its complicity in Israel’s genocide.
The Citizen, a publication of the university’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, <a href="https://www.thecitizen.org.au/articles/at-fishermans-bend-university-of-melbourne-angling-for-defence-contracts-relationships#:~:text=In%20an%20August,of%20Melbourne%E2%80%99s%20campus%E2%80%9D.">reported in February</a> that the university previously petitioned the Department of Defence to “consider greater connectivity” between the proposed Fishermans Bend campus and the Defence Department’s specialist Defence Science and Technology Group, which is also located in the suburb. 
“The University claims to be on about the big social challenges and trying to make the world better”, Tilman Ruff, an honorary associate professor and a founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/the-university-of-melbournes-new-campus-has-students-and-academics-seething/news-story/ed698e07f91089b4defaa5bbcdba8fff">told news.com.au earlier this month</a>.
“It’s hard to see how getting in bed with war profiteers and particularly makers of now illegal weapons of mass destruction fits with trying to do good in the world for the betterment of humanity.”
Boeing manufactures and sells F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters to the Israeli Air Force. BAE Systems, another of the world’s largest defence contractors, is a key supplier to the F-35 fighter jet program. 
Documents obtained from the university under Freedom of Information reveal that, after a student protest against a forum hosted by Boeing at the Parkville campus in 2024, the university reprimanded students speaking out against war crimes while reassuring the company of the university’s solid commitment to collaboration at Fishermans Bend.
The “weapons campus” aligns with a broader Victorian government initiative to lure more arms manufacturers and military contractors to the area. Melbourne University will provide space and materials for companies to improve their weapons and hardware. It will also funnel engineering students into the war industries. The campus will serve as the brains behind the bombs. 
The university is open about its intent to develop “leading-edge defence technologies” and describes the campus as “a site for multinationals and SMEs to engage in the Defence ecosystem ... supported by our state-of-the-art materials fabrication laboratory, ocean simulation facilities and autonomous robotics testing sites”.
The university is also gushing about the opportunities presented by the federal government’s proposed acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines. It is hard to miss the connection between its <a href="https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/november/university-of-melbourne-welcomes-student-places-to-support-nuclear-powered-submarines-student-pathways">positive statements about training nuclear scientists</a> and the Fishermans Bend campus’s intended defence research into “marine systems technologies” and “optimising the performance and security of submarine, ship and amphibious operations in the open ocean and coastal areas”.
Students for Palestine Unimelb opposes collaboration between the university and the military. We have collected signatures from more than 1,000 students for a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DMpBwh5zmEC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==">special general meeting for Palestine</a>, organised by the student union. If four hundred students attend, the meeting’s decisions will be binding on the union. If a mass meeting votes in favour of all motions, the union will campaign against the construction of Fishermans Bend, against all university ties to weapons companies, against the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/melbourne-university-expels-palestine-solidarity-activists">repression of student activism</a> and to organise a <a href="https://freedomflotilla.org/">fundraiser for the next Freedom Flotilla</a> sailing to break Israel’s blockade and bring aid to Gaza.

Emma Dynes

Students campaign against Melbourne University’s ‘weapons campus’

During Berlin’s Internationalist Queer Pride on Saturday, 26 July, more than 15,000 people marched through the streets of the German capital under the slogan “None of us are free until all of us are free”. Our numbers grew as we marched through the working-class neighbourhood Neukölln, picking up many locals watching from the footpaths who were drawn in by the parade’s central demand: end the genocide in Gaza. It was not long before riot police, stalking us in massive numbers from the start, launched an unprovoked attack. Dozens of us were beaten and arrested, myself included, and the march was forcefully dispersed well short of its destination.
In Germany, this sort of police response has come to be expected at Palestine rallies, especially in Berlin. As in most other countries, there has been a steep rise in support for the Palestinian cause, especially among young people, and the German state is resorting to desperate and draconian measures to stop the rising tide.
Since October 2023, the German state has cracked down on Palestine activism by raiding homes, shutting down events, cancelling art exhibitions, cutting off funding to cultural institutions and issuing deportation orders to foreign nationals who dare to criticise Israel.
More than 30 raids on activists have taken place since October 2023. These raids—which usually happen at night and involve dozens of heavily armed police—serve one purpose: intimidation.
In April 2024, the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace was raided by the Berlin police. A three-day conference they were hosting was shut down, and several organisers were arrested, including Udi Raz, a Jewish Israeli living in Berlin. Only months earlier, Raz had been fired by the state-funded Jewish Museum for describing Israel’s actions in the West Bank as apartheid.
In another case in December 2023, the Berlin home of Salah Said, a German-born Palestinian activist, was raided by police, who confiscated personal items and electronic devices. He was raided two more times over the following eighteen months, despite never being accused of any crime.
Since October 2023, several cultural organisations and exhibitions have been cancelled, and artists threatened with deportation. The Folkwang Museum in Essen cancelled a planned exhibition curated by Haitian artist Anaïs Duplan, citing his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In Berlin, the cultural centre Oyoun lost all public funding after hosting a Jewish-led pro-Palestine event.
Several academics have been fired or had their professorships rescinded after voicing support for the BDS campaign, including Nancy Fraser, a Jewish American who was stood down by Cologne University for calling Israel an “ethno-supremacist state”. 
But possibly more disturbing than all of this has been the criminalisation of everyday acts of resistance by ordinary people, especially Arabs and Muslims, showing solidarity with the Palestinians.
In February 2025, Berlin police implemented a racist ban on Arabic chants at demonstrations, citing “public order” concerns. Despite this ban, and despite arrests, protesters have defiantly continued to chant in Arabic. During the Pride march, “Al-Hurriya li-Filastin” (Freedom for Palestine) was chanted by thousands of Arabic and non-Arabic speakers alike. The phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has been criminalised, and Palestinian flags and keffiyehs are banned in all schools across Berlin.
However, none of this has stopped the movement from growing.
At the start of Israel’s latest assault on Gaza in October 2023, pro-Palestine rallies were banned and several attempts to march were met with arrests, pepper spray and hundreds of riot police. In the days and weeks following Israel’s ground invasion, protesters continued to defy the ban. A candlelight vigil held by Jewish Voice for a Just Peace was a protest form that the authorities hesitated to crush, which created space for demonstrations immediately afterwards that managed to reclaim the streets.
In Neukölln, “illegal” spontaneous gatherings in support of Palestine turned into organised demonstrations, and on the night of 18 October 2023, riot police cracked down on a large pro-Palestine gathering. This time, the protesters—mostly young, local residents of Middle Eastern background—fought back. Protesters used fireworks, stones and Molotov cocktails to fight the police, and built barricades in some places. Over the next three nights, police used water cannons, pepper spray and mass arrests to subdue the protests. The police were subsequently forced to soften somewhat their hardline stance, fearing further rioting.
By 21 October, demonstrations were allowed, and about 5,000 attended a protest in Berlin. The right to protest had been won on the streets.
In the following weeks, rallies were mostly limited to major cities like Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg, and usually numbered less than a few thousand. In the past twelve months, however, hundreds—sometimes thousands—have repeatedly protested in other major cities including Leipzig, Freiburg, Stuttgart, Münster and Cologne.
In Berlin, the rallies have grown into the tens of thousands over time, reaching a peak on 21 June this year, when a demonstration called by two influencers on Instagram drew more than 50,000 people. These are numbers never before seen for Palestine protests in Germany.
The growth of the protest movement mirrors a recent change in public opinion. Despite the rabidly pro-Israel German media, public opinion has shifted strongly in favour of the Palestinians.
The newspaper Die Zeit found that support for Palestine among under-30s has risen from 53 percent in 2019 to 63 percent today. In the same poll, 43 percent of respondents said they would support a pro-Palestine demonstration, even if Hamas flags were present. 
A poll conducted by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
newspaper this year found that 57 percent of Germans now hold a negative view of Israel, up from 23 percent in 2022. Another poll conducted by the public broadcaster ZDF in May found that only 13 percent of Germans support Israel’s actions in Gaza, and 80 percent think Israel’s actions are unjustified. It cannot be overstated how big a shift this represents in a place like Germany.
Germany is arguably the staunchest supporter of Israel after the United States. The term Staatsräson, or “reason of state”, is used by politicians to argue that Germany can atone for the Holocaust only by making the survival, security and success of the Israeli nation a core reason for its own existence. Exactly why the Palestinians should have to pay the price for the Holocaust is never clarified. But unwavering support for Israel is much more about the priorities of German imperialism than about atoning for the Holocaust. 
As the post-World War Two geopolitical map shifted from rivalry between European colonial powers to the Cold War stand-off between the US and the USSR, Germany became America’s key European ally. Even after the fall of the USSR, the US maintained more troops and military bases in Germany than in any other European country—and still does. Germany is one of the most powerful countries in the world. It leads the European Union, the world’s largest economic bloc, and benefits immensely from the geopolitical status quo. Reining in Israel would mean reducing the West’s influence in the Middle East, which is unacceptable for Germany, America and its allies.
The German state justifies its violent repression of pro-Palestinian protests by labelling participants as antisemitic. And if you label something antisemitic in Germany, you can do whatever you want to it.
There has also been a long and steady campaign of Islamophobia and anti-migrant sentiment in Germany (particularly towards Middle Eastern migrants), led by mainstream parties. It’s a convenient scapegoat tactic when the economy is stagnating, housing is becoming unaffordable and public services are crumbling. When an entire religious and ethnic group is dehumanised, it becomes that much easier to meet its protests with outright violence.
While most political parties, including the Social Democratic Party and the Greens, have backed this genocide, the left party Die Linke has moved in the right direction. Die Linke has at times acted shamefully by suppressing pro-Palestinian voices within the party, insisting that Israel has a “right to defend itself” and hesitating to use the word genocide. But there is a growing pro-Palestinian movement within Die Linke that has forced it to call rallies and field pro-Palestinian candidates for election.
In this year’s federal election, Die Linke built a strong grassroots campaign in parts of Berlin, led by activists who had been involved in local struggles for Palestine, against police racism and against evictions and deportations. The Die Linke candidate for Neukölln (one of twelve Berlin boroughs), Ferat Kocak, won 30 percent of the candidate vote and was elected to parliament. This was a 17-point increase from the 2021 election, in which Die Linke won just 13 percent of the same candidate vote.
Berlin-wide, Die Linke increased its vote by nearly 8 percent and won the overall party vote with 20 percent, easily beating all other parties. There was a surge of support in neighbourhoods with high Arab, Muslim and Turkish populations, as well as increased support from young people.
In the mainstream media, a shift has taken place in the past few months towards accepting some criticism of Israel and allowing support for the Palestinian cause. News organisations that until recently parroted Israeli talking points have started to change, ever so slightly, their coverage of the war on Gaza. The horrifying images of starving children are difficult to spin and defend. But the Palestinians’ determination to live, along with the growing protest movements, have surely also played a part.
In Germany and elsewhere, something is happening that is rare to see: the realisation by masses of people that the entire facade of Western democracy, freedom and human rights is nothing more than a bunch of lies that can be discarded at a moment’s notice. People will not soon forget how the entirety of the Western world’s political and media establishments aided and funded this live-streamed genocide.
The Germans have a phrase regarding the Holocaust: “nie wieder”, or never again. Never again will we allow genocide to happen. More people in Germany are coming to realise that “nie wieder ist jetzt”. Never again is now.

Eric Oliver

Repression and resistance: the Palestine movement in Germany

Sunday, 3 August, will go down in history as the day that 300,000 people, in pouring rain, marched over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to demand an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and that the Australian government sanction Israel. The people have spoken. It is the day the whole political and media establishment and the pro-Israel lobby, which have spent nearly two years trying to convince us that Israel’s endless slaughter is justified, definitively lost the argument.
They tried to stop this march from happening, because they understood its potential power. The New South Wales Labor government said it couldn’t happen. The police took us to court to try to stop it. The media ran with their scare campaign about “disruption”, “chaos” and a potential “crowd crush”. 
The media and government also tried to put the spotlight on me, hoping they could discredit and split the Palestine movement. They ran a good old-fashioned campaign of Cold War red-baiting, “outing” me as a Trotskyist, dismissing me as a “serial pest” and a “professional protester” and decrying that I had cost the state $10 million. The Sydney Morning Herald
suggested that I would “jump behind a megaphone for the facile thrill of annoying the establishment”. This attempted character assassination had a transparent intent: to discredit the cause without engaging with the arguments being made, and to drive a wedge between Palestine activists and the growing numbers who agree with them. 
This strategy failed sensationally. In the wake of the campaign’s Supreme Court victory and the enormous numbers who mobilised on the bridge, it was the media’s campaign that looked out-of-touch and the genocide apologists the real serial pests. Not used to failure, the right went into meltdown. The Australian ran a series of hyperbolic pieces, in which they both doubled down on their attacks on me and turned on the Supreme Court for enabling me and revealing its supposedly communist sympathies. 
“The most powerful man in Sydney on Sunday leads his pro-Palestine supporters across the Harbour Bridge basking in the global spotlight—and revelling in a sweet victory handed to him by the NSW Supreme Court”, lamented the Australian. “Josh Lees, the 43-year-old Trotskyist who now calls the tune in the harbour city, has captured the nation’s most iconic landmark and plans to use the moment well into the future ... The keffiyeh-wearing Lees has led a string of causes in the last two decades, his exploits on behalf of refugees, LGBTQI rights and against capitalism all breathlessly recorded in the Red Flag, his Socialist Alternative news outlet. On Saturday night the Red Flag was hailing Lees’ court win as a triumph in the ‘test of wills between the forces of injustice and imperialism’ ... Lees walked away from the court waving the Palestinian flag. And making it very clear: this was just the beginning.”
It may come as a surprise to readers of Red Flag that in fact I do not “call the tune in the harbour city”, nor that Trotskyism or socialism has yet triumphed. What the gigantic success of the March for Humanity does signify is a huge collective victory of people power over the capitalist establishment, which has backed the genocide in Gaza from the outset. The credit for this belongs to all those who argued, endorsed, organised and mobilised to make that day what it was, and especially to those in the Palestine Action Group Sydney who have stuck it out and kept this movement going for the past two years, most of whom don’t get the “glory” of mainstream media hit pieces. And above all it goes to the hundreds of thousands, who represent many hundreds of thousands more, who took a stand in the face of two years of pro-Israel propaganda, repression and slander from the government, the media, the universities, the arts establishment, but who can recognise a genocide when they see one and refuse to remain silent. 
The establishment is right to be worried, because we do now have a platform to build a much stronger Palestine solidarity movement, with much wider social backing, which is calling into question the entire rotten reality of imperialist deals like that by which Australia is still helping to arm Israel’s military machine. The dam has burst, and the federal government’s attempts to run for cover under Palestinian statehood recognition have already fallen apart. We are going to see a huge mobilisation all around the country on Sunday, 24 August, for the Nationwide March for Palestine, demanding sanctions and an end to the two-way arms trade with Israel.
In this sense, our victory in the Battle of the Bridge is more than just a victory for the Palestine campaign. It is a powerful demonstration that decency and humanity can win out against this vicious capitalist system, that we can win against the governments, the media empires and the institutions that uphold the status quo regardless of the human cost. It is an inspiring example of what socialists always argue: that hope lies with the people, the working class and the oppressed, who can stand together in the spirit of solidarity and internationalism against their common enemies in the ruling establishment; and that those masses are far more fit to rule the world than the media barons, billionaires and their political lackeys who have justified, supported and profited from genocide.

Josh Lees

Right-wing media in meltdown after protesters win ‘Battle for the Bridge’

On 30 June, Al Jazeera reported that the death toll of Palestinians killed at aid centres had reached 583. Images of desperate, emaciated people crammed into cattle yards, and footage of soldiers shooting at pot-wielding civilians, were rightfully outraging the world. 
The same day, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, handed down a report outlining how, for some, this genocide has been the business opportunity of a lifetime. 
Since 7 October 2023, the Tel Aviv stock exchange has grown by a staggering 213 percent, totalling US$225.7 billion in market gains. Corporations from across the world have lined up to cash in on Israel’s genocidal offensive. 
Albanese’s report outlines this chain of profiteering, concluding, “The forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and big tech—providing boundless supply and demand, little oversight and zero accountability—while investors and private and public institutions profit freely”. It details profiteering in a range of sectors, including weapons production, technology, finance, construction, agribusiness, retail, education, transport, tourism and insurance. 
Weapons sales are a big part of it. At least 85,000 tonnes of bombs—equivalent to six times what was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—have been used in Gaza, according to the report. Every shell, tank, fighter jet and missile used against the Palestinians comes with a price tag attached. The report outlines:
“For Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture. The 65 per cent surge in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024—amounting to $46.5 billion, one of the highest per capita worldwide—generated a sharp surge in their annual profits. Foreign arms companies, especially producers of munitions and ordnance, also profit.”
In August 2024, Israel spent US$20 billion in a single purchase, and US aid has contributed handsomely to its war chest, amounting to US$19 billion in the year to October 2024 alone. According to research from the American Friends Service Committee, the onset of the war in Gaza brought bullish gains on the stock market for weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing and General Dynamics. Two years on, buoyed by international military spending, they remain elevated. 
But it isn’t just the arms dealers. According to the report, banks such as BNP Paribas and Barclays have stepped in to underwrite Israeli government bonds, ensuring Netanyahu’s ability to borrow more and double the genocide budget. Shipping lines profiteer from handling weapons and goods bound for use in Palestine. And so the links in the chain begin to take shape: the Israeli state borrows from banks, for a price, so that they can buy bombs, for a price, which are transported, for a price. 
Construction companies are just some of these beneficiaries, the report stating: “Israeli military operations rely heavily on equipment from leading global manufacturers to ‘unground’ Palestinians from their land, demolishing homes, public buildings, farmland, roads and other vital infrastructure. Since October 2023, this machinery has been integral to damaging and destroying 70 per cent of structures and 81 per cent of cropland in Gaza”.
While Gazans line up with empty pots for meagre rations, suffering malnutrition and now contending with a deadly heatwave, a fountain of state spending cascades through the private sector. The purpose of this spending is to help shore up Western domination of the Middle East, but it has also provided critical stimulus to the Israeli economy and to many US companies. 
Occupation, apartheid and militarism have long acted as an economic spur in Israel and enabled its technology sector to become highly competitive by international standards and a core part of the economy—amounting to 64 percent of Israel’s exports during the genocide. Known to the world’s investors as the “start-up nation”, Albanese points out that “Israeli tech firms often grow out of military infrastructure and strategy” such as the NSO Group and its Pegasus spyware. 
Bankrolled by Israeli government spending and US aid, this has made Israel an attractive destination for tech firms like IBM, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft, which all maintain significant operations there. Genocide has turbocharged this, leading to a 143 percent growth in military technology start-ups in 2024, a key component of steeply rising stock prices for Israel’s corporate sector. In 2022, on the eve of this new boom, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade already described it as a “flourishing tech sector” and boasted that “Australian companies are making gains” there. 
In a right-wing diatribe against the Albanese report, Reason magazine’s J.D. Tuccille decries it as “a masterful mishmash of leftist gibberish” and complains of its “hostility to free markets”. Freedom, for capitalism’s apologists, is epitomised by profit-driven companies enjoying a feeding frenzy brought on by a genocide. 
And nor is this profiteering going on independently from the state, as the free marketeers champion. Rather, it is emblematic of a particular era of capitalism in which the wealth of industry is backed up by seemingly endless cash injections from the state—just as insolvent banks were bailed out to the tune of trillions during the Great Recession and mining companies are subsidised by billions every year. 
Many of these corporations rely on government spending, from huge military budgets to state investment in tech, construction and research. And so, the quest for profit not only destroys the lives of ordinary people through imperialist rivalry, housing crises and climate disaster, but also depends on large outlays of public money that might otherwise be used to fund essential, life-sustaining services like health, housing and education. 
It is symptomatic of the deep sickness in the system, both moral and structural, that resources are allocated in this way. If you are a child in Gaza, with the misfortune to have been born on a patch of earth that the biggest empire in world history seeks to dominate, then you will be starved, dehydrated, shelled and displaced. If you are a rich company helping the imperial powers expand their domination of territory and markets, there are endless reams of cash available. 
The human catastrophe in Gaza should already have been a rallying cry to tear down the capitalist system. That it is being used to gild the palaces of industrial barons should only strengthen our resolve.

Jack Mansell

Corporations gorge as Gaza starves

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared that Australia will vote to “recognise” Palestinian statehood at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly next month. This is a cynical response by his government to mounting public pressure and mass starvation in Gaza.
The government’s cynicism is reflected in Albanese’s spurious claim that “this is about much more than drawing a line on a map—this is about delivering a lifeline to the people of Gaza”. If his government were serious about providing a lifeline, it could start by ending Australia’s ongoing export of weapons components to Israel, including armoured steel in Israeli armoured vehicles and F-35 aircraft components.
The government could cancel deals with Israeli weapons companies (such as the $917 million contract signed last year with Elbit Systems) that facilitate the Israeli war machine. And the government could expel the ambassador, cut all diplomatic ties and impose sanctions on the Zionist state. 
When Defence Minister Richard Marles was asked, on the ABC’s Insiders program, about Australia’s ongoing military exports to Israel, he clarified the government’s position. Marles repeated the lie that Australia does not supply weapons to Israel (a statement premised on the claim that only fully assembled arms count as weapons), described Australia as an “F-35 nation” and said that the exports of parts and components would continue.
As Amal Naser from the Palestine Action group <a href="https://archive.is/eYz66">pointed out in an 11 August article for the Sydney Morning Herald</a>: “You cannot ‘recognise’ a state while you allow Australian-made components to help arm the regime destroying it. You cannot fight for the dead while helping make the weapons that kill them”.
Less than a fortnight ago, Albanese declared that he would not recognise Palestine anytime soon. But after widespread anger over Labor’s complicity in the genocide was expressed on 3 August in the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/making-history-on-sydney-harbour-bridge-massive-march-for-humanity">massive march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge</a>, his government has been trying to contain those sentiments, following the lead of the other US-aligned imperial powers that had already made such moves.
Australia now joins a chorus of Israel’s Western collaborators—the UK, France and Canada—that have announced plans to recognise a Palestinian state in September. All these countries continue to support and participate in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians through arms sales, intelligence sharing and the repression of pro-Palestinian protests. 
But the starvation of 2 million people by Israel in Gaza is now too politically embarrassing for many Western governments that have supported Israel’s slaughter from the outset. As Israel commits new atrocities every day—starvation, murder, annexation—its claims to uphold “humanitarianism” grow increasingly thin. Israel’s self-image has long been that of a liberal democracy. But the horrors of genocide mean increasing numbers of people are seeing through the West’s sham commitment to “humanitarianism”. 
The vote on recognition will do nothing to obstruct or halt Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, nor the extension of its ethnic-cleansing operation in the West Bank. This was bluntly asserted by Israeli Prime Minister and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, who declared that the recognition announcements are “not going to change our position”. Netanyahu’s proposed plan for the permanent occupation of Gaza City has made it clear that the only solution it will “recognise” is the conquering of the entire territory and the ethnic cleansing of its inhabitants.
The move to recognise Palestinian statehood has taken place under the banner of the so-called two-state solution—the recognition of a Palestinian mini-state alongside that of Israel. Albanese argued that it “is humanity’s best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and bring an end to the conflict, suffering and starvation in Gaza”.
But neither Albanese nor any of the other leaders calling for a “two-state solution” have any intention of forcing Israel to allow the Palestinians to have a genuine state of their own. That is because any sovereign Palestinian state—one in control of its own security, borders, trade and a host of other functions typically carried out by a state—is practically impossible as long as Israel exists as an apartheid ethno-state. 
Israel is an aggressively expansionist state that is intrinsically hostile to Palestinian national self-determination. Israel has been in a permanent state of war against the Palestinians since it was established through a project of mass ethnic cleansing and genocide in 1948. It is the only state in the world that refuses to define its own borders—precisely because it is premised upon the permanent expansion into, and occupation of, Palestinian territory.
According to its proponents, the territorial basis for a Palestinian state consists of the West Bank (the area to the west of the Jordan River), East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. But ever since Israel invaded the West Bank in 1967, Zionist settlers backed by the Israeli military have been relentlessly seizing land and expelling Palestinians from their homes. That process has accelerated under Netanyahu’s far-right government and during the genocidal war on Gaza. The two-state solution of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is unviable. 
Proponents of a “two-state solution” are fully aware that the trajectory on the ground is not towards the establishment of a Palestinian state, but towards the annihilation of the basis for one. Labor Foreign Minister Penny Wong herself noted as justification for fast-tracking the recognition process that “there is a risk that there will be no Palestine left to recognise”.
The false promise of a Palestinian state existing alongside Israel has also been used to extract concessions from the Palestinians while Israel has continued their dispossession. This can be seen in the demand, issued by all the governments pushing for recognition of a Palestinian state, that such a state must have no weapons or army. Israel, of course, is not expected to disarm. 
Indeed, most of the world is engaged in an enormous, terrifying arms race. But the Palestinian people are expected to be satisfied with a so-called state that lacks the capacity for self-defence, and is entirely dependent on Israel for fiscal, energy, resource and trade access to the outside world.
As well, the project of “recognising” Palestine is an attempt to rehabilitate the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/palestinian-authority-complicit-occupied-west-bank">Palestinian Authority</a>, which collaborates with Israel to repress any resistance to the occupation in the West Bank. It has little credibility left—just 19 percent of those in the West Bank approve of the authority’s performance, according to a May poll for the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research.
For years, the PA has been a corrupt and pliant puppet of the US and Israel. But Albanese has indicated that the recognition discussions are being used to render it even more subservient. The PA has pledged to halt payments to the vulnerable families of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. The organisation has also committed to “demilitarise”.
In the unlikely event that some token Palestinian state were created under these conditions, it would be a state of rubble in Gaza and a West Bank under Israeli control, with no armed forces and a puppet government hand-picked by Israel and its imperialist backers.
Such a state would not deliver peace but only continued Israeli domination and terror. It would do nothing to challenge Israel’s position as a watchdog state for Western imperialism in the Middle East, armed to the teeth by the US. 
Until Israel is recognised for what it is—a genocidal, terror state—any talk of a Palestinian state existing in its shadow is simply cover for those complicit in ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Robert Narai

Recognising Palestinian statehood won’t stop Israeli terror

Close to two years of savage Israeli war on Gaza have created a humanitarian catastrophe. But while Israel and the US are responsible for the butchery, another force also shares the blame: the Arab leaders who have stood by and let Israel run amok. 
The problem is not that the Arab governments lack the power to hurt the US and Israel. After all, they sit atop the world’s biggest oil reserves and, in Egypt’s case, control the Suez Canal, one of the busiest maritime corridors. The Arab regimes don’t lack the power; they choose not to use it.
It hasn’t always been this way. For several decades, many Arab governments positioned themselves as anti-colonial forces. At the end of World War One, European powers controlled the entire Arab world from the Atlantic to the Arabian Gulf. The colonialists were motivated by greed for oil, territory and other resources. In some cases, they ruled directly. In others, as in Egypt, they installed puppet monarchs to do their bidding. 
The oppressed grew angry at their servitude and the theft of their land. Inspired in part by the Russian Revolution, anti-colonial revolts broke out in Egypt and Iraq after the war and, later, in Syria and Palestine, but these were savagely put down. 
A fresh nationalist tide surged after World War Two. A new generation of fighters emerged to drive out the occupiers and their accomplices. They were led in many cases by middle-class intellectuals, professionals and army officers eager to take over from the colonial powers. 
Arab nationalism dominated these struggles. Its leading figures wanted to eliminate the shame of national subjugation and to modernise their countries, seize the oil wealth then in the hands of Western companies and diversify their economies. They tapped into popular grievances—anger over poverty, unemployment and landlessness—but their project was to leverage this anger in their bid for power.
Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser’s seizure of power in Egypt in 1952 at the head of the Free Officers Movement announced to the world Arab nationalism as a force. Nasser transformed Egypt and the broader Middle East and enraged the former colonial powers. 
In 1956, Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, which had been controlled by the British and French since its opening in 1869. In a secret alliance with Israel, the two European powers attacked Egypt. Determined not to allow the restoration of colonial power, the population rose against them, fighting alongside the Egyptian army. Fearing that revived British and French colonialism in the Middle East might scotch its own imperialist ambitions, the US ordered them out, ensuring Nasser’s victory.
Nasser’s victory over Suez made the president a hero in the Arab world. Enormous crowds would turn out to hear him speak. They saw in him someone who had led Egypt out of colonial slavery and into a new world of Arab pride and independence. 
Nasser joined independence leaders from across Asia, Africa and the Middle East at the 1955 Bandung conference to promote the anti-colonial movement. He was one of the most important figures in the Non-Aligned Movement of former colonies seeking a path independent of the big imperialists.
Nasser ran a pragmatic foreign policy in a world of Cold War competition, initially seeking support from both the US and the Soviet Union. But when the US would not supply arms, the USSR stepped in and provided Nasser with weapons, aid and technicians. The tilt towards the USSR was matched by a shift in economic policy. Nasser sought to emulate Joseph Stalin’s program of economic reconstruction, setting up dozens of state enterprises to encourage industrialisation.
Nasser described his project as “Arab socialism”, as did the other nationalist regimes, but there was nothing socialist about them. They presided over authoritarian one-party states that imprisoned, tortured and killed thousands of working-class activists. Standing in opposition to the Arab nationalist governments were the US-aligned governments, chiefly Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran and Morocco.
Regardless of their differing political alignment, all the Arab governments proclaimed their support for Palestine. In 1964, Nasser set up the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and in the following years, other governments sponsored and armed factions of the liberation movement. Partly, they were motivated by domestic political considerations, given the popularity of the Palestinian cause at home. But more important was their calculation about how best to control the Palestinian movement, which in some countries threatened internal stability.
What happened to Arab nationalism?
Several things put paid to Arab nationalism, paving the way for the region’s embrace of the West.
The first and most dramatic event was the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel routed the Arab armies and seized Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The mighty Arab nation had been humbled. Nasser’s prestige tumbled, and the Arab nationalist project was irrevocably weakened. The US now fully embraced Israel as its main ally in the region, opening the spigot on billions of dollars in economic and military aid.
In 1970, Jordan’s King Hussein attacked the PLO following a challenge for power by Palestinian nationalists and leftists, demonstrating again the illusion of Arab unity. Following his victory, Hussein drove the PLO into exile in Lebanon.
Then in 1978, Egypt, now ruled by Nasser’s successor President Anwar Sadat, signed a peace deal with Israel and normalised diplomatic relations. This was a breakthrough for Israel, ending its isolation in the region and removing its main military threat. It also signalled Egypt’s abandonment of Arab nationalism, its betrayal of the Palestinian cause and its embrace of the United States, which it has adhered to since that day. 
The Arab League registered its displeasure at Sadat’s agreement with Israel by suspending Egypt’s membership. But Egypt was simply ahead of the pack. Informal links between Arab nations and Israel were growing, and in 1989, the Arab League readmitted Egypt. In 1993, the PLO itself signed a peace treaty with Israel and, in 1994, Jordan followed. 
Other nations—Syria, Iraq, South Yemen, Sudan and Libya—opposed normalisation with Israel. But they were no friends of the Palestinians. In 1970, they stood by and watched as King Hussein smashed the PLO, and in 1976, Syria’s President Hafez al-Assad invaded Lebanon to crush an insurgency by Palestinians and Lebanese leftists, killing thousands.
The economic promise of Arab nationalism—state-led industrial development and self-reliance—also fractured in this period as economic growth stalled. In 1974, the Egyptian government opened up to Western capital, selling state enterprises, winding back price controls and reducing social programs. Soon, most governments in the region followed suit, seeking closer integration into the world economy. 
Arab nationalism also fell victim to national rivalries as the post-colonial states promoted their national interests in a world where the struggle against colonialism no longer united them. This was evident early on: Nasser spoke of pan-Arab solidarity, but his main goal was to project Egyptian power in the Middle East. The same was true of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. 
The collapse of the Soviet Union, which had provided Arab governments with weapons and finance, was another nail in the coffin of Arab nationalism. Many who had looked to Moscow now embraced US imperialism, taking loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, imposing savage austerity on the working class and poor and enriching themselves. 
Arab governments also became increasingly complicit in US wars in the Middle East. In 1990, the Arab League backed the US in the Gulf War against Iraq, with Egypt, Syria and Morocco all sending troops to support the Americans. Several Arab governments also supported the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, allowing the US to use their airspace and facilities. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the Arab League opposed it, but this did not stop many Arab governments from helping the US. Egypt gave free passage to the US navy through the Suez Canal; Saudi Arabia invited the US to fly cruise missiles over its territory; and Jordan provided the US with bases from which to mount special forces operations across the border into Iraq. 
Years of austerity and political repression, along with the betrayal of the Palestinian cause, created a pressure cooker in the Arab world. The pressure cooker blew in 2011, as popular uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain challenged and, in some cases, overthrew, repressive governments. The US and Israel looked on aghast as the Arab leaders they had supported for decades fell or tottered under the impact of mass protest. They were alarmed as hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Cairo and Alexandria to demand liberation for Palestine.
The revolution opened the door to freedom in the Arab world. But the counter-revolution that followed, fully backed by the US and Israel, slammed the door firmly shut. Political repression returned, even more ferocious than before. The US and Israel breathed a sigh of relief that the genie of revolution had been put back into the bottle.
Where are things today?
Most Arab countries have embraced the US-led world order, while others have oriented toward Russia. None can be described as anti-imperialist or anti-colonial. US bases can be found across the Middle East, the Gulf region in particular. Qatar hosts the US Central Command along with 10,000 US troops and 100 US aircraft. 
The Arab regimes are deeply embedded in Western markets. The Gulf states, responsible for much of the world’s oil trade, work with the US to stabilise world oil prices. They trade in US dollars, which helps maintain the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE committed hundreds of billions of dollars in orders for US military supplies, energy equipment, commercial aircraft, critical minerals and infrastructure investments during President Trump’s recent visit.
Arab states aligned with Washington have close relations with Israel. Four more countries—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco—established diplomatic relations with Israel as part of the US-led Abraham Accords in 2020. The Arab League did nothing to censure them. Only mass domestic sentiment for Palestine holds back Saudi Arabia from joining their ranks.
Egypt’s collaboration with Israel stands out. The Egyptian government reinforces the Israeli blockade of Gaza, tightly controlling supplies to the beleaguered strip. The regime refuses to allow international solidarity missions to cross the Sinai to reach the Rafah crossing to Gaza.
The motivations of these governments are several. Because Israel is central to US power in the Middle East, these regimes will not help Palestine win its freedom because such a struggle must challenge the US, which is an important prop of their own power. 
Economic factors play a part. Israel is the region’s most advanced economy. For many years, Egypt supplied Israel with vital gas supplies and, now that Israel has gas supplies of its own, Egypt imports Israeli gas. As long as there is money to be made from collaboration with Israel, the Palestinians are discarded.
Part of the explanation lies in understanding the military balance of forces. For a period, some of the Arab governments believed a united Arab offensive could defeat Israel. The 1967 disaster, followed by a stalemate in 1973, made clear that this was not on the cards. As national governments seeking their place in the region, they now recognise the reality of Israeli military supremacy, reinforced by Israel’s bloody victories since 7 October. 
Other Arab governments collaborate with Israel in their joint opposition to Iran, which rose as a regional power following US defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. In April last year, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all worked with Israel to shoot down Iranian missiles. Two months later, Saudi generals, along with those from Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt, met the Israeli military’s chief of staff and the chief of the US Central Command in Bahrain to discuss “security cooperation”. 
It is not just those states closely aligned with the US that betray the Palestinian cause. Other countries in the region, Iran and Syria (until recently) most notably, have cleaved more closely to Russia. Syria hosts Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean. Iran and Russia worked closely with the former Assad regime to wreak terror in Syria. Russia supplies both with most of their military arsenals. The Hussein and Gaddafi regimes in Iraq and Libya were close to Russia at times. But close relations with Russia mean nothing for their attitude to Palestine. Russia, like the US, wants a strong Israel. Israel supplies Russia with drones for its war in Ukraine and backs it diplomatically in the UN. Israel and Russia work together in Syria. Whichever camp they back, none of the region’s governments will put itself out for Palestinian freedom.
Like any other part of the global ruling classes, Arab leaders do not believe in ethnic or national solidarity. They are committed only to profit and power—especially their own. They mouth support for Palestine and condemn Israeli war crimes to maintain their credibility with their populations. But when activists mobilise in solidarity with Palestine, the regimes batter them off the streets. The Arab regimes understand that the demand for Palestinian freedom can easily bleed into demands for freedom at home.
As far as the Egyptian leaders are concerned, the sooner Israel wipes out Hamas, the better. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which forms the main opposition to the Sisi regime in Egypt. The president’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, fought to prevent Hamas from taking power in Gaza following its win in Palestinian Authority elections in 2006, and Sisi is now working with the Arab League to exclude Hamas from any role in governing postwar Gaza. Israel has reciprocated by helping the Sisi regime entrench the Egyptian counter-revolution. 
Why would these leaders put themselves out to support an oppressed people when they deny their own people their basic rights?
The connections between the Arab ruling classes, the US, Russia and Israel tell us that the fight for a free Palestine cannot be separated from the fight for a free Arab world. Revolts against the regimes by Arab workers, students and the poor for their own demands for bread and justice strengthen the fight for democracy at home but also loosen Israel and America’s choke hold on Palestine. If Israel gets away with its atrocities only because the Arab regimes let it, the fall of these regimes in popular revolutions is a precondition for the liberation of Palestine.

Tom Bramble

Arab governments stand by as Israel carries out genocide

History often happens without warning and, even more often, against all our wishes and best efforts. Sunday, 3 August, was different. Hundreds of thousands woke up ready and determined to make history themselves on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The March for Humanity, a protest against 22 months of genocide and starvation in Gaza, was historic, not least for its sheer size. Sydney has not seen a protest so big since the march against the Iraq war more than twenty years ago. “Massive, unprecedented and huge”, Jewish anti-Zionist journalist Antony Loewenstein announced from the speakers’ platform in Lang Park. There’s no question the march exceeded 100,000 participants, protest organisers predicting the final tally could be triple that.
Half of Sydney’s CBD became a protest-only zone. Helicopters buzzed overhead, drowned out as the day went on by cowbells, drums, whistles and the banging of pots and pans to signify the starvation gripping Gaza. 
“Hello passengers”, said a prerecorded voice on the Wynyard train station loudspeaker. “If you’re here for the protest ...”. I waited at the top of the station escalators to meet up with members of my union. One wrote in our group chat that her train from Glenfield, two hours before the protest, was composed of just two groups: “One: Palestine protesters. Two: Footy fans”. Another chimed in: “We just came through Lidcombe and more and more passengers are getting on ... All walks of life. We stand together, it’s brilliant”.
They weren’t wrong. Up the escalators, in progressively larger instalments, came what looked like all of society. Every conceivable age and background; from choirs, unions, religious groups and political parties; from every suburb of Sydney, every corner of NSW and interstate.
The crowd exited the station and stepped out into truly appalling weather. The rain came in angry fits, and vain hopes raised by fleeting rays of sunshine were repeatedly dashed. Yet this was a day that masses of people wouldn’t have missed for the world. A very dapper man walked past me in Lang Park, hardly giving his beautiful shoes a second glance as they sank into mud. When children are dying of human-made hunger, or shot dead for sadistic target practice, would anyone let a bit of rain hold them back?
I tried to observe what I could by weaving through the crowd. The fastest way to move was by sloshing along the kerb of York Street, where a small river was flowing. Yet the people just kept coming. Homemade placards (“Penny Wong is a ‘non-lethal’ murderer”), keffiyehs galore, shirts with every conceivable slogan. Umbrellas, umbrellas, umbrellas. Each time I returned somewhere—Wynyard Station, Lang Park, or the woefully under-prepared Domino’s Pizza—the crowd was impossibly huger than before, as if I were returning on a different day.
The march was also historic because it was opposed by both major political parties and police. Two other great protest marches across the bridge—the 2000 March for Reconciliation and the 2023 World Pride march—were endorsed and even led by most of official society. The March for Humanity, however, was fought tooth and nail by NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns and the state’s police force. Minns lied that the rally would plunge the city into “chaos”. Federal Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi (recently sanctioned by Anthony Albanese’s parliament for silently holding a sign protesting the starvation of children) explained from the platform: “It was never about traffic, it was never about logistics, it was always about protecting Israel and the Labor government from accountability”.
Minns made it clear that he opposed the bridge march regardless of how much notice was given. The NSW police took protest organisers to court to try stop it from going ahead. The outcry and overwhelming support from more than 300 organisations tipped the court ruling in our favour. “We’re here today because people power won”, Amnesty International representative Mohamed Duar told the crowd. Duar’s father still has the key to his house in Palestine that was stolen from his family by Israel in 1967. “I promised my father that one day he would be able to return, and I intend to keep my promise”. Sporting legend Craig Foster also spoke, and anti-war hero Julian Assange marched at the front with the lead banner.
In an encouraging sign, more trade unions than ever endorsed the protest and its pro-Palestinian demands. Flags and banners represented the National Tertiary Education Union, the Nurses and Midwives’ Association and the Electrical Trades Union, among others. As Maritime Union of Australia state secretary Paul Keating told the crowd, organised workers have played an essential role in struggles against war and racism throughout Australian history, from Vietnam to South African apartheid. “I say to my fellow trade unions, if ever there was a time to come together and be a force for good, now is the time”.
As part of my transport job, I drive over this bridge almost every week, and it’s still beautiful every time I do. But that did not leave me any better prepared for approaching the bridge on foot in the middle of the road. The slow but dogged pace, the onwards push of the crowd, the sprawling out as the road widened and the surging mosh when it narrowed again. The bridge loomed ahead like something to conquer, and the crowd moved inexorably to take it. Just as I had this thought, we began to chant: “Whose bridge? Our bridge!”
Cheers erupted as our contingent finally passed under the iconic steel structure. Beneath its magnificent arches, flanked by those gigantic hangers and moving cheek by jowl for a righteous cause—I have never seen the Harbour Bridge from a more beautiful vantage point. Even the bridge climbers above us, who would have seen the march in its full glory, missed something by being so far away from the action (though many raised their fists in solidarity).
Exactly halfway across the bridge, I felt something almost dreamlike. There were a hundred thousand people on this bridge. For a moment, this most famous Australian landmark belonged to Palestine. A brief pause in the chanting. The crowd was enveloped in silence and the sky in fog. I turned to the activist next to me. Did he feel it too? He nodded. “It’s like being in the eye of a storm”.
The crowd’s spirits were not dampened by the endlessly renewed bouts of rain, nor by the police’s sudden decision to block the end of the bridge and make everyone march back the other way. A protester, who on any other day looked like she worked in the quietest part of the library, fumed past: “It’s just a fucking power trip. Absolutely pathetic fuckers cannot hack that we beat them in court”. But perhaps for once in their life, police were telling the truth: at up to six times the anticipated size, the rally might have been simply too big to take the planned route into North Sydney. Not a bad problem to have.
Turning back did not mean giving up. The crowd left the bridge in perfect safety and order, proceeding all the way back to Wynyard Station, and then spilling out onto George Street until reaching Town Hall. “Show me what democracy looks like!” called the megaphoners; “This is what democracy looks like!”, we replied. 
After the march, leading Palestine Action Group organiser and socialist activist Josh Lees wrote on social media that it was “an absolutely incredible day. Minns predicted chaos. Instead, we had what we knew we would: a beautiful outpouring of humanity, marching side by side to end a genocide and demand our government sanction Israel. We’ve sent an enormous message to the world. Today the people spoke, and they said stop the genocide! Free Palestine!”
Each of those individuals amongst the people made a choice to give up their Sunday, catch overflowing trains into pouring rain, stand for hours and march for hours more, and rail against a genocide that Australia’s entire political, media and university establishment has covered up, excused and enabled. And by the sounds of it, most of those who came had been willing to do so even if all the powers that be succeeded in their uncompromising efforts to ban the march. “I was coming either way”, my GP’s receptionist told me the day before, when the court ruling came in. Facing the horror of this modern-day Holocaust, the spirit that captured Sydney on Sunday is exactly what gives socialists hope in the possibility of a better world—one run by ordinary people and not our genocidal masters. 
There’s one more reason that Sunday made history. For the first time ever, the Shit-Eater of the Year Award has been called five months early. Judges say they’ve never seen any nominee, let alone a sitting premier, eat so much shit over a single weekend. Give us a big grin, Chris Minns. With a movement this determined to end the unbearable slaughter of Gaza, there’ll be plenty more for you to come.

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Recognising Palestinian statehood won’t stop Israeli terror

Arab governments stand by as Israel carries out genocide

Making history on Sydney Harbour Bridge: massive March for Humanity

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