There has been a renewed attack on the right to protest in NSW, led by NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns, in conjunction with the NSW Liberal Party and a right-wing media campaign designed to smear the Palestine solidarity movement. 
The campaign began with sections of the media hyperventilating about the presence of some Hezbollah flags at our Sydney protest on 29 September. It worked itself up into a full-blown moral panic about anyone daring to discuss the 42,000+ Palestinians killed by Israel in the past year, on the anniversary of 7 October. 
Although Israel was invading Lebanon and continuing a year-long genocidal rampage in Gaza, it was us, those protesting against the slaughter, who were labelled terrorist supporters, violent, insensitive and a threat to “social cohesion”.
For the Australian establishment, only Israelis can be mourned. According to them, there is no such thing as a Palestinian victim who deserves to have their life remembered and honoured—they are only Hamas terrorists and human shields. 
The campaign culminated in the NSW police, under orders from Minns, taking the Palestine Action Group Sydney to the Supreme Court to try to stop our protest on 6 October and a candlelight vigil on 7 October from going ahead. The arguments of the police and prosecutors were farcical and drew on long-established racist stereotypes, particularly about Lebanese people. They tried to concoct an image of violent, terrorist-sympathising mobs. 
At one point, they claimed that flower beds in planter boxes posed a safety risk. At another, they argued that a protest route, which they themselves had proposed to protest organisers at a previous meeting, went too near a Sydney synagogue. Later, they argued that the protest should be banned because all the publicity, generated by their own court challenge, meant it would be bigger than expected! In the end, the police withdrew their application to stop us from marching.
But they mobilised an obscenely large mob of police who were itching for any excuse to make arrests to justify the hysterical anti-protest panic. Hundreds of riot police were sent to surround and intimidate a candlelight vigil. Despite this, both events were massive and successful, and the police and government were left with egg on their faces at the lack of “violent terrorists” they could invent.
Chris Minns, not one to let a good law-and-order panic go to waste, then went on 2GB radio with shock jock Ben Fordham (where Minns seemingly makes most of his policy announcements) to complain about the cost—supposedly $5.4 million this year—of policing our protests. As if it were our decision to send hundreds of cops to a candlelight vigil! 
“I’m going to have a review into the resourcing that police put into these marches, and it’s my view that police should be able to be in a position to deny a request for a march due to stretched police resourcing”, he said. Minns has also appeared to endorse the idea of Liberal opposition leader Mark Speakman that a “user pays” system should be introduced, whereby protesters are forced to pay the costs of the police. Besides being a general attack on protests, this proposal would create a perverse situation in which the rich could protest but not the poor.
Minns also personally singled me out as a “serial protester”, prompting the baying bloodhounds of Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph to write an attempted <a href="https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/serial-propalestine-rally-organiser-josh-lees-received-covid-fines-after-campaigning-to-lock-down-nsw/news-story/ec8d90ca4fe038838fde4148f6c4ff65">hit piece</a> on my history of protest, presumably based on information leaked to them by NSW Police.
At our protest on 13 October, two 19-year-old women from Students for Palestine were arrested, had their bags searched, were given move-on orders to leave the protest and were told they would receive infringement notices in the mail. Their “crime”? Putting up a poster on a pole in Hyde Park to advertise a protest.
These threats to our right to protest are just the latest in a long line of authoritarian laws adopted in recent years. The Human Rights Legal Centre <a href="https://www.hrlc.org.au/news/2024/07/03/protest-peril">reports</a>: “Over the past two decades, 49 laws affecting protest have been introduced in federal, state and territory parliaments. New South Wales has introduced the most anti-protest laws”.
In 2022, the NSW Liberal and Labor parties teamed up to pass the Roads and Crimes Act, which introduced two years’ jail and/or a $22,000 fine for anyone found to be disrupting bridges, tunnels, major roads, train stations, ports and public and private infrastructure. The laws targeted climate protesters but can be used against anyone. Last year, they were used to charge Palestine solidarity protesters attempting to blockade Israeli shipping company Zim at Port Botany.
It has become common police practice to impose insanely strict bail conditions on protesters, even when the alleged offence is minor and would attract only a fine if proven. These conditions often include exclusion zones around the CBD or potential protest sites like universities, bans on attending future protests, and even bans on associating with other activists. The latter powers were supposedly introduced to help NSW police deal with criminal gangs. They are now routinely used against protesters.
Every movement in history has had to contend with the repressive state apparatus, which is devoted to maintaining the “cohesion” of the current, unequal, unjust and murderous social order. The best way to fight for the right to protest is to protest, in bigger numbers than ever.
Josh Lees is an organiser with the Palestine Action Group Sydney.

Josh Lees

NSW assault on the right to protest

Jerome Small

What’s driving Israel’s wars?

In August of 2023, someone wrote the word “ESHAY” on a pillar in Sydney. How do I know this? And why am I telling you? Because this enigmatic incident was included in the Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s “Report on Antisemitism in Australia 2023”—a report that claims to document and record trends in anti-Jewish hatred, and which is treated as a serious, even definitive, source by the mainstream media and political parties.
If you don’t want to subject yourself to a Trotskyist publication explaining what “eshay” means, look away now. We will stick to reputable sources. Wikipedia describes an eshay as a member of a subculture of young men who “wear sportswear, have mullets and engage in immature and anti-social behaviour”. An alternative definition—“dickheads whom [sic] seem to think they are top shit”—comes courtesy of an Urban Dictionary contributor writing under the nom de plume “I hate eshays”.
Was this graffiti in Sydney anti-eshay? Or was it a public assertion of eshay pride? Its author did not leave us enough evidence to make a conclusive determination of this question. Yet I think we can say that it probably didn’t have much to do with Jews. Nonetheless, this message found its way into the ECAJ’s 2023 list of antisemitic incidents in Australia, and it wasn’t the dumbest thing in there. Not by a long shot. According to the report, cited as authoritative by the entire political gamut of Australian daily news outlets, even organising a protest against neo-Nazis is an act of antisemitic hatred. But we’ll come to that later.
The ECAJ published its report at the start of 2024, a couple of months into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. It’s nearly 300 pages long and claims to document and analyse incidents of antisemitism in Australia. The report’s publishers got the response they were after: “An unprecedented wave of antisemitic hatred surges through Australia” was how the Murdoch press reported it, with more measured but effectively identical analysis appearing in the Nine papers, the Guardian, ABC and SBS.
This report is a scam. It downplays a very real antisemitic threat—that of a growing conspiratorial and far-right movement that has shown a real interest in violence—while using false claims and distorted definitions of antisemitism to slander left-wingers, Muslims and anyone else critical of Israel’s genocidal conduct. Its authors declare their political goals at the outset. “Antisemitism has many active sources – extremist right-wingers, extremist left-wingers, and Islamists”, they explain. “However, each of the main sources operates differently. In general: right-wing antisemitism is overt, but marginalised; left-wing antisemitism is insidious, but mainstreamed.” So don’t worry too much about actual Jew-hating Nazis and conspiracy theorists: they’re “marginalised”. Worry about the “insidious” antisemitism associated with the supporters of Palestine. And if you can’t detect or prove any antisemitism at all, that just proves how insidious it is.
And so the report proceeds. Its catalogue of antisemitic incidents is full of examples of straightforward Palestine solidarity activism, involving no hostility towards or criticism of Jewish culture or religion, and that usually takes place within, and is often motivated by, an anti-racist framework. One example cited is advocacy for boycotts of Israel or its settlement economy. “BDS mimics the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses”, the report warns. “More insidious, BDS officially preaches non-violent forms of protest.” BDS obviously involves no such racial targeting. In fact, more to the point, it mimics one of the most significant and effective anti-racist campaigns in history: that to end the apartheid regime in South Africa. 
Alongside the eshay incident, the report lists in its documentation of antisemitic incidents:
<ul><li dir="ltr">“Graffiti of ‘BDS’ (anti-Israel ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’), written four times on a concrete wall, Paddington, Sydney (15 May 2023).”</li><li dir="ltr">“Graffiti of ‘BDS’ in two places, Surry Hills, Sydney (17 June 2023).”</li><li dir="ltr">“Graffiti of ‘BDS’, re-written where previously removed, Surry Hills, Sydney (18 July 2023).”</li></ul>
There’s plenty more like that. And they all get counted in the statistics. Mentioning the year 1948 or the term “Nakba” is also antisemitic, according to these esteemed researchers: graffiti, stickers and posters with these words are included in the lists, and therefore also in the headline numbers.
Perhaps, on reading this, you have begun to suspect that aspects of this report might be a little misleading. Well, guess what? By thinking that, you just perpetrated an act of antisemitism. In the report’s list of forms of antisemitism, we find: “Jewish organisations being accused of concocting false accusations of antisemitism ... specially in order to stifle criticism of Israel”. (Research by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students is leaned on heavily in the report. AUJS is a pro-Israel group with the unusual distinction of having had to issue a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/5219">public apology to Socialist Alternative</a> for concocting false accusations of antisemitism in order to stifle criticism of Israel.)
Maybe you’re guilty of something worse than scepticism about the report. Maybe you organised a protest against neo-Nazis and chanted about the need for anti-racist unity. Believe it or not: antisemitism. Describing a rally against a neo-Nazi base organising in the west of Melbourne, the report quotes a single chant: “Black, Indigenous, Arab, Asian and white—unite, unite, unite to fight the right!” This incident is listed under the category “Omitting Jews”. So desperate are the report’s authors to slander left-wingers and Palestine supporters that they even found a way to construe an anti-Nazi rally as an act of antisemitism.
What is particularly inexcusable about all this is the way it obscures the genuine antisemitism that exists and which should be combated. Falsified reports like this, along with the meaningless statistics that emerge from them, make it much harder to understand the form real antisemitism takes today. 
The report itself documents many examples, most of which are perpetrated by the same neo-Nazi grouplets that socialists and other left-wingers have been organising against for years—with groups like ECAJ contributing nothing to the cause, only intervening to slander the anti-racists. These Nazi groups descend from a revived far-right movement that emerged from the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric that dominated public life during Tony Abbott’s government. There’s a related current of conspiratorial antisemitic sentiment attributing the proposal for an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament to Jewish influence. In both cases, the genuine antisemitic incidents emerge from groups that largely espouse radicalised versions of Liberal Party talking points.
Further along the right-wing conspiratorial spectrum, the ECAJ reports various ranting voicemails and graffiti along the lines of “JEWS DID COVID” and (more mysteriously) “COVID IS JEW”. These far-right conspiracy theorists, like the neo-Nazis, may see themselves as distinct from the mainstream right wing. But they still draw their fears and hopes from a radicalised version of mainstream conservatism, whether it be hostility to immigration, resentment of Aboriginal people, opposition to public health measures that inconvenience business owners or paranoia about a progressive conspiracy to undermine national unity. This is real antisemitism. The left has always opposed it, in word and in deed, usually without the support of opportunistic pro-Israel political groups that falsely claim to act in defence of Jews. The same right-wing media outlets that fearmonger about every progressive cause, contributing to the rise of this current, are also ECAJ’s best allies in promoting the lie that Palestine solidarity is antisemitic.
It is quite possibly true that there is an increase in religiously conceived antisemitism relating to Palestine. The report documents things like pro-Palestine slogans being shouted at people wearing identifiably Jewish religious clothes. This is a terrible, but predictable, result of the occupation of Palestine being understood as a clash of religions. Yet this misunderstanding is exactly what the ECAJ promotes. ECAJ describes any attempt to understand Israel and its imperialist and expansionist policies in anti-racist political terms—as colonialism, for example, or apartheid—as forms of anti-Jewish prejudice. Its entire report is structured to suggest that the Jewish people are inseparable from the genocidal Israeli government and that any criticism of the latter can emerge only from hatred of the former. The alternative to this is to build an anti-racist pro-Palestine movement—which the anti-Zionist opponents of ECAJ, Jewish and non-Jewish, have been doing for more than a year.
The report is a joke. It is vexatious, mendacious, outrageous: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEietIoxk">preposterous</a>. It should be utterly, instantaneously discrediting to the institution that published it, and to the individuals associated with it. But it isn’t. Quite the opposite. The former president of ECAJ, Jillian Segal, has been appointed Australia’s new “antisemitism envoy” by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. 
This report is not exceptional or an outlier. ECAJ is part of an international group of Zionist organisations, the so-called J7, that includes the Anti-Defamation League of the US, Britain’s Board of Deputies, France’s CRIF and the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Most of these produce similar reports, with similar intentions, promoting similarly misleading and unreliable statistics. ECAJ claims its 2024 report is coming out “soon”. Given the explosion of pro-Palestine activism in the last 12 months, it is absolutely certain that it will claim a horrifying rise in what it calls antisemitism. The lies of pro-Israel groups won’t help us fight real antisemitism—and nor will they stop us standing in solidarity with Palestine.

Joel Schneider

Zionist groups are falsifying antisemitism statistics and the media are playing along

Tens of thousands of Palestine supporters rallied across the country last weekend to protest one year of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Forty thousand people marched in Sydney, 20,000 in Melbourne, and hundreds more in Wollongong, Canberra and Perth. 
In Sydney and Melbourne, people have rallied every Sunday for the past 52 weeks. The streets routinely become a sea of red, white, black and green as thousands of people wave the Palestinian flag. The sound of solidarity echoes through the city with the chants: “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinian” and “Free, free Palestine”. 
Palestine Action Group organiser Josh Lees addressed the roaring Sydney crowd: “We are here in some of the biggest numbers we have seen this year. We are just getting started”. 
Seeing the genocide play out in real time has compelled thousands of people to join the movement. Many who didn’t know much about Palestine prior to Israel’s invasion are today committed advocates for the cause. Others have been drawn into action by their outrage at the Australian government’s complicity in genocide, from parroting Israel’s lies about “self-defence” in justifying mass murder, to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-28/israeli-weapons-company-awarded-australian-army-contract/103519558">signing a $900 million contract</a> with an Israeli weapons company.
At the Melbourne rally, Jewish Council of Australia organiser Ohad Kozminsky criticised the Israeli government for weaponizing Jewish identity to whitewash genocide. “We are united in our opposition to Israel’s continued policies aimed at the destruction of Palestinian life. We are opposed to the vile prioritisation of the lives and rights of Jewish people over the lives and rights of Palestinian and Lebanese people.” 
Nasser Mashni, president of the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network, fired back at politician’s criticisms about our decision to hold rallies on the anniversary. “Will anyone speak of the dead (Palestinian) children, dead women and dead men? It’s shameful that we’re being asked to be respectful when we’ve had 365 October 7’s in the past year.” 
These rallies generate a sense of confidence and strength on our side. By collectively standing with thousands of people demanding an end to the slaughter, we push back against the feelings of hopelessness and apathy which can so easily take over. 
This is even more important because every major institution is stacked against us—from the mainstream media to the universities, cops, courts and politicians. 
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon has heightened the stakes. As Palestinian activist and Free Palestine Melbourne member Noura Mansour said in her speech at the Melbourne protest, “We now watch the Israeli violence spill over into the entire region as it targets our brothers and sisters and families in Lebanon”. 
A year on from the invasion of Gaza and we’ve entered a new era of Israeli terror. That means we must continue to push our struggle forward.

Bella Beiraghi

Tens of thousands protest to mark a year of genocide in Gaza

More than 300 students joined a special general meeting for Palestine at the University of Western Australia (UWA) on 2 October, after Students for Palestine submitted a petition with more than 700 student signatures demanding the UWA Student Guild convene it.
Dozens of staff and others from the broader campus community joined the students. Attendance exceeded the venue’s capacity, causing some people to be turned away and forcing others to sit on the floor or in the aisles. 
Students voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motions supporting Palestine, with a small number of Israel supporters speaking and voting against. 
The meeting was one of the key events in the ongoing campaign organised by Students for Palestine to pressure the university to cut its ties with Israel and end its complicity in the Gaza genocide. 
“The ties between the university and Israel are substantial”, recently elected Guild Councillor and Socialist Alternative member Finn Penter told Red Flag. “UWA leads a project that has ‘defence applications’ with L3Harris, a weapons company which supplies over 1600 components for F-35 fighter planes used by Israel. The university also has an exchange program with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem—which has a campus situated on Occupied Palestinian Territory—and an incoming Chancellor who is staunchly pro-Israel. We want our university to help people, the environment and society—not to help Israel’s genocide in Palestine.” 
Students also voted to call for a free Palestine “from the river to sea” and for an end to the genocide. Before this meeting, the UWA Student Guild, which is dominated by a faction of moderate student independents called Spark, had not taken a clear stand against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The previous year’s Guild Council initially responded to Israel’s attacks on Gaza in late 2023 by moving a motion that simply opposed violence in the “ongoing conflict”. This was followed by another motion passed in May, which condemned “the recent military assault in Rafah” but did not name Israel as the perpetrator.
“It’s a huge shift for the position of the Guild”, Danica Rachel, who chaired a snap rally after the meeting, told Red Flag. “What the Guild has said up to this point has been mealy-mouthed and frankly pathetic. But thanks to the SGM, the Guild can finally take a clear position in favour of Palestinian liberation, with equal rights for all from the river to the sea.” 
Credit for the meeting goes to the socialists, activists and left-wing students who connected with and mobilised the considerable sympathy for Palestine and opposition to Israel among students. 
In the week leading up to the meeting, Israel began its bombing campaign in Lebanon, raising the possibility of regional war. Student activists felt it was crucial to respond to this. They moved an extra motion without notice to “condemn Israel for its drive to war in the Middle East” and to identify “Israel [as] the clear aggressor in the region”. The motion passed to roaring applause. 
In the last twelve months, student activism has exploded in solidarity with Palestine around the world and across the country. With this latest mass meeting, UWA students have decisively joined this movement.

Alevine Magila

Hundreds vote against genocide and war at the University of Western Australia

More than 100 people gathered in Phnom Penh on Thursday evening, 26 September, to express their solidarity with the people of Palestine. At this time every year, over two weeks of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-amXPJFmuF0">Pchum Ben</a>, Cambodians pay remembrance to those who have died. Pchum Ben is a fifteen-day festival in September to October during the lunar month of photrobot, the traditional period for mourning and making offerings to transfer merit to the dead, especially one’s own ancestors. Traditionally, it is believed that special attention needs to be paid to the wandering spirits of those who suffered violent or painful deaths, who need to be venerated and assuaged so that they can rest in peace.
Pchum Ben has heightened significance in Cambodia’s society today. During the 1970s civil war and Khmer Rouge genocide, more than a quarter of the population perished. Families were dispersed across the country, and bodies of those more than 2 million people who died were discarded without ceremony. Most people lost relatives and friends, but do not know where they died, and thus have never been able to perform proper funerals for them.
In 2023, as Israel’s attack on Gaza began, a solidarity ceremony was held in Phnom Penh, launching traditional offerings of rice balls, candles, flowers and incense onto the Mekong River. It is unbelievable that the carnage could have gone on relentlessly day after day until now. As Pchum Ben has come around again, Israel is extending the same horror into Lebanon.
It is in this context that a number of artists decided to stage a “Pchum Ben 4 Palestine” exhibition. Some 70 paintings, posters, photographs and other artworks were displayed, mostly offered for sale along with the traditional Cambodian black and white checked krama scarf, closely resembling the Palestinian keffiyeh. Funds raised will be given to the Palestine Children’s Defence Fund.
More than 100 people crowded into <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FTGalleryPhnomPenh">the FT Gallery</a>—Cambodians and foreign residents from many different countries, faiths and political opinions stood or sat in traditional prayer. A Buddhist monk chanted and gave a brief sermon, followed by speakers from Cambodia, India and Palestine and singers from the Messenger Band, expressing their ongoing solidarity, all noting the parallels between Cambodian and Palestinian suffering.
At the United Nations, Cambodia has voted for repeated General Assembly resolutions <a href="https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/kingdom-votes-for-un-gaza-ceasefire">demanding a ceasefire</a>. The current and former PM have spoken out clearly against the hypocrisy of Western governments preaching human rights, international law and the rule-based world order while condoning and even aiding and abetting genocide in Cambodia in 1975-1979 and again today in Palestine.
First published at <a href="https://forsea.co/">Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia</a>. Helen Jarvis is vice president of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal and a <a href="https://www.aupp.edu.kh/congratulations-dr-helen-jarvis-on-achieving-2021-lifetime-achievement-award/">life member</a> of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Helen Jarvis

Standing with Palestine in Cambodia

Recently, the spotlight has been on arms manufacturers that profit from Israel’s genocidal practices. But powering colonisation and oppression isn’t done just by weapons companies. Brands that present themselves as green and ethical are sometimes guilty too. 
One example is <a href="https://www.solaredge.com/aus/">SolarEdge</a>, an Israeli company founded in 2006 by former special forces soldier Guy Sella and partly owned by BlackRock, one of the world’s most prominent investors in climate destruction. 
Sella’s motto for SolarEdge was “Legal, moral and profitable”. But the company is based in Herzliya, northern Tel Aviv, one of the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/alharam-sidna-ali-memory-herzliya/5799">first Zionist settlements</a> in Palestine. In 2018, the company built production facilities in the colonised <a href="https://techtime.news/2018/03/07/solaredge-3/">Upper Galilee</a>, and also has offices in Modi’in-Maccabim-Re’ut, an <a href="https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/120859">Israeli settlement</a> in West Bank Palestine <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/2012-08-14/ty-article/eu-part-of-modiin-isnt-israel/0000017f-ed65-ddba-a37f-ef6faf060000">considered illegal</a> by the United Nations. 
In his youth, Sella volunteered with the Israeli military’s Sayeret Matkal unit, becoming a team commander. The Sayeret Matkal is nominally considered an “anti-terrorist” unit, though that designation in the context of Israel’s longstanding occupation is questionable. The unit’s involvement in the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/16/sabra-and-shatila-massacre-40-years-on-explainer">Sabra and Shatila massacres</a> in Lebanon also suggests that it may itself have been involved in terrorising civilians. 
Sella went on to command the military’s Intelligence Corps, ending his career as a lieutenant colonel. Before founding SolarEdge, he was also responsible for establishing <a href="http://www.star-ventures.com/">Star Ventures</a> with several of his former soldiers. Sella died in 2019, but these co-founders maintain involvement in the company. 
One is Lior Handlesman, who was, until recently, the company’s vice-president of marketing and product strategy. Handlesman is also involved in another company, <a href="https://www.grovevc.com/insights/news/in-the-last-two-months-i-have-seen-over-20-startups-in-the-defense-sector/">Grove Ventures</a>, which specialises in “defence start-ups”.
SolarEdge CEO Zvi Lando recently resigned but, under his leadership, the company became Israel’s <a href="https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-solaredge-ceo-zvi-lando-steps-down-1001487628">most valuable</a>, with an estimated US$20 billion market value. Before joining SolarEdge, Lando was a director at Camp Magen (Camp Defence in Hebrew), which was founded to instil Zionist propaganda in both Israeli and American youth and train them in combat techniques. 
Israel already has compulsory service, drafting youth into a military that is primarily deployed to keep the non-Jewish population of Israel in line and to intimidate Palestinian civilians. In this context, Camp Magen should be viewed as an extension of Israeli militarisation.
Not only does SolarEdge have offices based in occupied Palestinian territory, but in 2015, the company supplied parts to solar farms in the illegal Israeli settlements <a href="https://jordanvalleysolidarity.org/news/solaredge-working-in-illegal-israeli-settlement/">Shdemot Mehola </a>and Petza’el in the Jordan Valley, occupied West Bank. Settlements are <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm">illegal expansions</a> of Israeli territory into Palestinian land, usually accompanied by Israeli settler violence against Palestinians and mostly backed by the Israeli state. 
SolarEdge also directly supplies the Israel Prison Service, which currently detains <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/17/palestinian-prisoners-day-how-many-palestinians-are-in-israeli-jails">9,500 Palestinian prisoners</a>, of whom at least 3,500 are held without charge. This includes 200 children. A dual legal system exists in Palestine, under which <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/6/who-are-israeli-settlers-and-why-do-they-live-on-palestinian-lands">Israeli settlers</a> are held accountable to Israeli civil law while Palestinians are bound by Israeli military law and tried in <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/2/26/israels-military-courts-humiliating-charade-for-palestinians">military courts</a> run by Israeli soldiers and officers. Such is the nature of the Israeli <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/">apartheid</a> regime.
Adding to SolarEdge’s questionable history, the company’s <a href="https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-blackrock-increases-solaredge-stake-1001335496">major shareholder</a> is BlackRock, the world’s largest investment company, which also holds a <a href="http://blackrocksbigproblem.com/">dubious record</a>. 
BlackRock’s <a href="https://www.responsible-investor.com/esg-funds-maintain-exposure-to-israeli-arms-manufacturer-elbit-systems/">significant investments</a> in the <a href="https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/07/07/blackrock-wall-street-banks-profit-israel-gaza-un/">arms industry</a> include <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/02/29/israeli-weapons-elbit-systems-australian-defence-department-contract/">Elbit Systems</a>, which supplies both the Israeli military and Myanmar’s junta. According to Weapons Free Funds, a website that tracks ethical investments, BlackRock has $78.01 billion in military investments. This year, the United Nations <a href="https://www.malaysianow.com/news/2024/06/21/blackrock-among-scores-of-entities-warned-by-un-experts-to-stop-arms-transfers-to-israel">warned</a> BlackRock to stop supplying weapons to Israel. 
Furthermore, the company has been consistently criticised for crimes against the environment and indigenous communities. The investment fund has one of the world’s most extensive fossil fuel portfolios. US media network CBS valued the portfolio at $US260 billion in 2022, including a 6 percent share in Exxon. 
SolarEdge cannot maintain any claim to sustainability when its major shareholder holds some of the world’s most environmentally destructive investments. And it cannot claim to be “moral” when its business operations are carried out on occupied land and its products are supplied to Israeli settlements.
There is good news, however.
Over the last two years, SolarEdge has been in crisis, its <a href="https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/y1qygmbv2">market value crashing</a> to US$1.6 billion. <a href="https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/y1qygmbv2">Calcialist Tech</a>, a news website, claims this is due to rising US interest rates reducing investment, the global fall in demand for solar power products and an oversupply of materials in Europe since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 
But many Israeli companies are facing a crisis. More than <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles-id/25882">46,000 businesses</a> closed in six months, and the country’s GDP fell by 20 percent. 
The economic deterioration is related to the war. But the <a href="https://bdsmovement.net/what-is-bds">Boycott, Divest and Sanction campaign</a>, which encourages people and companies to disinvest from Israeli products, has also had an effect. Over the years, BDS has forced companies such as Ben &amp; Jerries and Puma to withdraw major contracts with Israel. 
It should be no surprise that BDS lists SolarEdge as a company that should be boycotted.
An opportunity to raise awareness about SoarEdge is at the Clean Energy Council’s <a href="http://www.all-energy.com.au/">All Energy Australia Exhibition &amp; Conference</a> being held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre on 23-24 October. Billed as the country’s “largest and most anticipated clean energy event”, the two-day meeting showcases new developments in renewable energy technology, hosts workshops and boasts more than 400 stalls from a broad range of international companies and agencies. 
Just last month, the exhibition centre hosted <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/why-were-right-to-disrupt-land-forces">Land Forces</a>, a military technology conference that showcases the latest in killing machines. The arms conference was met by <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/why-were-right-to-disrupt-land-forces">protests</a> that resulted in serious police violence. The All Energy conference might claim to be “serious about sustainability”, but don’t be fooled into thinking green capitalism is any more ethical.
SolarEdge is based in and supplies illegal settlements and a prison service that detains thousands of innocent Palestinians, including children. If the company’s morals reflect its founders, then they are those of men who violently pursued the colonisation and dispossession of the Palestinian people. 
Out of Sella’s “Legal, moral and profitable”, we’re left with only “profitable”—but even that has come under pressure. 
Isolating the Israeli economy is one of the most powerful ways that we can help the Palestinian liberation struggle. This means helping to build the BDS movement and exposing companies like SolarEdge. 
Unions should place bans on SolarEdge products, and its presence at conferences like All Energy should be protested.
Tommy Lawson is an electrician in the renewables sector and author of “Foundational Concepts of the Specific Anarchist Organisation”.

Tommy Lawson

SolarEdge: Israel’s dirty green energy company

One year ago, Israel began its genocidal bloodbath in Gaza. As the bodies of men, women and so many children piled up, ripped apart by bombs made in the USA, everyone was called on to answer the question: “Which side are you on?”.
Governments of every stripe, from the far right in Italy and Argentina, to the Democrat and Labor administrations of the US and Australia, and the Arab dictatorships and monarchies of the Middle East, chose the side of genocide. Weapons companies kept the ammunition and profits flowing. The Australian media became mouthpieces of Israeli state propaganda. Palestinians whose families were being annihilated were either ignored or asked only one question: “Do you condemn Hamas?”.
But against the tide, a new movement rose. It started with those of us who had been organising in solidarity with Palestine for many years. In Sydney, we in the Palestine Action Group started making calls and by 9 October we had 2,000 people on the streets. Within a few days, protests were occurring in every major city.
We had organised protests against Israel’s previous massacres in Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2018 and 2021. But none of us predicted just how bloodthirsty Israel would be this time. And none of us knew that we were kicking off a movement that would mobilise thousands of people every week, for 52 weeks, to demand freedom for Palestine. If there is one ray of hope amongst all the horror of the past year, it’s that millions of ordinary people have defiantly taken a stand with this movement for liberation.
No sooner had we taken to the streets than the attacks on us began. The script was familiar: we were labelled antisemites. The Jewish organisations and individuals who participated in every protest were erased from the media narrative. In NSW, Labor Premier Chris Minns lit up the Opera House with the colours of Israel’s flag and then declared that our protests would be banned. Police threatened the use of extraordinary powers to crack down on us, and even forcibly strip-search protesters. Peter Dutton called for protesters to be deported. It took real bravery for people to mobilise in the face of all that, but on 15 October, 15,000 people demonstrated that we could not be intimidated into silence.
The centrepiece of this movement has been the nationwide mass weekly or fortnightly protests. They have been the biggest rallies for Palestine in Australian history. In Melbourne and Sydney, upwards of 60,000 people have mobilised, with huge numbers out in Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra. Even smaller cities and towns like Wollongong, Newcastle, Cairns and Katoomba have held regular protests, attracting hundreds.
These sustained mobilisations have kept Palestine at the centre of Australian political debate, piling pressure on our rotten politicians, drawing huge numbers into the cause for the first time, giving confidence and inspiration to all who come that we are on the right side of history, and showing the people of Gaza that we are with them, even if our governments are not.
Crucially, the protests have mobilised far larger numbers of non-Arabs and non-Muslims than the Palestine movement had previously. It is a testament to the argument that ordinary people, regardless of their background, are capable of rejecting racism and standing in solidarity with oppressed people. 
The mass protests have created the foundation for countless other actions to be organised in the past year: occupations of train stations, pickets at weapons companies, attempted blockades of ports, convoys to Canberra, protests and sit-ins at Albanese’s office, hundreds of vigils, plays and film-screenings, actions aimed at local councils and much more.
Students have played a big part. High school socialists in Melbourne organised the biggest school strike for Palestine in the world last November, and students elsewhere followed suit. Students for Palestine kicked off the Gaza solidarity encampment movement on Australian universities, setting up the first camp at Sydney University in April, before it spread to twelve other campuses. 
A wave of huge student general meetings has been held at campuses around the country, mobilising 1,500 people at the University of Queensland and several hundred in other places. The immense majorities voting for pro-Palestine motions are extraordinary and demonstrate how large support for Palestine is amongst young people.
Everywhere people have tried to express their opposition to the genocide, they have come up against institutions that try to repress them. Journalists Antoinette Lattouf and Nour Haydar were sacked for reporting the truth. Fatima Payman was driven out of the Labor Party. Pro-Palestine school students and teachers have faced off against principals and education departments, demanding their right to wear the keffiyeh. Actors and musicians from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to the Sydney Theatre Company have been punished for taking a stand. Many trade union members have campaigned against their union leaders to take a stronger stance in support of Palestine. University students and staff are currently facing a concerted right-wing campaign to silence them. Recent protests against the arms convention in Melbourne were met with police violence. Yet still, we resist.
As the genocide grinds on and Israel escalates its violence in Lebanon, there are precious few victories for us to celebrate. But all of us who have thrown ourselves into the fight to stand against this descent into hell should be proud of what we have done. There are thousands and thousands of people who are more committed than ever to free Palestine and tear down this barbaric system, and we aren’t done yet.

Still fighting for Palestine, one year on

Israeli soldiers describe the Zionist state’s vast network of prisons as “hell”. In them, at least 9,600 Palestinians are held hostage, almost half of whom were detained “without trial, without being presented with the allegations against them, and without access to the right to defend themselves”, according to a report published in August by Israel-based human rights organisation B’Tselem. 
Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as Network of Torture contains 55 testimonies from Palestinians released since 7 October. Despite their being only a fraction of the imprisoned population, their stories shine light on a brutal apparatus of physical and psychological terror designed in every facet to crush the Palestinian people. 
Since 7 October, Israel’s prison system has operated under a “prison state of emergency”. Even the most basic inmate rights—such as the right to speak to a lawyer and family—have been stripped away. 
Accounts of beatings at the hands of guards and mauling by dogs come up again and again in the report. And some 60 Palestinians have been killed in custody in the past year. Take the case of Arafat Hamdan, a diabetic held in Ofer Prison in the West Bank. When his health rapidly deteriorated, his cellmates called guards for help. 
“The guard said Arafat needed food and drink, and I told him we had nothing to feed him. He said to wait for breakfast”, Muhammad Srur, a 34-year-old father of two from the West Bank village of Ni’lin, recounted. But by breakfast, Arafat was dead.
Israel’s torture regime is designed to degrade and humiliate to a level of detail so sophisticated that only the cruellest mind could have conceived it. 
Twelve to fourteen prisoners are crammed into cells designed for six. Prisoners are forced to eat spoiled food. One testimony describes having only six slices of bread to eat per day. Another relates how they were forced to eat mouldy yoghurt. 
“For 191 days, I didn’t see the sun”, Thaer Halahleh recounts. 
Sami Khalili, who spent twenty years in Israel’s prisons, had letters from his late mother confiscated. Olive oil and spices that he and his fellow inmates had previously used to cook for themselves were destroyed. Routinely, guards attempt to force Palestinians to kiss the Israeli flag or sing Zionist songs. Refusal, the response of many, is met with hails of fists and batons. 
“Once, when a detainee in the cell next to ours asked to swap his yogurt because the expiration date had passed, they punished all the inmates in the cell: they set dogs on them, beat them with clubs, dragged them to the bathroom and beat them up”, Hisham Saleh recounted. “The next day, I could still see their blood on the floor.”
Long before the “prison state of emergency”, the carceral system had been a pillar of apartheid. Before Israel’s genocidal campaign began last year, 5,192 Palestinians languished in the regime’s vast prison network. Israel employs a series of categories to imprison Palestinians without even a pretence of due process. Administrative detention is one of the most notorious. Human rights group Amnesty International defines it as:
“A form of detention under which individuals are detained by state authorities based on secret security grounds that the defendant and their lawyer cannot review, effectively circumventing due process guaranteed for all persons deprived of their liberty under international law.” 
Nearly 40 percent of Palestinian men, and 20 percent of the population, spend time in Israel’s prisons at some point in their lives. Few families are untouched by the system’s vast reach. Having served prison time is one of the legal bases for being denied working rights inside Israel, amounting to de facto discrimination for the “crime” of being Palestinian.
Welcome to Hell is a reminder that apartheid is not simply a government policy in Israel. It is embedded in the structure of the state. Judicial, military and prison apparatuses are structured to oppress and discriminate against the Palestinian people. Their apartheid function is established by more than just legislation. 
Even the most rudimentary legal “rights” for Palestinians are rendered meaningless by the racist structure of the state apparatus. Muhammad Srur’s description of his attempt, in a court hearing, to appeal his treatment at the hands of guards illustrates this:
“I also spoke about how we were brutally attacked and abused by the guards during transfers, but the judge didn’t pay attention to that. After the hearing, on the way to the cell, the IPS [Israel Prison Service] people took revenge on me for complaining about their behavior. They hit and kicked me brutally the whole way.”
Under far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, apartheid is open policy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal regime has given the state apparatus licence to commit any and every act of violence. The “prison state of emergency” has emboldened and strengthened the far-right government’s allies in the state machine. Negev Prison chief Brigadier General Yosef Knipes explained as much to the conservative Orthodox magazine Mishpacha: 
“We can categorically say that the new policy and the tone set from the top are good for us—the executive authority. When government-level officials back decisions and give the professionals in the field the powers needed to get the job done properly, it produces the desired outcomes.”
A change in government will not fundamentally alter these institutions, not least because every significant party is committed to apartheid. As the report concludes: “Minister Ben Gvir’s influence remains evident, but his policy could not have been implemented without the cooperation of the entire system”. 
Liberation for Palestine means the dismantling of the whole system of apartheid between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Jack Mansell

‘Welcome to hell’—the barbarity of Israel’s prisons

If Israel were a person, they would combine the worst traits of Donald Trump, George W. Bush and a bloviating campus progressive: a pathological liar with a penchant for mass murder who weaponises the politics of identity to shut down political challenges. 
Yet arguably worse than Israel is its friendship circle, which repeats every lie as truth and defends, excuses or enables every act of depravity on the part of its obnoxious pal.
In Gaza, more than 41,000 people are confirmed killed, more than 10,000 are missing and presumed dead, and nearly 100,000 have been injured. And now Lebanon is being hammered as well.
The crushing <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/eyewitness-to-genocide">testimony of Dr Mohammed Mustafa in the latest issue of Red Flag</a>, describing the mounting toll of malnutrition and hepatitis A on children, is yet another reminder of the barbarity Israel is inflicting in the territory.
One year into the genocidal offensive, the figures indicate clearly that the entire Gaza Strip is being made uninhabitable.
Most of the 2.2 million residents have now been herded into just 11 percent of the territory—roughly 39 square kilometres. 
Ninety-six percent of the population—2.15 million people—are facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. Almost half a million are in what the World Food Programme defines as “catastrophic conditions”. 
More than two-thirds of permanent crop fields have been significantly degraded or destroyed.
Two in every three buildings are damaged or destroyed.
Two-thirds of the road network has been damaged, and nearly 1,200 kilometres of roads have been destroyed.
Almost 93 percent of schools have been damaged, and 85 percent need “full reconstruction or major rehabilitation work” to be used again, according to a research group led by the UN and British charity Save the Children.
The United Nations and aid agencies have labelled the situation “beyond catastrophic”. In May, the International Criminal Court prosecutor applied for arrest warrants to try Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in August that blocking humanitarian aid is “justified and moral” even if it wipes out the entire population of Gaza.
Yet not only have Israel’s friends stood by this rogue state, not only have they continued to provide military and diplomatic support (US President Joe Biden denounced the request for arrest warrants as “outrageous”), but they have routinely smeared opponents of genocide as antisemites.
On one level, it’s an indication that Israel and its Western backers have lost the argument. If a position cannot prevail through reason, bring in the censors and try to silence the critics through force. 
Yet it exposes more than a failure of the “Enlightenment values” routinely invoked as the reason for the West’s need to prepare for and wage war. 
As Israel expands its offensive into Lebanon, predictably with zero threat of sanctions from its friends, the true nature of global capitalism has again been revealed: the “rules-based order” is a fig leaf under which economic competition for profits and state competition for territorial influence regularly spill over into conflicts with few rules—just the exercise of brute force until someone emerges victorious.
“It is no longer the liberty, unity, and state-independence of each nation that is the ideal of capitalism, but the subjugation of millions of members of foreign peoples to the rule of one’s own nation”, Otto Bauer wrote in his 1907 work The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy. 
“Each nation is to arm itself to the teeth in order to be able to maintain its oppression of the subjugated peoples at all times and to keep foreign rivals away from its own sphere of exploitation.”
It is the age of criminals parading as saviours: permanent war, unpunished mass murder and permanent hypocrisy. 
In the competition for power, Israel today is the pre-eminent rogue state. But it would be nothing without its friends.

NSW assault on the right to protest

What’s driving Israel’s wars?

Zionist groups are falsifying antisemitism statistics and the media are playing along

Tens of thousands protest to mark a year of genocide in Gaza

Hundreds vote against genocide and war at the University of Western Australia

Standing with Palestine in Cambodia

SolarEdge: Israel’s dirty green energy company

Still fighting for Palestine, one year on

‘Welcome to hell’—the barbarity of Israel’s prisons

Israel: a rogue state with many friends

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