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A report on the public presentations by
Michael Shaik* & The Rev Helen Cox
at the Union Memorial Church, North Melbourne
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Last Wednesday night, the Uniting Church Congregation of North Melbourne hosted two presentations on Palestine that juxtaposed emotion with facts – the anguish of one human being for the suffering of millions of Palestinians with the clear perspective of another whose task it was to validate the truth of that very moving narrative. The two speakers were former Uniting Church minister Helen Cox and Michael Shaik, public advocate with Australians for Palestine.
Heather Mathew, who had quietly conceived of the idea of bringing the
realities of Israel's occupation of Palestine to her fellow parishioners and
the wider community, opened the proceedings by introducing Helen Cox as a forthright advocate for justice and peace who has been passionate in giving voice to the injustices suffered by the Palestinians.
Helen wasted no time in announcing the disturbing statistics of hundreds of
Palestinian civilian men, women and children who had been killed over the
years to make way for Israel's colonial enterprise – especially the
children, who had been alive and playing and were suddenly brutally murdered never to know life beyond the short years they had lived. The full impact of this horror, Helen told us, had only registered on her radar screen some five years ago when she felt compelled to bring this to the attention of all who would listen. But in her endeavours, she soon found it most disturbing that our government is not listening.
Incredulous that Israel's deliberate destruction of 18,000 family homes
barely raises an eyebrow, that its humiliating restriction of daily movement
never raises a cry for Israel to pull down the 760 checkpoints imprisoning a
whole people, that no one questions the chilling Warsaw ghetto-like graffiti
messages on the Wall that Israel has built to imprison them even more, Helen soon realised that her message had to be brought into the public arena and she explained just how she did that.
Armed with a backpack, flyers and a banner that read "One huge step for
peace – Israel withdraw from the Occupied Territories", Helen told us how
she took herself into the heart of Melbourne city undaunted by the barrage
of questions that challenged her mission. Whenever she was asked for whom she stood, she answered– "I'm on the side of the human race – those who are oppressed, dispossessed, humiliated, falsely accused and all those who live in fear. I'm on the side of those who seek peace, not through the barrel of a gun, but through justice." Her answer resonated deeply with the audience before her.
At pains to point out that it is Israel that ignores UN resolutions, the
Geneva Convention and international law, Helen said that she could
confidently claim Archbishop Tutu, Mandela, Carter and Kasrils as leading
supporters of Palestinian human rights whenever people wanted to dismiss her and others as "ratbags" for championing the Palestinian cause.
As a God-fearing Christian, Helen deeply regrets that the church has lost
its prophetic voice. She is hopeful that Melbourne's Archbishop Freier's
words "critics of the status quo are the prophets of our time", will give
courage to those who have up until now been intimidated by the charges of
anti-Semitism when anyone calls into question Israel's iniquitous practices.
Her own belief is that more and more people are beginning to speak up for
the Palestinians despite US, Israeli and even our own government's attempts
to take the moral high ground in their cruel façade of empty gestures for
peace, but which ignore the most basic human rights for Palestinians.
Referring to the UN International Conference of Civil Society in support of
Israeli-Palestinian Peace of 30 August 2007, Helen quoted their call for
global civil society to mobilise in 2008 to commemorate 60 years of
al-Nakba, the great catastrophe of Palestinian dispossession that began in
1948 as Israel set out to cleanse all of the land for an exclusively Jewish
state in Palestine. As she ended her strong and passionate presentation,
Helen left the audience with a sobering observation made by the World
Council of Churches this year - that Israel's dispossession and occupation
has stolen two generations of lives. That alone, she said, should shock
people into acting as she urged everyone to have the courage to call for
peace and justice for the Palestinians.
Helen's call for peace left a resounding impact on the audience within the
hallowed walls of this simple and beautiful church which had been graciously opened for the occasion by its minister the Rev Dr John Smith. Heather then introduced Michael Shaik whose demanding task it was to explain just why the Israel/Palestine conflict is in fact one of the defining conflicts of our time.
In just 30 minutes, Michael covered the catastrophic effects of Israel's
iniquities over 60 years of uprooting and oppressing the indigenous
Palestinians. His aim was to show how Israel's colonisation of the West
Bank with Jewish settlers since 1967 has made a Palestinian state simply
impossible. By imprisoning the indigenous Palestinian population, Israel now
has a demographic problem that it sees as endangering the exclusively Jewish state it set out to create. The situation is one of a colonial minority
population lording it over a majority indigenous population.
To ensure the most favourable of outcome for its future survival, Israel's
Prime Minister Olmert was elected on a platform of implementing Israel's
realignment plan, whereby Israel would unilaterally and finally declare its
borders to the permanent detriment of the Palestinian people. And, while
this was supposedly put on hold when Olmert won office last year, Michael
pointed out that Israel is in fact engaging in a massive program of ethnic
cleansing. This is being done by denying the Palestinians their own
resources - water and fertile land - while Jews receive lavish housing
subsidies and tax breaks and use the lion's share of Palestinian water
resources. And worse than that, Israel's discriminatory building permit
system and ruthless destruction of Palestinian homes is depriving
Palestinian families of any security or stability in their own homeland. By
making conditions for the people so unbearable, Israel hopes to drive them
out from the very areas it covets, particularly the Jordan Valley and
Jerusalem.
Much of Michael's presentation concentrated on the effects of Israel's Wall
which is increasingly imprisoning Palestinians throughout the West Bank.
Michael showed how Israel has begun demolishing an entire neighbourhood of homes in Silwan on the western side of the Wall to establish a national
archaeological park. He also showed how the Wall is closing off Jerusalem to
the Palestinians which has been for them the economic and cultural centre of
their lives. Now they are being shunted into reservations developed along
the same lines as the Bantustan policy of Apartheid South Africa.
These are the realities on the ground said Michael, and they are becoming
ever more permanent, particularly as the world is distracted by yet another
peace conference coming up at the end of the month in Annapolis, USA.
Michael explained that the same thing happened during the Oslo peace talks
when away from the photo opportunities of the negotiations, Israel's
settlement project almost doubled to 400,000 Jewish settlers. And it is on
that note that Michael brought the audience around to the bigger picture of
Middle East politics and how Israel's expansionist ambitions are part of the
new strategic alignment in the region advocated by US Secretary of State
Condoleeza Rice and which is likely to involve a confrontation with Iran.
Although time did not allow Michael to give a full account of the recent
Mearsheimer and Walt book "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy", he did refer to their findings which show the enormous power and influence of this lobby group on US foreign policy, despite its pro-Israel stance proving to be very damaging to America's national interests and also Israel's long term security.
In concluding, Michael referred to the James Baker III "Iraq Study Group
Report" which proposes amongst many other recommendations, the need to
engage with Iran and Syria; the need to re-new the Arab-Israeli peace drive;
and the need for the US to issue a statement that would commit to no
permanent bases in Iraq and no wish to control its oil. If this does not
happen warned Michael, the war in Iraq will get worse and a war on Iran will take place, all leading to the explosive situation of a wider regional war.
The urgency to stop this mad rush to war must fall on civil society, said
Michael, since the anti-War movement - once able to mobilise millions - had
now become totally irrelevant, probably because of its failure to stop the
war on Iraq, but especially because it refuses to look at the impact of the
Israel lobby on US foreign policy. It is up to us to mobilise and change
the status quo and Michael pointed out that former US president Jimmy
Carter's is already advocating hard for the removal of the structure of
apartheid in Israel if peace in the Middle East is to have any chance at all
of working.
Michael answered all the ensuing questions in his usual authoritative and
well-reasoned way, while illustrating his answers with clear, up-to-date
graphs and statistics. It was a powerful performance in light of the
topic's contentious nature and gave everyone another way of looking at the
issues that have for too long been hidden by a narrative that has only
served Israel's interests.
Wednesday night was a welcome opportunity to advocate for Palestine to a new and receptive audience - only made possible by the support of Rev Dr John Smith and the Uniting Church Congregation of North Melbourne, Professor Phillip Darby, the director of the Institute of Post Colonial Studies and Heather Mathew's unwavering commitment to seeing a fair narrative on Israel, Palestine and the wider Middle East.
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