Janet Parker, from Jews for Palestine WA, gave the following speech to an emergency protest in Boorloo, called by Friends of Palestine WA on February 7.
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I pay my respects not just to the First Nations people of this land, but to the people of Palestine.
Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
Palestine always was, always will be Palestinian land; from the river to the sea.
Over this last month, we have seen moments of joy, and ongoing grief and trepidation.
Over recent weeks, our hearts overflowed as we watched tens of thousands of Palestinians making their way back into northern Gaza.
But the joy was tempered by fear and uncertainty of what was to come.
Not only were Palestinians returning to a land completely and utterly decimated by Israeli tanks, drones and bombs — and the returnees had no illusions about this — but the big unanswered question hung like a sword over their heads: how real was this ceasefire?
Would it last?
What twists and turns could be expected from the Donald Trump leadership in its bid to shore up its relationship with Israel as its bulwark in the Middle East?
We watched Israel turn its attentions to the West Bank and an up-scaled assault on Jenin and Ṭūlkarm.
It displaced 26,000 Palestinians from their homes: large parts of the camp were completely levelled; at least 100 houses have been destroyed or heavily damaged.
The Israeli state mounted huge billboards saying: “You have no future here”.
Have we heard about this ethnic cleansing in the news?
Not unless you are closely following the avenues of truth telling.
Amid this comes the latest political bombshell.
War criminal Benjamin Netanyahu goes to the US, sits with newly minted President Trump and, while the latter announces the plan to permanently relocate Palestinians in Gaza to neighbouring countries such as Egypt and Jordan, Netanyahu says: “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell.”
Netanyahu said he’d be doing the Palestinians a favour “ending the death and destruction and, frankly, bad luck”.
Bad luck?
Fifteen months of genocide is not “bad luck”. His posture of humanitarian concern is pure farce.
While Trump continued with his fantasy of turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, Netanyahu took the opportunity to go on a goodwill tour of the American far right.
He met billionaire antisemite Elon Musk, who recently gave Nazi salutes at an inauguration rally. Then he met with more than a dozen evangelical Christian leaders, including ambassador-hopeful Mike Huckabee, who embraces the Israeli government’s dispossession of Palestinians because he believes it is a prerequisite to Armageddon.
Netanyahu also met televangelist John Hagee, who once remarked that the Holocaust was part of “God’s plan to drive the Jews to Israel”.
We know that the far right is the largest generator of antisemitism and violence against Jews.
So why did the Prime Minister of Israel spend days courting such extremists? The answer is that US support for Israel has never been, and is not now, about Jewish safety.
Supporters of Israel are intent on using the fear over rising antisemitism to advance their agenda of trampling over the Palestinians, and our most fundamental democratic rights and freedoms.
While the far right now directs most of its hate towards Muslims, it has never let go of its virulent antisemitism.
There is no contradiction between this and its support for Israel.
The far right believes in “pure” ethno-states and opposes multiculturalism.
Likewise, Netanyahu has been more than happy to court far-right antisemitic groups in the US and political parties in Europe.
The corporate media and a number of senior Liberal and Labor MPs have, for more than a year, dishonestly tried to smear supporters of human rights and international law as “antisemitic” to deflect from their own complicity in Israel’s genocidal violence.
But when a far-right billionaire throws Nazi salutes — something that actually fuels antisemitism in word and deed — they have nothing to say.
It’s the Labor government, which aids and abets genocide and ethnic cleansing, and now says it cannot be expected to comment on statements made by the US president that promote ethnic cleansing.
They are the ones endorsing hate, yet the movement protesting this politics of genocide and hate are the ones being accused of spreading hate.
We practice the politics of love, not hate.
And, it is for this reason, that we will not stand by and allow the US government, the Labor government, or any other, to turn Gaza into a business investment.
Jews for Palestine WA pledges that we will not rest until Palestine is returned to the Palestinians. We can never be free until all people are free.
Hands off Gaza! Palestine for the Palestinians! From the river to the sea Palestine will be free!
[Janet Parker is an activist in Jews for Palestine WA.]