A small blow for justice
In recent weeks the Australian government struck a small blow for justice in the Middle East when it dropped its ban on government contact with the Palestine Liberation Organisation and foreign minister Gareth Evans invited two Palestinian nationalists and two Israeli representatives to visit Australia. The two Palestinians are Hanan Ashrawi and Fisal Husseini, the latter widely regarded as PLO President Yasser Arafat's main representative in the occupied territories. Evans made the invite to the Palestinians while visiting Jerusalem.
Following the departure of Bob Hawke, an outspoken Zionist, it seems the government is now able to able bring its policy more in line with the United States position of land for peace. While this policy does not stand for justice for the millions of Palestinians forcibly exiled from their homeland, it does at least acknowledge to some extent the injustice of the Zionist colonisation of the West Bank and the brutal character of Israeli rule there.
Naturally, the Zionist lobby is furious about the government's change of position, and has responded with its usual nauseating, racist characterisations of Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. The Zionists would prefer that theirs remain the only view available to the majority of Australians, as it was under curtain of censorship that descended over the Palestinians during Hawke's time as prime minister.
This is not to say the Palestinians are about to get a fair hearing — far from it. There is no suggestion that the mass media are about to abandon their biased attitudes towards the Palestinians, or their racist stereotyping of Arabs and other Muslim peoples — an approach that contributed to a serious increase in hostility towards Arab Australians during and after the Gulf War. But at least the proposed visit of Palestinian representatives will open a new round of public discussion, a prospect that supporters of justice in the Middle East will welcome, and that Zionists have already shown they fear.