John Pilger: Australia lags behind on issue of Palestine

It was standing room only at the John Pilger Q&A film screening in Surry Hills, and reportedly the same packed-house situation across town at the Marrickville Council meeting where the focus was on whether or not to formally continue council level support for the BDS campaign.

Pilger acknowledged the Marrickville meeting in his introductory address to the audience (to much applause) and spoke on the issue of mainstream media coverage of Israel and Palestine, including the ongoing smear campaign against the Marrickville Greens who support BDS. Perhaps particularly noteworthy in the context of the relentless oppositional campaign, against Marrickville Mayor Fiona Byrne in particular, is that Pilger says while elsewhere there is progression on public awareness and media response on Palestinian issues, Australia lags. As many have said, the BDS is just the beginning (Fiona Byrne told The Australian: “We have certainly put the BDS on the national agenda, whatever that means”.)

I think the whole issue of Palestine has moved forward in public understanding hugely over recent years, hugely. And that has been a media response to this public awareness. Australia is largely an exception to this. As we have at the moment, a Murdoch newspaper, the only national newspaper in this country, The Australian, conducting an all-out smear campaign against a couple of Greens who happen to stick their [indecipherable] apparently, and state the obvious. That the connection, and we have something like a Murdoch retainer, [...] Penberthy, describing what they were doing as reminiscent, and I paraphrase, of Kristallnacht, this is so obscene, so profane, and this connection between criticism of Israel and accusing people of being anti-Semitic, has to end in Australia.

 

It’s beginning to end. It’s beginning to end in the UK, it’s beginning to end even in the United States, in much of Europe, where people are finally being able, feeling that they can talk about it. And non-violent, completely non-violent campaigns, like the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions campaign, the BDS campaign, which is much more modest than the anti-Apartheid movement but based on that, and supported by the likes of Desmond Tutu, who speaking in the spirit of Nelson Mandela called Palestine the greatest moral issue of our era, are starting to discuss it. There are views on this and those views should be heard, but this thuggish intimidation of people who are simply standing up for a justice is something that is particularly striking in Australia and in the Australian media and in my view reflects the, that monopoly, that omission, censorship by omission that exists mroe in Australia, than practically in any other Western democracy.

If you are interested in hearing about what went on at the Marrickville council meeting last night, click here to read Antony Loewenstein’s report.