Classes were in session on 6 January at Birzeit University, near Ramallah in the West Bank, when Israeli soldiers entered the campus firing tear gas, sound bombs and live rounds on students and staff. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/6/israeli-forces-injure-11-palestinian-in-university-raid-in-ramallah">Al Jazeera reported</a> that 41 people were injured, including hospitalisations for five who inhaled tear gas, three hit by shrapnel and three shot in the legs.
Ghaied Hijaz, an activist and Birzeit University graduate, told Red Flag that more than 150 soldiers stormed the university:
“This is not the first time [Israeli forces] break into the university campus. But this time was different. For the past ten years, they would break in during the night. But to come in during the day when the university is full of students, shooting live bullets and tear gas, is something that was surprising to all of us, because that didn’t happen since the Second Intifada [a period of Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation from 2000 to 2005].”
In the north, the Israeli military’s Operation Iron Wall has been a campaign of total destruction in the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps. <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/genocide-continues-gaza-west-bank-pushed-new-nakba">Middle East Eye reported</a> that 40,000 refugees were expelled in early 2025 and that entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. Israel has broken another boundary: these areas were supposed to be under Palestinian control, and now they have a permanent Israeli military presence.
Things have shifted decisively in the West Bank since October 2023. The violence and theft of Palestinian land have increased to levels that were perhaps untenable a few years ago. The support that Israel has received for its genocide in Gaza has been taken as a green light for stomping on the rest of Palestine.
Al Jazeera reports that, since October 2023, at least 1,102 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and about 11,000 injured, either by Israeli military forces or by settlers looking to steal more land; around 21,000 more are locked in Israeli prisons. More than 2,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented more than 1,800 attacks by settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank in 2025 alone.
The goal is to eradicate Palestine “between the Sea and the Jordan” river, as the original charter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party reads. For this, the West Bank is crucial, as it is where an imagined Palestinian state would be formed with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel is now taking the opportunity wipe Palestine off the map.
Armed settlers roam the hilly West Bank countryside, terrorising Palestinians trying to protect their homes. They are regularly backed by soldiers and have the full support of Netanyahu’s government. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, himself a settler, has been making it easier for settlers to obtain weapons: some 230,000 gun licences have been distributed in Israel in the two years to November 2025, as <a href="https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-organized-settler-militias-west-bank-palestinians-funding-arms">reported by Drop Site News</a>.
The settlers are at the front line of stealing Palestinian land. Since October 2023, at least 152 new settler outposts have been set up, making up more than 42 percent of all outposts established since 1996, according to monitoring by Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now. The outposts are not officially sanctioned by the Israeli government, but many eventually become recognised as settlements.
On top of the new outposts, the Israeli government approved eleven new official settlements in December of 2025, adding to dozens of others in the past two years. By exploiting an Ottoman Empire-era law, Israel “declares” land owned by Palestinians “state land” as long as it hasn’t been cultivated. The “state lands” are then often used for further development of settlements. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem <a href="https://www.btselem.org/download/201007_by_hook_and_by_crook_eng.pdf">estimated in 2010</a> that about 16 percent of the West Bank has been stolen in this way. Peace Now recorded that at least another 40 square kilometres have been taken since then, with 2024 the largest year since they began recording in 1998.
The most significant ongoing land theft is the imminent development of the E1 zone, stretching east from the outskirts of Jerusalem. It was approved by the Israeli government in August 2025, but the plan had been in limbo for twenty years because it was considered too much for Western states to stomach. Now, it’s going ahead, and developers are bidding for the right to build 3,401 housing units to connect existing Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem to others deep in the West Bank.
The settling of E1 will plug the hole in the separation barrier, a concrete wall Israel has built through the West Bank stretching as high as nine metres. It will physically separate East Jerusalem from the West Bank and cut off the northern part of the West Bank from the south. The point is to establish “facts on the ground” that kill any possibility for a Palestinian state. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, also a settler, put it bluntly as he announced the approval:
“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise. Anyone in the world who tries today to recognise a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground.”
If the two-state solution was ever anything more than a fantasy, soon it will be a geographical impossibility.
All of this is an acceleration of a process that has always been part of the Zionist project. In 1948, Israel was established on top of most of historic Palestine. In 1967, Israel defeated Jordan in the Six-Day War and began its occupation of the West Bank. Since then, Israel has progressively encroached further and further, eating away at the area Palestinians have access to or control over. B’Tselem’s 2010 <a href="https://www.btselem.org/download/201007_by_hook_and_by_crook_eng.pdf">By Hook and By Crook report</a> includes invaluable documentation of the mechanisms and policies Israel has used to this end.
Israel immediately began requisitioning land for settlements, claiming them as necessary for security and military functions. By 1981, 53 settlements had been established in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That year, the Israeli government adopted a policy known as the <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-186771/">Drobles plan</a>, named after its author Matityahu Drobles, then chairman of the World Zionist Organization settlement department. It spelled out in no uncertain terms the goal for the West Bank, which Israel calls “Judea and Samaria”. The policy pre-empted Smotrich’s above-quoted boast about the E1 zone by several decades:
“The state-owned lands and the uncultivated barren lands in Judea and Samaria ought to be seized right away, with the purpose of settling the areas between and around the centres occupied by the [Palestinians] so as to reduce to the minimum the danger of an additional Arab state being established in these territories. Being cut off by Jewish settlements, the [Palestinian] population will find it difficult to form a territorial and political continuity. There mustn’t be even the shadow of a doubt about our intention to keep the territories of Judea and Samaria for good.”
The Drobles plan makes gestures towards “the cohabitation of Jews and Arabs side by side”, but no such peaceful coexistence was meaningfully pursued. Insofar as the Jewish and Palestinian populations in the West Bank are “side by side”, it is on the two unequal sides of apartheid.
Israeli settlers are subject to civil law; Palestinians are under military law. Settlers get highways built for them and enjoy total freedom of movement; Palestinians are restricted to slower roads blocked with military checkpoints and require Israeli-issued permits to travel. Israelis have political rights; Palestinians in the West Bank have none.
After 1979, Israel slowed down (but didn’t stop) the military requisitions of West Bank land and switched to the “state land” declaration strategy. Most declarations were made between 1979 and 1992, and are where most settlements near built-up Palestinian areas were established.
The carve-up was codified in the signing of the second Oslo accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1995. This defined three areas in the West Bank: Area C, under total Israeli control, was the only geographically contiguous and the largest area, making up 60 percent of the land; Area B is jointly administered by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), and was 22 percent of the area; Area A is the smallest—18 percent—and the only area ostensibly under Palestinian control through the PA.
It was a stitch-up heavily in favour of Israel, but it did not end there. Peace Now estimates that, from 1994 to 2006, the municipal areas of 92 settlements were expanded in defiance of Oslo. And settlers have continued establishing outposts.
During the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, construction began on the separation barrier, with a route designed to claim even more land for settlements and to make movement for Palestinians even more difficult. The barrier now spans almost the entire length of the West Bank. To build it, Israel routinely requisitioned land and demolished Palestinian homes.
In 2005, when Israel removed its settlements from the Gaza Strip, it also retreated from four of them in the north of the West Bank. In March 2023, Netanyahu’s government re-authorised those four settlements.
If these decades were death by a thousand cuts, then what Israel is doing now is hacking and slashing. While all eyes have been on Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank has accelerated. Israel’s aim is total control and ownership, from the river to the sea.

Danica Rachel

The new phase of colonisation in the West Bank

In the wake of the terrible massacre at Bondi, carried out by supporters of ISIS, Labor governments, the far right and sections of the media have launched a renewed assault on the Palestine solidarity movement. Rather than confronting the real sources of racist violence, they have cynically weaponised a tragedy to smear a mass movement that has, for over two years, mobilised hundreds of thousands against genocide in Gaza.
The accusations have reached fever pitch, with the Australian newspaper leading the charge. A particularly egregious example came last week from Megan Goldin, former Middle East correspondent and novelist. In an article titled “The march to the Bondi massacre began at the Sydney Town Hall”, Goldin directly linked pro-Palestine marches with the massacre. She maintained that the movement against Israel’s offensive in Gaza was somehow motivated by hate. 
In a fabulous exercise of minimising the obvious, Goldin merely mentioned the slaughter in Gaza. The 70,000 plus Palestinian’s murdered by Israel could not be a justification for the demonstrations, she argued. Rather, the only possible reason for the unprecedentedly large anti-war demonstrations is hatred, foreign influence and terrorist sympathies. The rest of the article rested on racist assertions and outright slander to back up such claims. That a speaker at one of the Australian rallies once “studied in Qatar”, the country where some Hamas leaders lived, was enough “evidence” for Goldin. 
The Palestine movement did not emerge from hatred. It emerged from opposition to slaughter and has been led by people who understand the long history of Israel’s violence toward the Palestinians. This history was why our movement was determined to move quickly. We understood from the very beginning that Israel would massacre thousands of Palestinians after Hamas’ 7 October attack. We were entirely justified in such a prediction. Indeed, many of us underestimated the lengths to which Israel was prepared to go. We didn’t anticipate the degree of depravity enacted upon the besieged population of Gaza. 
Since 7 October, the Israeli state has unleashed a campaign of mass killing that has left tens of thousands, at least, dead. Indeed, Israel’s leading English-language newspaper, Haaretz, argues the number of dead could be more like <a href="https://archive.is/o/QTmYi/https:/www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-26/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/100-000-dead-what-we-know-about-gazas-true-death-toll/00000197-ad6b-d6b3-abf7-edfbb1e20000">100,000</a>. Hospitals have been destroyed, entire neighbourhoods levelled and famine imposed as a weapon of war. It was this horror that motivated people to take to the streets demanding an end to the bombing, an end to the siege and justice for Palestinians.
To call this antisemitism is to drain the word of all meaning. Antisemitism is a real and deadly form of racism, with a long and horrific history. It culminated in the Holocaust and continues today in violent attacks on Jewish people and institutions. But opposing a state’s actions—even fiercely—is not racism. Opposing genocide is not hatred. Demanding freedom for Palestinians does not require hostility to Jews, and in practice it has generated the opposite.
From its earliest days, the Palestine movement has involved large numbers of Jewish people. Jewish anti-Zionists, socialists, students, Holocaust survivors and their <a href="https://archive.is/QTmYi#selection-3621.0-3633.201">descendants</a>
have marched, spoken, organised and been arrested alongside Palestinians and non-Palestinians alike. Indeed, many Jewish people have asserted that it is because of their knowledge of the history of the Holocaust that they feel compelled to take a stand. 
And many Jewish people and organisations have protested precisely because they reject the claim that Israel speaks in their name, or that Jewish safety can ever be secured through apartheid, ethnic cleansing and mass murder. 
This is one of the movement’s greatest strengths—and one of the reasons it is so threatening to those invested in Israel’s impunity. The presence of Jewish activists explodes the lie that criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. It shows that the real dividing line is not between Jews and non-Jews, but between those who defend oppression and those who resist it.
The reality is that the Palestine movement is a mass movement. It reflects Australian society as it actually exists—multicultural, multiracial and deeply connected to the world beyond our borders. 
Yet, again and again, the movement is judged not by what it does, but by what it refuses to do—namely, endorse Israel’s narrative that its violence is “self-defence”, that Palestinian resistance is uniquely illegitimate and that the lives of Palestinians are expendable. In a political culture in which unquestioning support for Western-aligned states is the norm, dissent is treated as extremism.
The thinly veiled panic about “migrants”, “foreigners” and “Middle Eastern influence” echoes some of the oldest racist tropes in Australian politics. The “war on terror” propaganda, a Western ruling-class campaign to drum up support for war in the Middle East, justified its own brutality through reference to the dangers of a terrorist fifth column in Western societies. It is no accident that Muslims and Arabs are singled out, portrayed as inherently dangerous, disloyal or prone to violence. Such narratives served, and continue to serve, our rulers. They turn our attention away from imperial violence. 
Crucially, the movement has consistently stood against all forms of racism, including antisemitism. When antisemitic incidents occur, they are condemned. When far-right forces attempt to exploit the crisis, they are opposed. This is not accidental. It flows from the movement’s politics: a commitment to universal liberation and opposition to all systems of oppression.
Those now attacking the Palestine movement are not interested in combating antisemitism or preventing violence. If they were, they would confront the rise of the far right, the mainstreaming of racist conspiracy theories, and the brutalisation produced by a society riven with inequality and alienation. Instead, they target a movement that has challenged imperialism, exposed Western hypocrisy and mobilised solidarity on a scale not seen in decades.
The attempt to link the Palestine movement to the Bondi massacre is obscene. It diverts attention from the real causes of racist violence and seeks to silence opposition to genocide through fear and intimidation. We should reject it outright.
Defending the Palestine movement is not just about defending one cause. It is about defending the right to protest, the right to dissent and the right to stand against mass murder without being smeared as racist or violent. In a world where atrocities are increasingly normalised, that defence could not be more urgent.

Vashti Fox

Defending the Palestine movement from slander

To receive updates on planned protests against Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who will arrive in Australia in the coming weeks at the invitation of the federal government, <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfA87D1WrHHFZAyYO1JU9Fms-zRpSF_EW7ZVEziirWYWH3_cg/viewform">join the rapid-response network</a>. 
--------------------
Isaac Herzog is about to arrive in Australia. As president of Israel for the duration of the genocide in Gaza, Herzog bears responsibility for the deaths of more than 71,000 Gazans, the forced displacement of more than 2 million people and a massive escalation in settler violence in the West Bank. 
In a just world, the moment Herzog stepped onto the tarmac, he would be detained and face prosecution for war crimes committed under his watch. Instead, he will be welcomed by our political leaders with open arms.
Throughout the genocide, Herzog has consistently justified Israel’s targeting of civilians. In October 2023, <a href="https://x.com/OmarSShakir/status/1713379904392204493?lang=en">he declared</a>: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible [for the 7 October attack on Israel]. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true ... And we will fight until we break their backbone”. Two months later, he was photographed <a href="https://x.com/declassifiedUK/status/1963911689264312648">signing bombs</a> set to be dropped on Gaza. 
Herzog’s claim that “there are no uninvolved in Gaza” was a slogan taken up by Israeli soldiers. It was a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C0iu9ZJoouQ/">rallying cry</a> and a justification for targeted executions of aid workers, journalists and children. 
Statements made by Herzog were included as evidence in the suit filed by South Africa with the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide. In September last year, a <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds">UN commission of inquiry</a> found Herzog, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, guilty of inciting genocide. 
Bigotry has been a feature of Herzog’s political career. In 2016, <a href="https://www.972mag.com/no-herzog-arab-lovers-is-the-last-thing-you-can-say-about-labor/">he reportedly told a meeting of activists</a> that he didn’t want his party to be seen as a bunch of “Arab lovers”, and his election campaign of that year accused Netanyahu of not being harsh enough towards Palestinians. He boasted about being a veteran of the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/unit-8200">Unit 8200</a> “Israeli Big Brother” spy agency known for its mass surveillance and blackmail of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. 
In 2018, Herzog parroted the line of the most unhinged Jewish extremists when he <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2018/06/israeli-intermarriage-solution/">said on national television</a> that Jewish people in the US being “married or coupled with non-Jewish partners” was “an actual plague” requiring “a campaign, a solution” to combat. 
Nothing can justify the Albanese government extending an invitation for Herzog to visit Australia. The Israeli president is coming to cynically exploit the tragedy at Bondi to rehabilitate public support for the apartheid, ethno-supremacist regime in Israel. 
But the past two years of ongoing genocide against the Palestinians cannot be swept under the rug so easily. A coalition, including a number of Jewish activist organisations, is planning nationwide protests for Herzog’s arrival. 
Join us to send a message loud and clear that war criminals are not welcome here.
Shovan Bhattarai is the Sydney convener of Students for Palestine.

Shovan Bhattarai

Protest against war criminal Israeli President Isaac Herzog

Sussan Ley’s Liberals will back Labor’s proposed changes to hate speech laws, which would introduce a new offence for “aggravated hate speech”, targeting religious “hate preachers” who incite violence, and another offence for “serious vilification” on the basis of race. But only as long as they focus exclusively on her areas of interest. 
“I want to be very clear, tackling hate speech is not a licence to go after free speech”, Ley told a press conference in Sydney. “There are clear issues that this legislation needs to address. It needs to be targeted to the threats that we face, and those threats are radical Islamic extremism and antisemitism.” 
It’s a great relief to hear from Ley, Australia’s most credible oppression umpire, that Islamophobia, homophobia and anti-Indigenous racism are all sorted. Only one form of bigotry remains to be knocked out. 
This fits with a well-worn pattern of selective outrage on the political right. For the last two years, the proudest racists in the country have worked double shifts, promoting hostility toward Muslims and migrants in the morning, and then mouthing concern about rising antisemitism in the evening.
Former Liberal Attorney-General George Brandis provides one of the crudest examples. He once famously defended attempts to water down the racial discrimination act by praising the “right to be a bigot”—but is now one of most vocal advocates of tougher penalties for antisemitism. 
Why is antisemitism the one form of bigotry that the political right vocally opposes? The answer is simple: When they say “antisemitism”, they don't really mean antisemitism. They mean any expression of pro-Palestine sentiment or opposition to Israel’s war. When it comes to the real antisemitism, which is overwhelmingly found on the racist right, they turn a blind eye. 
Look for yourself: try to find a statement from George Brandis condemning the National Socialist Network’s vile antisemitic rally outside NSW parliament last November. Try to find a Liberal who says we should cut ties with the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/05/14/nx-s1-5387299/trump-white-house-antisemitism">Nazi-infested</a> Trump administration. They couldn’t care less 
This episode also exposes the free speech hypocrisy of the right. Just a few years ago, the Liberals were posing as free speech warriors, facilitating a review into a “crisis” of free speech on university campuses and threatening to penalise universities that censored students and staff. Now they advocate withdrawing funding from universities that fail to censor criticisms of Israel. 
From banning marches to banning specific slogans, there’s been no area of political expression they won’t trample on when it comes to Palestine. But Sussan Ley still shamelessly cites “free speech” as a reason not to include protections for LGBT people. Who at this point takes the free speech rhetoric of the right seriously, when it so clearly only pertains to their pet concerns? 
The debate also shows the limits of hate speech laws as a means to challenge bigotry. As the Albanese government announced its plans to rework hate speech laws in December, the ABC reported that just four people had been charged under the new laws across the year. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says this shows the need to tighten the legal framework, because they’ve been unable to stop hateful speech that sits “just below the threshold” of prosecution. 
But the lack of charges just reveals how ineffectual these legal frameworks are for challenging the real roots of bigotry. In our legal system, biased toward the capitalist class and the right, hate speech laws are never used to challenge the bigotry of the elite. 
And there’s been no shortage of elite bigotry to confront. Last year, the Murdoch press, sections of the Liberal Party and well-funded conservative groups like Advance Australia promoted marches of thousands across the country that called for mass deportations and hosted Nazis on their speaking platforms. 
In the aftermath of the Bondi shooting, Bob Katter, a sitting MP, claimed that migrants in Australia live in “radical ethnic enclaves” and warned that white people are “eradicating themselves from the gene pool”—an invocation of the fascist “great replacement” theory. 
No capitalist legal framework for criminalising “hate speech” is ever going to challenge any of this, because promoting racism, scapegoating and social division are core elements of capitalist politics. 
The qualified support the Liberals have given to Labor’s proposed law just shows the cynicism at the heart of the current debate about tackling antisemitism. It’s not an anti-racist campaign. It’s an operation by the political right to attack their enemies and silence legitimate criticism of Australia’s support for Israel.

Luca Tavan

Liberals’ hate speech hypocrisy after Bondi

The Greens this week welcomed the government’s announcement of a royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion. After a month-long vitriolic campaign against the Palestine movement, the Labor government and the right to protest, the Greens have followed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in capitulating to the ruling-class demand for a federal inquiry. 
Reading the media release of acting leader Sarah Hanson-Young makes you wonder what planet Greens leaders are living on: “A balanced, careful and powerful royal commission is a chance to learn hard lessons while minimising divisive politics in crafting a national response to the anti-Semitic Bondi mass shooting”.
The idea that this royal commission could be “balanced” is pure fantasy. Those pushing for it have little interest in learning “hard lessons” about the Bondi attack. They made their minds up on day one, evidence be damned, that blame for the shooting should be pinned on the Palestine solidarity movement. Those who call the legitimacy of this argument into question will never be given a fair hearing—as evidenced by the fate of Age cartoonist Cathy Wilcox, who has faced a barrage of attacks for a cartoon that correctly criticised the royal commission call as an “astroturf” campaign driven by the pro-Israel establishment. 
Hanson-Young’s media release continued: “The strongest national response will be based on bringing together multicultural Australia to reinforce our values of tolerance, democracy and respect”.
But democracy is precisely what is threatened by the royal commission. Already, the Bondi attack has been cynically weaponised as a pretext to ban protests in NSW. The Albanese government has agreed to implement one of antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal’s most Trumpian and authoritarian proposals: to threaten funding to universities that don’t clamp down on Palestine solidarity activism. The drivers of the royal commission—the Liberal Party, Jillian Segal, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Murdoch press—want to use it to extend and deepen this authoritarian and anti-democratic push. 
The Greens urged the commission to tackle “all forms of racism ... as part of the Commission’s social cohesion mandate”. But the terms of reference for the royal commission make clear that it will be focused solely on antisemitism, which is code in the twisted lexicon of the pro-genocide establishment for criticism of Israel’s genocidal war. 
Beyond this, the invocation of “social cohesion” has only ever been about silencing some voices to the advantages of others. Opponents of Israel’s war have been told to stop marching, self-censor and shut up in the name of national unity, while vocal promoters of Israel’s genocide are never accused of disrupting “social cohesion”. 
The suffering of the families and friends of Palestinians and Lebanese murdered by Israel simply don’t count in this calculation of “cohesion”. They are told that their outrage and grief is racist and hurtful to members and supporters of the oppressor nation carrying out genocide. 
The left has a responsibility to call out the cynicism and hypocrisy of this campaign and rally our side to defend the Palestine solidarity movement and basic civil liberties such as freedom of speech. Instead, the Greens are giving the royal commission a progressive paintjob, attempting to spin it as a process that could be fair and balanced. 
This isn’t just the product of political confusion—it’s reflective of the Greens’ desire to go with the flow. The Greens are a party of small l-liberals. Their strategy for achieving a more just world is to act as a right-on but “respectable” and “reasonable” wing of capitalist politics. 
This is why the Greens have a long-established practice of mouthing criticisms of government policy and then lining up behind it. They rightly argued that Labor’s 2023 and 2025 environment bills would worsen climate catastrophe by entrenching fossil fuel use, but then voted for both bills. While positioning themselves as the “party of renters” under Adam Bandt’s leadership, they passed Labor’s bogus housing bill, which has done nothing to address the rental crisis. 
These actions are all about proving to the ruling class that the Greens, for all their progressive policies, can be constructive players in the Canberra game rather than disrupters of the system. 
Greens members and MPs who buck this trend of collaboration and compromise have been marginalised and excluded by the party hierarchy. When left-wing Greens in NSW’s Marrickville council created a political firestorm by adopting a BDS policy in 2010, Greens leader Bob Brown intervened aggressively to have the policy overturned.
Sarah Hanson-Young herself has been instrumental in pulling left-wing Greens into line, joining a campaign to drive out Senator Lee Rhiannon when she got in the way of the Greens striking a crap deal with the Liberal government over education funding. 
Over the past two years, the Greens have shifted to the left on Palestine, mirroring the massive shift in the sentiment of young people. They’ve gone from condemning violence on “both sides” during Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza to now labelling Israel’s actions as genocide and calling for sanctions. Since 7 October 2023, they’ve supported and spoken at anti-war demonstrations. This has been a welcome development. 
But adopting a good policy platform and sending an MP to the odd rally isn’t enough if you are just going to fold under ruling-class pressure. The Greens’ capitulation in the face of a dishonest and cynical campaign to slander the Palestine movement shows the difference between socialists and small-l liberals. 
Socialists don’t just take radical positions when it’s popular or easy. The Greens have folded at precisely the time when it matters most. It’s our job to continue to hold the line—and our principles—against the right-wing onslaught.

Greens capitulate to right-wing campaign against the Palestine movement

So it’s official. The Albanese government has appointed former High Court justice Virginia Bell to head a royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion. It will begin its hearings soon, with a deadline for reporting to the government in mid-December. 
This is a win for the ruling class, which has mounted a weeks-long offensive to use the Bondi massacre to attack the Albanese government, the Palestine movement and civil rights more generally. The royal commission will give them the means to do this.
There can be no overstating the sheer cynicism of this campaign by the ruling class, spearheaded by the Liberal Party, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Zionist Federation and the Murdoch press, but which has drawn in a broad spectrum of establishment bodies, ranging from big business lobby groups, former heads of security agencies, judges and barristers to the ABC and Nine newspapers and university vice chancellors. 
Those campaigning for a royal commission have been united in their determination to link the Bondi killings to a supposed “national crisis of antisemitism”, the blame for which, they argue, lies with the Palestine solidarity movement and the Albanese government’s supposed support for this movement. Everything that might point away from those goals has been pushed to one side.
The leaders of this campaign aren’t really interested in understanding the massacre. They simply brushed aside the fact that the killers had no known identification with the Palestine solidarity campaign. They have dismissed as irrelevant national gun laws to limit ownership of the kind of high-powered guns used in the attack.
No, the popular revulsion at the Bondi killings had to be the springboard for a malicious and much broader agenda—one of crushing the Palestine movement and legitimising a more repressive political and legal environment in the name of tackling “antisemitism” and “religious and ideologically motivated extremism” and protecting “social cohesion”.
We know that by “antisemitism” they mean the unprecedented Palestine solidarity campaign that has brought millions onto the streets since 7 October 2023. By “ideologically motivated extremism”, they mean chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” or “Long live the intifada!” By threatening “social cohesion”, they mean Palestine supporters wearing keffiyehs or watermelon earrings.
It’s not like they’ve tried to hide their agenda. The Liberals demanded before Christmas that a royal commission examine “the threat posed by far-left wing and neo-Nazi extremists”, where by “far left” they mean anyone who has marched for Palestine. They wanted a thorough purge of the universities and the arts and cultural institutions. And in response to the Albanese government tabling hate speech legislation, the Liberals will only back this if it’s restricted to hate speech against Jews or Christians. If it identifies Muslims, LGBTI, disabled people or racial minorities as targets of hate speech, well, “freedom of speech” must prevail.
If the architects of this campaign were really so worried about neo-Nazism, they might have tried to do something about it. Instead, Ley has refused to speak out against the rise of One Nation, the far-right anti-immigration marches or the recent Nazi demonstration outside NSW state parliament. If Israel’s supporters in Australia are so opposed to fascism, perhaps one of their leading figures, Alex Ryvchin, shouldn’t have excused Elon Musk’s fascist salute at one of Donald Trump’s inauguration events as an “appreciative gesture”. If they cared about calming community anxieties, why have they cheered on Israel’s barbaric war in Gaza?
Their motivations were clear when they tried to block the appointment of Virginia Bell on the grounds that the NSW Supreme Court had used one of her High Court judgements to overturn the Minns government’s ban on the pro-Palestine march across the Sydney Harbour bridge last year. 
The right will now use the royal commission hearings to attack the Albanese government and demand a crackdown on the Palestine movement. 
The commission is a gift to the Liberals as it will give them a point of unity after nearly a year of internal dissension. Whether supposedly “moderate” or right wing, they all agree in hounding the Palestine campaign and trying to push society in a more authoritarian direction. 
The widening of powers of the security agencies that will result from the royal commission will allow the police and security forces greater leeway to attack the freedoms of the Palestine campaign to organise. Its terms of reference, specifically “strengthening social cohesion”, will legitimise the Minns government’s legislation that allows the police to ban street marches for up to three months, and the Allen government in Victoria which has threatened to do the same.
The racists will be encouraged by the focus on immigration and surveillance of supposed hotbeds of extremism in western Sydney.
The government’s announcement that it will implement all the recommendations of Jillian Segal’s report on antisemitism will stiffen the resolve of university vice chancellors to crack down on Palestine solidarity campaigns on campus.
The focus on strengthening “social cohesion” will give governing bodies of cultural and artistic bodies, like the Adelaide Festival board, even more excuses to cancel Palestinian writers like Randa Abdel-Fattah.
The Albanese government has capitulated to this ruling class offensive, which should come as no surprise. The government has defended Israel’s “right to defend itself” as it slaughters 70,000 Palestinians, turns Gaza into a hellscape and steals more and more land on the West Bank. How could we ever rest our hopes in such people?
The Greens have been no better, with acting leader Senator Hanson-Young welcoming the decision to call a “balanced, careful and powerful” royal commission that might “bring together multicultural Australia” and “tackle antisemitism and all forms of racism”. Can they not read? It’s a royal commission into antisemitism, where “antisemitism” means the existence of the Palestine solidarity movement. 
But we won’t give in to this ruling class offensive. We will continue to march for Palestine and campaign against Israeli atrocities until Palestine is free.

Tom Bramble

Royal Commission a win for the ruling class offensive against the Palestine movement

In the aftermath of the Bondi massacre, nothing says “social cohesion” quite as emphatically as sacking an invited Palestinian-Australian guest from the country’s premier writers’ festival. At a time when the prime minister and political leaders are appealing for unity and calm, they are turning a blind eye to blatant and obvious anti-Arab racism.
This is the only conclusion we can draw from the decision of the board of the Adelaide Festival to “dis-invite” writer and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah from the writers’ festival on the grounds that she has previously made comments that might make people uncomfortable. It is worth letting the festival board speak for itself:
“We have today advised scheduled writer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah that the Board has formed the judgment that we do not wish to proceed with her scheduled appearance at next month’s Writers’ Week.
“Whilst we do not suggest in any way that Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s or her writings have any connection with the tragedy at Bondi, given her past statements we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
This is a shameful position for the board of a leading cultural festival to take; to argue that removing a Palestinian speaker promotes “community cohesion”.
It’s not clear what the festival organisers were hoping to achieve, but it is clear that board members were pressured into taking this decision. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has made clear his opposition to the Palestine movement and support for Israel. While he is legislatively prevented from directly intervening in festival matters, he has made his distaste for Randa well known through extensive media appearances and statements.
In the wake of the Bondi tragedy and the announcement of a royal commission into antisemitism, we can expect the right and pro-Israel politicians to push for more pro-Palestinian voices to be silenced. It is clear that this is what politicians like Josh Frydenberg and the Murdoch media have been pushing for in their relentless campaign for the royal commission.
It is also clear, <a href="https://overland.org.au/2026/01/universities-and-the-arts-after-bondi-from-definitions-to-ambient-antisemitism/">as David Brophy writes at Overland</a>, that the push to censor pro-Palestine voices will be extended across the arts sector and higher education this year. Brophy notes the chilling new phrase “ambient antisemitism” that animates the sinister push to clampdown on cultural and academic activism. Apparently, according to its authors, “ambient antisemitism” is whatever makes a pro-Israeli Jewish person uncomfortable. This is exactly the sentiment behind the Adelaide Festival decision to sack Randa.
In this climate, it would be easy for people to duck and cover. But this is not what has happened. On 8 January, within hours of the board publicising its ban on Randa Abdel-Fattah, <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/statement-from-the-australia-institute/">the Australia Institute</a>—a left-liberal think-tank—announced it was withdrawing its sponsorship and participation. By late that day, over 35 participants also withdrew their participation. Within 48 hours, it had grown to more than 50, including several prominent international guests.
Among them are well-known feminist Jane Caro, Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, English author Zadie Smith, journalist and academic Peter Greste, Indigenous writers Amy McQuire and Evelyn Araluen, journalist Amy Remeikis and many others. Significantly, high-profile Russian writer and Putin critic Masha Gessen also withdrew.
Gessen was previously cancelled for comparing <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust">Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Nazi holocaust</a>. In December 2023, in another ironic action, <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/uk/german-foundation-withdraws-from-awarding-jewish-journalist-hannah-arendt-prize-over-new-yorker-essay/">the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought was snatched back from Gessen</a> for criticising Germany’s support for Israel and the suppression of the Palestine movement at home.
It is fantastic that so many writers and artists have joined a protest in solidarity with Randa. It shows we can fight back against the heavy repression and intimidation that pro-Israel forces are trying to impose on us. 
Writers’ week staff have also voiced their opposition to the board’s decision in an email to the guests who have withdrawn. The festival workers are members of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, and the union issued a statement condemning the censorship of Randa. But the MEAA could take this further by calling union members working at the festival to take industrial action.
However, while it is worth celebrating that the Adelaide Festival’s attempted censorship of Palestinian voices has blown up in its face, it is not enough. It is vital that we continue our public protests, our union organising and all other forms of solidarity with Palestine. We can take heart from Randa’s own strong statement in the face of censorship:
“This is a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship and a despicable attempt to associate me with the Bondi massacre ... Australian arts and cultural institutions continue to reveal their utter contempt and inhumanity towards Palestinians ... I remain confident that the writing community and the broader public will ultimately respond with principle and integrity.”
We must repay Randa’s confidence with our actions, just as we must recognise that the right will be pushing hard to silence us so that Israel can continue its genocide in the shadows. It is time for all of us to step up. Let’s take the great example of the writers who are standing in solidarity with Randa and build a movement that won’t go away at the first signs of intimidation.
There’s never been a better time to “globalise the Intifada”.
Marty Hirst is the author of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Theres-no-good-news-Journalism-crisis-and-philosophy-of-praxis/Hirst/p/book/9781032758817">There’s no good news: journalism, crisis and philosophy of praxis</a> (Routledge, 2025).

Marty Hirst

Adelaide Festival reaction shows we can push back the anti-Palestine repression

For more than two years, in a population less than half that of of Sydney, the equivalent of 45 Bondi massacres have been carried out, on average, every week. More than 71,000 murdered and more than 9,000 missing, presumed dead and buried under rubble. The scale of the crimes committed by Israel in Gaza is incontrovertible.
<a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds">The United Nations</a> charges Israel with genocide.
<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/8668/2024/en/">Amnesty International</a> charges Israel with genocide.
<a href="https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide">Israeli human rights group B’Tselem</a> charges Israel with genocide.
<a href="https://www.phr.org.il/en/genocide-in-gaza-eng/">Physicians for Human Rights</a>, another Israeli organisation, charges Israel with genocide.
<a href="https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IAGS-Resolution-on-Gaza-FINAL.pdf">The International Association of Genocide Scholars</a> charges Israel with genocide.
<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/19/israels-crime-extermination-acts-genocide-gaza">Human Rights Watch</a> charges Israel with the crime of extermination and acts of genocide.
The International Criminal Court charges Israeli PM <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu">Benjamin Netanyahu</a> and former Defence Minister <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/gallant">Yoav Gallant</a> with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And yet, within our midst in Australia are racist scum who support, justify or provide aid to the terrorist murderers carrying out atrocity after atrocity in Palestine. Instead of a royal commission into who exactly is complicit in these crimes, who exactly is giving succour to terrorism, who exactly is preaching genocide, the federal government has extended an invitation to Israel’s president to visit and is carrying out a royal commission into the opponents of genocide.
We are governed by sickos. 
Randa Abdel-Fattah, whose people have been starved and exterminated, has been <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/news/2025/adelaide-festival-board-statement">cancelled by the Adelaide Festival board</a> because “it would not be culturally sensitive” for her to appear at its upcoming writers’ week. Imagine Gary Foley being cancelled because some racist whites wouldn’t like what he has to say about what this country has done to Aboriginal people. It is unimaginable. But not for a Palestinian in Australia today.
Embedded in every institution of Australian capitalism, even the ones of purported “high culture”, are racist filth for whom Palestinian lives don’t count for shit. Those who aren’t racist scum are cowards who won’t speak up. These middle-class liberal toads are worse than the Andrew Bolts of this world. 
They say all the right things around their dinner tables with all their “sophisticated” friends and their fair-trade coffee beans that give a few extra cents on the dollar to poor Ethiopian farmers. They tut-tut about Donald Trump’s vulgarity and about the bad things that happened in the past—all of them on the right side of history on political questions that were long ago settled. 
They’re anti-racist only when it’s safe; only when anti-racism is officially sanctioned; only when its sponsored by official society and a bunch of NGOs.
You can bet they turn up to Invasion Day marches—now that that’s a popular thing to do, not when it was only handfuls of outcasts—and applaud and sob and nod along. You can bet that they talk admiringly of Nelson Mandela and love how Desmond Tutu was so cheerful, so forgiving. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UTHTszgg1Q">Tutu said more than a decade ago</a> that the situation in Palestine was “in many instances worse” than what he experienced in South Africa. Well, it is now infinitely worse. 
But when it counts, when push comes to shove, Australia’s cultural, political and business elites are siding with Israeli apartheid, with the genocidal ethnostate. 
Polite society? What a scam. A casually racist, cowardly scam. White Australia never really died. It just became more sophisticated. It became social cohesion. It became culturally sensitive. It became a royal commission. It became the Adelaide Festival board.

Ben Hillier

Forty-five Bondis a week in Gaza. Where’s the royal commission to root out Australia’s genocide supporters?

The royal commission is a central element in a reactionary campaign by the core sections of the Australian ruling class to cynically take advantage of the Bondi terrorist attack to push society sharply to the right. It needs to be stridently opposed.
This orchestrated McCarthyite assault on the Palestine movement, on the left, on workers, on basic democratic rights and anything seen as vaguely progressive with week after week of wall-to-wall media coverage is the most concerted right-wing campaign in Australia for decades. 
It is a systematic and extremely well organised attempt by the capitalist class to push the major institutions of society—the state apparatus, political parties, the trade unions, the courts, the universities, cultural institutions and so on—further to the right and to greatly strengthen the powers of the police and the security apparatus. They have blamed the murderous actions of two ISIS inspired gunmen on the hundreds of thousands of decent people who took to the streets to oppose genocide.
They want to use manufactured charges of antisemitism against opponents of the genocide in Gaza to severely curtail free speech and the right to protest and to create a harsher more authoritarian climate in society. This sets a very dangerous precedent for the future for campaigns by workers to defend their living standards, to oppose the threat of war between the US and China, to stand up for Aboriginal rights or any progressive cause.
This is not simply a campaign by Zionist forces, far-right figures like Pauline Hanson and the reactionary Murdoch press. The whole of the ruling class has joined forces in a concerted fashion—CEOs and the big business organisations, all of the mainstream media, military figures and the Liberal Party.
They choreographed demands from judges and lawyers to churches to Olympians and other supporting stars and cultural figures to ex-Labor MPs, plus the Teals and an array of small l liberals and do-gooders like David Pocock, with the likes of Lidia Thorpe trailing in their wake.
The Minns Labor government in NSW, a longstanding bitter opponent of the Palestine movement, also played an appalling role by rushing through draconian anti-protest laws, strengthening police powers and announcing its own scapegoating state based royal commission.
The trade union leadership, which has for decades refused to stand up for workers’ living standards and basic rights, played a notably despicable role. They consistently refused to mobilise workers to support the mass movement against genocide.
Then, in the wake of Bondi, the supposedly left-wing Victorian Trade Hall Council Secretary Luke Hilakiri denounced pro-Palestine protesters and rank-and-file workers active in Trade Unionists for Palestine. He declared that “they just need to back off” because they had supposedly “made all the points they need to make about Gaza”.
The Albanese government has strongly backed and armed Israel throughout its war on Gaza and denounced pro-Palestine protests as antisemitic. Then, in the wake of the Bondi attack, Albanese invited Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who a UN Commission has charged with “inciting genocide”, to tour Australia.
Albanese also promised to fully implement the outrageous anti-democratic demands of Jillian Segal, the far-right special envoy on antisemitism. Segal called for defunding broadcasters, universities and other public institutions that don’t ban criticism of Israel; Zionist oversight of the entire media; and compulsory pro-Israel “education” in schools.
However, all of this was nowhere near enough for the mainstream media and the rich and powerful who run this country. They demanded the government launch a full throttle McCarthyite witch hunt.
So when Albanese initially drew the line at calling a federal royal commission into antisemitism they unleashed an all out barrage of attacks to force the Labor government to fall into line and implement the ruling class’s full agenda. The capitalist class clearly is out to discipline Labor and humiliate Albanese to show who the real power in this country is. 
Albanese has officially caved to the ruling class’s demands. This simply further confirms that we can’t rely on Labor governments to protect, let alone advance, the interests of workers and the oppressed.
However, Albanese agreeing to a royal commission will not in any way bring this concerted right-wing campaign to an end. The capitalist establishment is determined that the royal commission will not limit itself to the motivations and actions of the two ISIS inspired terrorists. Behind the spurious rhetoric of combatting “antisemitism” the royal commission will be turned into a ferocious assault on the left and on democratic rights.
They want to curtail pro-Palestinian voices, have the dangerously broad definition of antisemitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance recommended by the royal commission, and severely undermine the right to protest.
We need to stand our ground and resolutely oppose this ruling class offensive.

Mick Armstrong

Why we must oppose the royal commission

The Melbourne Palestine movement is taking the streets this Sunday, 12pm at the State Library, to protest the federal government’s decision to invite the Israeli president to visit Australia, to demand an end to the Gaza genocide and occupation of the West Bank, and to defend our right to protest.
The Gaza genocide continues. Israel has violated the so-called ceasefire nearly 1,000 times in less than three months. At least 418 Palestinians have been slaughtered. All those people, with hopes and dreams that will never be fulfilled. 
<a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/gaza-strip-ipc-reports-19dec25/">According to the United Nations</a>, 1.6 million people in Gaza, including 800,000 children, are suffering acute food insecurity. That is more than three-quarters of the entire population. Gaza is buried under at least 50 million tonnes of rubble, making it impossible for the Palestinians to rebuild their lives. Meanwhile, Israel continues to tighten its suffocating blockade, banning essential construction materials, energy resources and humanitarian aid. 
The Gaza genocide has also given cover for Israel to rapidly advance its colonisation of the West Bank. Early last year, the military launched a full-scale assault in the north,<a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/largest-forced-displacement-west-bank-1967-oxfam"> </a><a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/largest-forced-displacement-west-bank-1967-oxfam">displacing 40,000 Palestinians</a>—the largest ethnic cleansing since 1967. Recently, in<a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israeli-military-raids-west-bank-force-entire-communities-lockdown-keeping-children-out-school"> </a><a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israeli-military-raids-west-bank-force-entire-communities-lockdown-keeping-children-out-school">Tulkarm</a>, hundreds of Palestinian families were again expelled from their land as the Israeli military bulldozed scores of homes. 
Amid these atrocities, the Australian political establishment is weaponising the Bondi massacre to crush Palestine solidarity. How dare they. 
Liberal leader Sussan Ley slandered our movement, linking it to the massacre, <a href="https://nswliberal.org.au/melissa-mcintosh/news/remarks-made-at-the-bondi-pavilion">arguing</a>: “First they came for the Opera House, then they came to the Harbour Bridge, now they’ve come for Bondi”. Her lies were echoed by a chorus of politicians, journalists and the business elites. 
These people have been crusading against the Palestine movement for the past two years. People like veteran racist Pauline Hanson, who has repeatedly called for Palestinian refugees to be deported back to Gaza. The ghouls from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry who slammed our rallies for disrupting business as usual. The media outlets, from the Age
to the ABC to the Herald Sun, that lined up to defend Israel’s crimes against humanity. 
They are using the post-Bondi moment to claw back lost ground. Mass opinion has shifted in favour of the Palestinians and against Israel, which put the Australian political establishment on the back foot. Now, they are on a massive offensive. Chris Minns, the New South Wales Labor premier, has banned protests and criminalised pro-Palestine phrases like “globalise the intifada”. Just last week, a woman was arrested for wearing a shirt with the slogan, which refers to supporting the Palestinians rising up against their oppression.
Our movement has rightly put the political establishment on notice for their complicity in genocide. The Labor government has helped arm Israel, supplying the barrel cannons for their F-35 fighter jets. A death-machine designed to fire over 3,000 bullets per minute. How dare they accuse us of stoking violence when they are up to their necks in this genocide. 
Anthony Albanese has personally invited Israeli President Issac Herzog to address the federal parliament. This man has blood on his hands for the Gaza Holocaust, justifying the slaughter of Palestinian civilians, arguing: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible” (for the 7 October 2023 attack). 
In a just world, Herzog, along with the entire political establishment here and around the world, would be tried for war crimes. But in this capitalist hellscape where profit and power rules, human life is expendable. 
Supporters of Palestine must redouble our efforts to build the solidarity movement and stand up to the ruling class offensive. The road to a free Palestine is a long one, but the past two years have given us a glimpse of hope—from the global Freedom Flotilla to the general strike in Italy.
We have faced down attacks on our movement because we know that we stand on the right side of history. This moment is another test; we must rise to the occasion.

The new phase of colonisation in the West Bank

Defending the Palestine movement from slander

Protest against war criminal Israeli President Isaac Herzog

Liberals’ hate speech hypocrisy after Bondi

Greens capitulate to right-wing campaign against the Palestine movement

Royal Commission a win for the ruling class offensive against the Palestine movement

Adelaide Festival reaction shows we can push back the anti-Palestine repression

Forty-five Bondis a week in Gaza. Where’s the royal commission to root out Australia’s genocide supporters?

Why we must oppose the royal commission

Why you should march for Palestine this Sunday

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