From the first days in their Jewish day schools and youth organisations, young Jews are drilled with the lie that Palestine was ‘a land without people for a people without a land’. From its inception, the Zionist movement has sought to suppress Palestinian history and narratives. Whenever there are exhibitions or events or publications featuring Continue reading »
politics
Private school fee rises are as intrinsic to an Australian summer as the screech of cicadas. And instead of relaxing in the holiday heat, I find myself plagued with questions about whether or how to respond to the former. Do these fee rises even matter? Should I be pleased to see that prohibitive fees in Continue reading »
In my first piece for Pearls and Irritations, I cautioned about Australia’s involvement in Ukraine and alluded to the strikingly similar circumstances of the conflict to the war in Vietnam. One can recollect that the verb “escalate” entered our lexicon via the spirited speechmaking of Lyndon Johnson, from the US noun for “a moving stairway.” Continue reading »
Australian citizens are at risk of being prosecuted under Australian law if they commit, or are complicit in crimes being perpetrated by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza. Since the commencement of the Gaza war, when the Israeli government issued an order to 360,000 military reservists to engage in the onslaught of Gaza, multiple dual Continue reading »
Australia’s reluctance from afar to recognise Israel’s genocide in Gaza is being challenged by the genocide case against Israel in the World Court. Australia has finally made clear its official position on the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Continue reading »
Australia’s assistance in striking targets in Yemen, obediently abiding by the direction of the United States and United Kingdom, had a certain curious resonance to another event that involved foreign shipping, the wounded pride of imperial powers, and meddling Arabs. From November 2023, the Houthis initiated a number of measures against Israeli shipping and vessels Continue reading »
We should be concerned about conditions for prisoners. Why? The obvious answer is that if the recidivism rate is high then the system is not working. A young unkempt man presented to the community centre at which I worked as a volunteer Chaplain. Struggling to make conversation, wanting to be left alone yet attending because Continue reading »
The founding secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, Mike Pezzullo, was dismissed late last year for egregiously breaching the public service code of conduct. The man who lectured public servants they should live by that code, broke it in a manner no previous secretary in living memory had done. While that should have provided an Continue reading »
Gaza is surely now among the internet’s most recognisable words, for obvious reasons. It used to be far less familiar to Australians. Up to about 1948, if they knew it at all it was as the place where the Biblical blinded Samson pulled down the temple, or where the Light Horse fought in 1917 to Continue reading »
The January release of the Cabinet papers for 2003 reminds us of the failure of the second attempt to introduce an economy wide carbon price in Australia through an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). It marks the ascendancy of the energy and resource sectors in influencing the Coalitions climate change policies. This decision to reject emission Continue reading »