The Australian Friends of Palestine Association’s pro-Palestinian protesters are now counting down to 100 consecutive weeks of peaceful protests in the heart of Adelaide, South Australia next month. To some people 100 weeks seems like a long time but if we put it in context with the seemingly inexorable march of Zionism it is insignificant. For at least 5980 weeks Zionists have plotted, planned and executed the theft of Palestinian land and lives to create a Zionist state. They have achieved this by being totally focused on their goals and by being impervious to distractions.
Distractions like United Nations Resolutions would stop most entities in their tracks. However, the state of Israel has shown complete disregard for the 224 UN Resolutions against their treatment of the Palestinians and the country of Palestine. These have been shamelessly swatted away like so many annoying insects. Nothing has stood in the way of the Israeli government continuing to grab Palestinian land.
[Mondo covered the Adelaide protests at 44 weeks, and no press, back here.]
The Zionist attacks on our protests in Adelaide have been mild in comparison to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians but, like Zionism, they have been persistent and increasingly ugly. We have witnessed at close hand the strength of the Christian Zionist movement in Australia. However the Christian Zionist distractions are an obvious but unsuccessful ploy to take our attention away from Palestine. Yelling at us “F— Palestine, what about the homeless?, Aboriginals?, Syrians ?” or whatever red herring is the flavor of the month will not deter us.
In fact, in the last 6 months or so, we have attracted new protesters including a small group of buskers who sing in the Mall at the same time as our protests. Helen and Phil usually perform songs about Palestine by noted political troubadours, David Rovics and Phil Monsour. They have attracted even more attention to the plight of the Palestinians and helped us educate Australians about the truth of Israel’s human rights abuses in Palestine. Above is one moving example of their work, David Rovic’s “Palestine”.
I believe that long range Zionist planning has been shown to be flawed as they did not anticipate the Palestinian call for a worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. They had no idea that this growing grass roots movement would have the same sense of purpose and commitment as Zionist ideologues have shown in the past towards colonizing Palestine. Here in Australia we are starting to see evidence that our BDS campaigns are effective. The 2012 BBC World Service’s survey clearly shows that Australians have changed their attitude to Israel. 65% of Australians now believe that Israel has a negative impact on the world. This is an increase of 7% on the previous year’s result.
The BDS movement may be misrepresented and ridiculed by the mainstream press but the truth of the matter is that BDS actions all over the world are growing and the movement will not be diverted from its goal of a just peace for the Palestinians.
Congratulations and well done to Adelaide BDS’ers, in going out every single week you’ve been more steadfast that us in Melbourne and I think Sydney also. We need to pull our socks up!
Congratulations from across the Tasman. You are doing way better that we are!
Thanks for your encouraging comments. I’ll pass them on to the protesters at the next protest.
Fantastic thing you are doing there. Good on you.
Good for you….keep it up.