EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a collection of articles that appeared in Direct Action #14 (June 2024) analysing the Palestine solidarity movement in Australia and its future prospects.
Protesters marching for Rafah resist arrest attempt by Queensland Police
Sylvia Ruhl reports on Brisbane protesters resisting Queensland Police.
A snap rally was called in Brisbane by Justice for Palestine Magan-djin, for the 10th of May (two days prior in response to Israel’s order to evacuate eastern parts of Rafah). It came before the IDF’s (Israel Defence Force’s) assault on the last remaining “designated safe zone” in the Gaza Strip[1]. Despite the short notice, a diverse crowd of roughly three hundred energetic comrades assembled in King George Square on a Friday night. A notable proportion of the attendees visited the march directly from the University of Queensland (UQ) Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Comrade Eliza and I were present to carry the red banner of the RCO.
After a series of heartening speeches, we marched the route normally taken by rallies that take place in Brisbane, that is, from King George Square, and back around Queen Street Mall. The march proceeded rather normally and uneventfully, until protest organisers decided to stop the march and have a brief, sit-in occupation of a large street crossing on George Street, at which they promoted the planned Nakba rally due to take place on the 19th of May.
At some point between when we left this sit-in and when the rally peacefully marched back towards the Adelaide Street crossing, officers from the Queensland Police Service (QPS) took a comrade into custody, as they recognised her from when she heckled Premier Steven Miles a week earlier. It was then discovered that QPS intended to have her kept in the police watchhouse overnight, shortly after stating they would process and release her immediately. Being kept overnight in a police watchhouse is a frightening, often traumatic, and sometimes deadly or fatal experience[2], with Australian police notorious for often brutalising individuals kept in custody, and refusing them medical treatment, leaving them to either die or suffer from lifelong injuries[3]. As of the time of writing, thirty-seven people have either been murdered or died in police custody in Australia since the 1st of January 2024, with eight of these victims being Indigenous[4].
Within minutes, organisers stopped the march at the important and publicly visible Adelaide Street pedestrian crossing, and had comrades sit down at the important crossing. After informing everyone present that they did not need to stay and that we would be occupying the crossing, organisers announced that a comrade had been taken into police custody and was criminally charged. In response, it was announced that the crossing would remain occupied until she was released. Although roughly fifty comrades, mostly families left, most attendees remained sitting on the pavement, surveilled by at most, six tired QPS officers. Although there was little prospect of demonstrators being removed that night, the majority of comrades remaining present (who were for the most part unorganised!) was a heartening sight, as it indicated enthusiasm towards advancing the struggle with absolutely no notice. Comrades present chanted and spoke jubilantly, both spirits and hopes remained high. Twenty-five minutes later, the liaison at the protest announced that our comrade had been released from custody, cheers erupted, and the rally returned to King George Square. Despite being 9pm, and roughly 3 hours since the protest began, there was still energy left in the crowd to chant and sing as the rally wrapped up.
We see this seizure of a peacefully demonstrating comrade by QPS as unusual in the post Bjelke-Petersen era, and a worrying precedent for future state repression of Palestinian solidarity protesters in Queensland. Our occupation was also a small escalation in response, one that achieved its goal of freeing our comrade. This was likely the first direct act of resistance against the state by many of our comrades attending, and acts as an important political step in advancing the struggle, at least locally, not just in terms of sharpening the experience of some of the most class-conscious youth present that night, but for the movement as a whole. We wish our shortly-detained comrade all possible luck in her ongoing legal struggles.
Notes
1 Tens of thousands of Palestinians evacuate Rafah as aid agencies warn food is running out. (2024, May 11). ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-11/israel-orders-more-palestinians-evacuate-rafah/103835474
2 Melbourne, D. A. P., University of. (2023, April 13). Quantifying an Australian crisis: Black deaths in custody. Pursuit. https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/quantifying-an-australian-crisis-black-deaths-in-custody
3 Street, L. (2007). PALM ISLAND DEATH IN CUSTODY. CAMERON DOOMADGEE (pp. 6–8)
4 Deaths in custody in Australia. Australian Institute of Criminology. Retrieved May 23, 2024, from https://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/deaths-custody-australia
University of Queensland Gaza Solidarity Encampment persists four weeks later. General Student Meeting to convene on the 29th of May.
Sylvia Ruhl ruminates on the UQ encampment and the upcoming Student General Meeting.
The Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the University of Queensland (UQ) was established on the morning of the 29th of April by Students4Palestine UQ[1], and was organised by Students4Palestine UQ, Socialist Alternative, and several Muslim student organisations including the UQ Muslim Students Association and the UQ Muslimah Societypersonal [based on correspondence from an anonymous source, 29th April 2024.]
The camp opened with and maintained three demands of UQ’s administration[2]:
- That no weapons companies be allowed to operate on campus
- That UQ discloses all ties with Israeli companies and universities
- That UQ entirely divests from Israel, Israeli institutions, and companies complicit in genocide
Less than ten tents were on the grounds at the corner of UQ’s Great Court before the camp’s opening rally at 12pm. At the beginning of the rally, roughly twenty students had gathered to listen to several speeches given by organisers. This number rapidly inflated to over three hundred jubilant students within the next hour as more comrades joined whether they had preplanned their presence or joined as passersby. The rally then moved on UQ’s Hawken Engineering Building and occupied it for roughly thirty minutes. Before midnight that night, the camp had expanded to at least twenty tents, indicating great enthusiasm for the camp among the student body. Revolutionary Communist Organisation (RCO) comrades were present since the first rally, and we have attempted (rather successfully) to the best of our ability to maintain a-round-the-clock presence in the camp and its operations despite our limited numbers.
Despite our non-existent influence in organising the beginning of the camp, the RCO’s in-depth involvement in the camp’s tactics and politics have given us an influence within the camp that has outsized our membership base. Aside from being a focal point for the political education of fellow travellers and new members who have joined us at the camp, we have had an undeniable influence on the camp’s orientation on key questions such as occupations, escalations, and the future of the camp. Comrade Eliza in particular has played a vital role in organising with the UQ branch of the NTEU (National Tertiary Education Union), getting a considerable number of university staff members to pledge to defend the camp should UQ attempt to remove the camp.
Ever since the beginning of the encampment we have been overwhelmed with material and moral support from both the student body and the public. Periodic protests, often called on little notice have taken place on campus, regularly attracting more than 200 students. An occupation of the Advanced Engineering Building (renamed to the Refaat Alareer Hall[3], in honour of the Palestinian martyr and poet killed by Israel on the 6th of December, 2023) occurred on the 16th of May. The occupation had a limited number of participants (roughly 50), and as such was abandoned later in the evening as holding it down would be unfeasible. A rooftop occupation of the Cumbrae-Steward building at the university was attempted by two autonomous Palestinian activists on the 20th of May[4]. The occupation was intended to be indefinite, but the two comrades occupying the rooftop voluntarily came down into police custody following a massive and sudden influx of Queensland police to the protest on campus.
The university administration has up to this point entirely avoided directly addressing the demands of the camp, with Vice-Chancellor Deborah Terry refusing to agree with the demand for a mass meeting with the camp to negotiate our withdrawal, instead requesting meetings with student organisers.
The university has yet to launch a violent crackdown on the camp and has continued with its strategy of waiting for the camp to peter out, in contrast with more aggressive university administrations further south. Terry had however, appeared to begin to change tone in an email sent to the entire student body on the afternoon of the 17th of May (notably a Friday afternoon). She had decreed that the word “Intifada”, and the chants “Out, out, Israel out” and “Israel out of Palestine/Gaza”, had been banned on campus, and that students using these phrases would receive academic punishment[5,6].
The Gaza solidarity camp was in agreement that, aside from being crassly racist and neocolonial (Afterall, “Intifada” is simply the Arabic word for referring to “throwing off something that oppresses”[7]) Terry’s latest manoeuvre was a violation on the freedom of speech of the student body, and that we would not recognise the seemingly ad-hoc new regulations. Organisers with the NTEU had gone tp the union to support staff in declaring to the university administration that they would not enforce academic penalisation against students for using the newly banned phrases. Students have continued to use the now-banned phrases at protests on campus in a newly launched free speech intifada.
To our knowledge, no individual students have yet to be challenged for breaching this rule. It would appear that the university administration has come to view their new rule as deeply unpopular and likely unenforceable due to institutional opposition.
Disregarding a handful of minor incidents caused by local rightist D-class celebrities, the Gaza solidarity encampment at UQ has been relatively undisturbed by Zionists. Although, until the 20th of May, there was a mostly empty encampment of Zionist counter protesters containing roughly thirty tents at its peak, situated roughly two hundred metres from our camp. Remarkably, the Zionists made little to no direct provocations towards us, beyond the obvious one of establishing a camp in solidarity with the same war criminals and genocidaires we oppose.
There was no attempted communication, let alone incursions or physical attacks of our camp or its members by the Zionist camp. This has been a great relief to comrades in Brisbane, as we had anticipated violent disturbances at our camp following widespread Zionist thuggery against anti-apartheid protesters elsewhere in Australia and the world.
A petition for a General Student Meeting (GSM), the first since 2019 easily gained the necessary 1,200 in-person signatures within four hours to officially call a mass meeting of the student body to debate and vote on whether the student body agrees with the three demands of the encampment. It should be noted that the requisite 1,100 signature benchmark is equal to 2% of UQ’s student population. UQ Union has set the mass meeting to be held on the 29th of May. We easily expect more than 500 students to turn up for the GSM, based on the general support for Palestine on campus, and the similar turnout at the most recent GSM in opposition to the Ramsay Centre[personal correspondence, anonymous source, 30th April 2024].
The format of the debate is as follows: three supporters of our demands, and three opponents (i.e. Zionists) will take turns debating our three demands at the GSM. The students present will then vote yes-or-no by raising their hands on each of our demands separately. Whilst we cannot help but fully anticipate a landslide victory in favour of our demands, the results of any general vote should never be taken for granted. As such, the camp’s campaigning as I write this is focussed firstly on maximising student turnout at the GSM, and secondly promoting a yes vote for all three demands.
Although not afflicted by the crises of swamp leftists dominating the camp as has happened elsewhere, the camp appears in our opinion to be retreat. We do, however, believe that there is still a considerable amount of life left in the camp. The camp has continued to grow since the initial rally to a size of roughly 120 tents, before recently stagnating. Whilst some serve as spares or potential barricades in the event of a crackdown on the camp, there is a lively environment at the camp daily, and a consistently sizeable contingent of campers. As shown by the most recent occupation attempt, there does not appear to be any potential for the camp to expand beyond its current size through indefinite building occupations. This is exacerbated by the fact that the university is currently in finals season, and that the university holidays are due to commence.
As such, I, and other comrades do not anticipate that the university will acquiesce to our demands in this current episode of the struggle. We do believe, however, that organising related to the camp, and events peripheral to it, such as recent protests elsewhere in Brisbane, have been politically transformative for camp protesters including RCO members.
Despite a briefly cold start, our relations with UQ Socialist Alternative (UQ SAlt) quickly improved in the course of this camp by necessity to the point we are in regular correspondence. RCO Brisbane comrades intend to further these relations through engaging with SAlt’s political program and organising debates between local SAlt and RCO cadres. Given SAlt’s status as the largest far-left organisation in Australia, the implications of this for the RCO’s medium-term merger programme are legion. Many young students have also drawn into the RCO’s orbit through our engagement in the camp. Some as fellow travellers, others have expressed interest in joining as applicant members. Although far more a consensus, a more general understanding among the student body has solidified in favour of Palestine, and we expect this to become further strengthen at the GSM on the 29th. As such, we think our work so far has been invaluable with ensuring victory for our demands at a later date, and it would therefore be difficult to consider any likely outcome of the current episode of the struggle to be a complete loss.
After all, building the revolution is not a sprint, but a marathon, and we intend to run the marathon to its completion.
Notes
1 Students for Paltestine UQ [@students4palestine_uq]. (28 April 2024). our camp begins and our fight continues tomorrow. free Palestine! weapons companies off campus! be there!!!#uqgaza camp. [Image attached]. Instagram.https://www.instagram.com/p/C6SkKQMBQYd/
2 Students for Palestine UQ [@students4palestine_uq]. (26 April 2024). UQ STUDENTS ARE JOINING THE INTERNATIONAL STUDENT MOVEMENT FOR PALESTINE! Join us to demand UQ cut ties with Israel and… [Images attached]. Instagram. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/20/university-pro-palestine-protest-camps-queensland-chants-banned-melbourne
3 Students for Palestine UQ [@students4palestine_uq]. (16 May 2024). Our building is no-longer the “advanced engineering” building – it is now the Refaat Alareer hall. Named after the palestinian… [Image attached]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/C7BDRN6Lcrh/?img_index=1
4 Northern Rivers Friends of Palestine [@northernrivers4palestine]. (20 May 2024). Two Palestinians have occupied the rooftop of University of Queensland Cumbrae-Stewart Building today demanding that UQ: 1. Disclose and Divest… [Video]. Instagram. Less than ten tents were on the grounds at the corner of UQ’s Great Court before the camp’s opening rally at 12pm. At the beginning of the rally, roughly twenty students had gathered to listen to several speeches given by organisers. This number rapidly inflated to over three hundred jubilant students within the next hour as more comrades joined whether they had preplanned their presence or joined as passersby. The rally then moved on UQ’s Hawken Engineering Building and occupied it for roughly thirty minutes. Before midnight that night, the camp had expanded to at least twenty tents, indicating great enthusiasm for the camp among the student body. Revolutionary Communist Organisation (RCO) comrades were present since the first rally, and we have attempted (rather successfully) to the best of our ability to maintain a-round-the-clock presence in the camp and its operations despite our limited numbers.
5 Students for Palestine UQ [@students4palestine_uq]. (17 May 2024). Earlier today, the Vice Chancellor sent out an email to all staff and students. Here is our reply: Deborah, We…. [Images attached]. Instagram Less than ten tents were on the grounds at the corner of UQ’s Great Court before the camp’s opening rally at 12pm. At the beginning of the rally, roughly twenty students had gathered to listen to several speeches given by organisers. This number rapidly inflated to over three hundred jubilant students within the next hour as more comrades joined whether they had preplanned their presence or joined as passersby. The rally then moved on UQ’s Hawken Engineering Building and occupied it for roughly thirty minutes. Before midnight that night, the camp had expanded to at least twenty tents, indicating great enthusiasm for the camp among the student body. Revolutionary Communist Organisation (RCO) comrades were present since the first rally, and we have attempted (rather successfully) to the best of our ability to maintain a-round-the-clock
presence in the camp and its operations despite our limited numbers.
6 Ore, A., & Cassidy, C. (2024, May 20). University of Queensland bans chants as pro-Palestine camp in Melbourne threatened over fire safety rules. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/20/university-pro-palestine-protest-camps-queensland-chants-banned-melbourne
7 Goldstone, J. A. (2014). The encyclopedia of political revolutions. New York, N.Y. Routledge, Taylor And Francis Group.
Unionists for Palestine Day of Action against Zim Shipping in Fremantle, Western Australia
Owen reports on the Unionists for Palestine Day of Action against Zim Shipping in WA.
Unionists for Palestine WA had a well-attended public event in Fremantle on Saturday (May 25th), starting with a public rally at Walyalup Koort Park before marching past the Zim Shipping local agent – Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) to finish at the Fremantle Port.
This was part of a National Day of Action called by Unionists for Palestine (and other groups), and was linked to coordinated events at every port in Australia, calling for an end to Israeli military aggression and showing solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against genocide.
Around 250 people attended the rally and were met with presentations from a range of different speakers from the Friends of Palestine WA, the Greens, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), among others.
During the march, the protesters chanted slogans such as: ‘Ceasefire Now’, ‘Free Free Palestine’, and ‘Israel, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide’. When passing the MSC building, protesters were met with a separate protest from an unidentified group. Playing dead, these protesters laid on the ground covered in fake blood, and held a large sign that read “No Business with Genocide – Drop Zim Shipping Now’. This separate action was quickly and vigorously shut down by police with move on notices as they were blocking the doors of the MSC building.
The protest was a healthy sign for optimism, a great number came out to show their support for Palestinian national self-determination and an end to the war in spite of bad weather. The protesters spoke with a lot of admiration for the global student movement and the local Curtin University occupation encampment.
Despite their willingness to protest, and even to put their bodies on the line in the case of the MSC shipping protesters, the event was plagued with liberal illusions that a ruling class fully devoted to the Israeli project would decide to stop supporting Israel simply due to public pressure. Misconceptions abound in this movement about politicians being willing and able to bow to public pressure, and that companies would prioritise morals and ethics over profit margins.
Appeals to the morality of the bourgeois are misguided. No ruling class has ever willing given up its wealth, privilege, and status; or Trotsky once wrote – ‘No devil yet ever voluntarily cut off its own claws’.
In the context of Australia, it is a liberal illusion that the bourgeois will voluntarily give up their lucrative business relationship with the vicious Israeli apartheid settler state. It’s not for nothing that PM Anthony Albanese, and Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong, have long been opponents of the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement in Australia.
Marxists substitute the well-meaning, but misguided moral criticism that is a hallmark of liberalism with the program of class struggle. It is only by seeking to overthrow the rotten capitalist political order that we can bring about an end to war and destruction. There is no need to appeal to the hearts and minds of the bourgeois, it is ultimately about the struggle of the working class against the ruling class. It is imperative to connect the popular desire for peace with the aim of social revolution and begin to substitute our own slogans with those of the lame phraseology of the liberal pacifists.
Melbourne Student Intifada, the UniMelb and Monash encampments.
Ruben explains the direction that the Melbourne student movement is heading, and the state of the Monash and UniMelb encampments.
Establishing the UniMelb encampment
Student University encampments spread to Melbourne on ANZAC Day, (Thursday, April 25th) starting with an encampment at the University of Melbourne (UniMelb) that was announced two days prior. This came after and was inspired by the Students 4 Palestine (S4P) encampment established at the University of Sydney on April 22nd. The encampment was run by the campaign group UniMelb for Palestine (UM4P), a group run by a covert organizing committee that was formed in late October 2023, mainly as a split away from Students 4 Palestine which was dominated by Socialist Alternative (SAlt). They are notorious for decrying SAlt as “the vanguard of white supremacy”, and they treat SAlt’s non-white members with contempt, condescendingly describing them as “tokens”. In a now deleted post, UM4P denounced SAlt on their public Instagram. Despite all this, the encampment was established, with some engagement from SAlt, the RCO, Unionists for Palestine, Solidarity and the ‘activist swamp’, alongside Palestinian nationalist sections of the Melbourne left. It soon became clear that the camp was functioning under an undemocratic basis. Despite the efforts of Solidarity members within UM4P, along with SAlt and RCO members to open meetings up to democratic process, all decisions were mediated though the UM4P unelected organizing committee. This quickly became a hostile environment for SAlt, with widespread anti-SAlt sentiment among camp residents and increasingly draconian restrictions on their activity and organizing eventually causing their withdrawal from the camp, with bans on them tabling, selling their newspaper, or participating in the communication signal chat.
In spite of self sabotage by the undemocratic leadership, this the camp had several initial successes, holding an on campus rally of over 400 students and staff, and successfully fending off a Zionist counter demonstration organized by the ‘Australiasian Union of Jewish Students’ after which Zionists accosted the camp. RCO members remained in the camp intermittently following this, with a reduced presence for the next two weeks, as we had little knowledge of what was going. This was mainly because information was shared covertly through closed communication channels, such as Signal groupchats. The UniMelb encampment became the largest in Melbourne with over 80 tents.
Other encampments
During this time other encampments were set up by S4P/ Socialist Alt at RMIT, Monash University, La Trobe and Deakin University. At Monash, the encampment was attacked in the night by Zionist gangsters, who destroyed parts of the encampment, while security refused to remove them. Attacks continued at Monash regularly, alongside increased repression for the university that threatened to expel seven students in the encampment for ‘harassment’ against the very same Zionists who had come to attack it.
The university also banned the usage of the slogan “from the river to the sea”, and the phrase “intifada” on the campus, and security tore break down barricades made to stop Zionists entering the camp. However, when an IDF memorial service was held on the campus close to the encampment, a strong mobilization to defend the camp managed to dissuade a full attack that could have followed in the wake of the UCLA attack. S4P at Monash was not helped by Monash for Palestine (another split group of activists in the same vein as UM4P) that argued that the encampment was ‘unsafe’ and that POC students should not attend. They then held rallies where they told students not to defend the encampment. The encampment was then disbanded due to more severe threats from the university administration. Similarly, the Deakin and LaTrobe encampments disbanded due to increased pressure from administration, leaving the RMIT encampment as the only S4P camp in Melbourne, with plans to disband on May 30th [Editor’s note: By the time of publishing, this camp should be dissolved].
UniMelb Occupation
An escalation at the UniMelb encampment took place on May 15th (Nakba day). After several failed rounds of negotiation in which the university would not agree to any demands, a self nominated “autonomous group” of students and staff occupied the arts west building, renaming it to “Makmouhd’s Hall” after a prospective UniMelb student recently killed in Gaza. This group insisted that it was a “sit-in” and not an occupation, forcing individuals who had started to barricade doors to remove the barricades. The University threatened to send in the police, however they never followed through on this threat, due to a strong mobilization outside the occupation and support from the staff union (which passed a motion with 99% support endorsing the protest’s demands). This occupation was joined by RCO members, who found the environment to nonetheless still to be hostile and run by UM4P, lacking democracy with meetings called without votes, refusal to disclose information such as what the plan of action for police attack was or what the negotiation strategy was, and asking for democracy resulted in organizers asking us to leave, as it gave them stress, and it was unclear if we were ‘friend or foe’.
We, with the help of solidarity members, were able to talk them out of this, but it did not solve the overall issue of democracy. Over a week later, UM4P came to a deal with the uni, in which it promised to disclose its funding for projects starting in June, “subject to national security concerns” in return for the disbanding of the camp and the occupation. On one hand, some concession was won from the university and this marked the protest as legitimate, but on the other the camp was disbanded and its potential for radicalism and further disruption stifled by the undemocratic practices of the leadership, leading to the failure to achieve disclosure, or to force the university to engage the police.
Overall the student encampments across Melbourne, while enjoying mass support have not reached the same levels of radicalism or success as those elsewhere, due to the lack of engagement and radicalism in the broader student body and the different approach of the administrations.
Newcastle Radicalism: UoN encampment and the Port protest
Ross Stiverson reports on the “day of action at the ports” in Newcastle, NSW.
The Students of UoN (University of Newcastle) are the latest among thousands of militant students across the world occupying campus lawns in protest of their university’s investment in Israel’s genocide, through their partnerships with “defence” contractors such as Boeing, Pantheon, British Aerospace Engineering, and in UoN’s case: Lockheed Martin. Erecting tents in front of the Auchmuty library, this eclectic group of students already have the bulk of Newcastle’s progressive community behind them. Food Not Bombs has volunteered to keep the camp fed, while Rising Tide offers their extensive network of professional activists and a screen printing stall, offering freshly painted Palestinian flag T-shirts for a modest donation.
On May 15th, we sat down for a “teach in”, headed by a professor who lectures at the university. She framed the present day protests through the lens of Anti-Vietnam War movement, and the similar current of student militancy that ran throughout the period. She spoke extensively on keeping accessibility a priority when protests, ensuring that persons with limited mobility can still contribute through letter writing campaigns and organizing boycotts. The speaker also advocated for a peaceful movement that works towards convincing the public that they aren’t “unruly”. Non disruption seems to be foundation these tents were pitched upon, a philosophy that diverges significantly from their counterparts in the US. I believe this stems from a question of numbers and ideology. The camp is a little over a dozen people, and while their dedication cannot be questioned, it does make occupation and disruption quite difficult.
Socialist presence was quite minimal other than ourselves and a visit from the Communist Student’s Collective, a student club who’ve set up their own demonstration front of the chancellery. We saw no socialist imagery or rhetoric on display, discussion of class struggle seemed to be absent besides token mention of Union involvement in the protests. The Greens are always in attendance. Local members are always stopping by and since our last visit they have hosted many speakers, including Dr Mehreen Faruqi and Maitland based activist and Greens candidate Campbell Knox. The camp is still there, guest speakers and supporters from the campus and community continue to visit, learn, and participate in the many workshops hosted. No plans for direct action has been revealed, and the Administration remains silent excepting vague platitudes championing freedom of speech and political expression. It remains to be seen if these weak statements stem from genuine fear of greater reprisal, or that (despite the camp’s best efforts) they don’t feel threatened in the slightest.
Unionists for Palestine have also been busy. May 25th was declared a national day of action on Australian ports, and thousands around the country gathered demanding that goods going to and from Israel be stopped. Newcastle’s rally was held in front of the Customs House, a local hotel, and numbered in at about 50-100. Familiar faces from the UoN encampment and No Weapons For Genocide’s rallies (which I reported on in Direct Action #13) were joined by Socialist Alliance and The Greens. In a series of short speeches, representatives from the United Workers Union (UWU), National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), and Electrical Trades Union (ETU), laid out the demands of the demonstrations:
- All shipping companies operating in Australian Waters declare any trade or cargo with Israel
- Impose an arms embargo and trade sanctions on the state of Israel
- Charges against Maritime Union Australia (MUA) and activists advocating for ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza be withdrawn
The speeches were concluded with chants, and a quick march over the road for photos against the Hunter River. Notably, the Maritime union didn’t attend the rally in any official capacity.
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