One cannot speak of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 without touching upon identity and its ramifications. Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury’s novel, My Name is Adam is replete with questions and answers regarding identity, juxtaposed against inscribed recollections of the ethnic cleansing of Lydda. No matter the veneer one strives to don as part of the journey moving…
Repatriating remains is an obligation not a gift
The South Australian Museum is rectifying slivers of colonial damage with the announcement that it will repatriate the remains of over 4000 Aboriginal people to their communities. This will be welcome news for Aboriginal communities, but also a reminder of the need to lobby against policies that deprive them of the right to a dignified connection with…
Book Review: Palestine and Rule of Power. Local Dissent vs International Governance
This collection of well-researched essays provides an insight into the dynamics of how neoliberalism is woven within the Zionist colonial process and how it has created two opposing camps, succinctly described in the foreword by Richard Falk as the failure of UN diplomacy and the existing possibilities of Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. The neoliberal framework depoliticises…
Australia’s politicians have a history of ‘othering’ Muslims and normalising right wing bigotry
Following the New Zealand terror attack, there has been a plethora of statements from politicians worldwide, ranging from perfunctory condolences to victim blaming. Australian Senator Fraser Anning’s tweet, “Does anyone still dispute the link between Muslim immigration and violence?” is not a solitary sentiment. Indeed, the only factor distinguishing Anning from the right-wing elements in any…
Land rights and climate change in Chile, Brazil
The High Court of Australia last week handed down ‘the biggest native title ruling affecting Aboriginal ownership of the land in decades’. According to lawyers representing mining companies the ruling could ‘trigger compensation applications from many of the hundreds of native title holder groups around Australia, which could amount to billions of dollars’. The ruling recognises two losses…
Delaying publication of the settlement blacklist exposes the UN’s false narratives on human rights
The UN is openly flaunting its priorities and, sadly, human rights are far from a major concern for the international organisation. Since its creation post-World War Two, and having established itself as the platform which determines what constitutes a human rights violation and which countries can be considered as perpetrators, several trends have emerged within…
Book review: Aya Dane
Mhani Alaoui lays bare the cliché of “forgotten memories” in her latest novel, Aya Dane (Interlink Books, 2018). Likewise, the perceptions of nostalgia and identity as imagined by an outsider also contribute to shifting memory into an isolated place. An implosion takes place which, for Aya Dane, starts unravelling when she received a letter from an art…
Australia’s Chile extradition test
Five years ago, the Chilean courts made an extradition request to Australia, to return former National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agent Adriana Rivas to face justice for her role in the kidnapping, torture and disappearances of seven dictatorship opponents affiliated with the Chilean Communist Party and the Revolutionary Left Movement. On 19 February, the news that…
EU’s dirty dealings with Libya over refugees
In 2018, an estimated 23,000 refugee children arrived in Europe through Mediterranean trajectories, landing in Italy, Spain and Greece. During the first two weeks of January 2019, 400 refugee children arrived in Europe. The United Nations International Children’s emergency Fund (UNICEF) is asking the EU to adopt ‘a region-wide approach’ to prevent further suffering for minors, at…
The UN persists with obsolete frameworks for Israel’s political benefit
Years after the two-state paradigm was declared obsolete, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process has informed the Security Council that, “The possibility of establishing a viable, contiguous Palestinian state has been systematically eroded by facts on the ground.” The statement is an attempt to transform what has been patently obvious for years into…
RAMONA WADI 