RAMALLAH, Friday, May 21, 2021 (WAFA) – Australian anthropologists and their global allies today called on Israel to immediately end its violent occupation of the Palestinian territories and dismantle its apartheid legislative regime.
As the anthropologists and their allies expressed their ‘deep concern’ over violence in Palestine/Israel, they condemned Australia’s direct support to the colonization of Palestine.
“We, the undersigned, mindful of the strong personal and professional relations that some of our colleagues have with the Middle East region, also mindful of our presence in a society historically built on the appropriation of Indigenous land, wish to register our deep concern over the violent events unfolding in Israel/Palestine and we mourn the many lives that have been cut short. We are also mindful that the Australian settler colonial state has long directly supported the colonisation of Palestine,” they said.
While noting that the recent wave of violence was the outcome of the forced expulsions of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah, they identified Israel’s colonialist policies abetted by US and European support as the root cause.
“The current escalation is a result of the new wave of evictions of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah in Occupied East Jerusalem. These evictions have to be understood as a continuation of the appropriation of Palestinian land and the expulsion of Palestinians from what became Israel and that began with the Zionist colonisation of Palestine, supported by the United States and the European colonial powers, early in the last century.”
“As the sole effective governmental power throughout Israel and the occupied territory, the Israeli state bears the greatest responsibility for the unfolding tragedy. It is this state that is directly engaging, or licencing Jewish supremacist mobs to engage in, the eviction of Palestinians from their homes.”
While condemning violence, they noted the ‘massive asymmetry in the capacity for violence’.
“We condemn all those who direct their violence against civilians. Nonetheless, we cannot but note the massive asymmetry in the capacity for violence that makes the Israeli state responsible for the much greater violence and devastation that the Palestinians are being subjected to.”
“We maintain our unequivocal commitment to a future in which Jews and non-Jews have found ways of existing together in a society where the rights, the sense of security and the dignity of all is respected. We stand in solidarity with all those working for such a future.”
They voiced concern and slammed using the term ‘conflict’ to refer to the situation in Palestine as misleading, not that it is a state of Israeli settler-colonialism.
“We are also concerned at the simplistic, ahistorical representation of these issues by many journalists, intellectuals, and political leaders, as a traditional “conflict” between two opposing parties or polities (implying the need to condemn either one or both “sides”), rather than an entrenched, ongoing system of settler-colonialism prosecuted or endorsed by numerous states, which produces intractable forms of economic, social, and political inequality that culminate in violence of many kinds, the most immediate victims of which are typically civilians, Arabs and Jews alike.”
They also denounced attempts to equate support for Palestinian redress with anti-Semitism as ‘deeply flawed’ and intended to ‘obscure the reality’.
“This completely unjust situation is perpetuated by the repeated equation of support for Palestinian redress with `anti-semitism’. That equation is deeply flawed and deliberately obscures the reality of European colonial occupation and domination of Palestinian lands and people. The issue is one of justice for a dispossessed, brutalised and immiserated Indigenous population.”
“We call on the settler state of Israel to immediately end its violent occupation of Palestinian lands and to dismantle the apartheid legislative regime which it has implemented in order to secure its hegemony,” they said.
They deplored the incursion of Israeli police into al-Aqsa mosque as well as Israel’s current military attack on Gaza in the form of remote warfare as criminal as they expressed their fear that “the aim is the total erasure of Palestinians from the occupied territories.”
They call for “an end to U.S. military funding to Israel and Australian collusion in that murderous trade” as well as for “further open debate of the attacks in the United Nations Security Council blocked twice by the U.S. government.”
They also condemned “Australia’s and the UK’s support of Israel’s illegal government policies of apartheid and territorial expansion.”
Among the signatories of the statement are Tony Redmond, an honorary senior fellow at the University of Queensland’s School of Social Science, Julie Finlayson, a research fellow at the Australian National University’s Centre for Native Title Anthropology, David Boarder Giles, a lecturer in anthropology at Deakin University, Ghassan Joseph Hage, a professor of anthropology and social theory at the University of Melbourne, David F. Martin of the Anthropos Consulting, Neil Maclean, an honorary associate at the University of Sydney’s Department of Anthropology, School of Social and Political Sciences, Francesca Merlan, a professor of anthropology at Australian National University, Alan Rumsey, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the Australian National University, besides to Gretchen Stolte, a fellow of the Australian Anthropological Society.
Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)