Danny is correct that the newly-created Facebook group ‘Jews for Palestine Northern Rivers’ is not yet active. We are few, and we concentrate on our work rather than on social media, but numbers are no reflection on the justice of a cause. We are proud to stand alongside a relative handful of principled and courageous Jewish Israelis who also refuse to allow tribal loyalties to define our humanity.
Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Palestine before our very eyes! Palestinians, who have endured over 76 years of ethnic cleansing, displacement, land-theft and other violations of their rights, are now being tortured (including sexual violence), starved, maimed and massacred, in their tens of thousands. The children of Gaza will bear lifelong scars from Israel’s settler colonial violence! And it is not because members of my family were murdered in the Nazi holocaust that I cannot remain silent, but because I am human!
Scores of reports by internationally respected humanitarian organisations attest that this is not a war against Hamas, but against the people of Gaza. There is no Hamas in the West Bank, yet hundred have been killed, thousands imprisoned and tortured, and tens of villages depopulated. Furthermore, Hamas has made several offers to negotiate the return of the hostages, and Israelis are demonstrating in the streets about their government’s sabotage of such moves.
Living in Australia we need look no further than the very land we stand on. Occupied, stolen land, whose sovereignty was never ceded; a state founded on genocide. It is the same settler colonial system that vilifies, oppresses and imprisons both Palestinians and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People. European imperialism leaves a catastrophic legacy, including several current genocides across the global south in the Congo, Yemen, Darfur, and Sudan, to name a few. Make no mistake, we all have sweet life-giving blood on our hands and we all have a part to play daily in the repair of the world, in Tikkun Olam!
Of course, we all want peace but peace without truth, justice and liberation is an illusion!
Peace, justice and liberation will require an ongoing commitment to dismantling systems of colonialism and oppression, which are the same systems that are at the root of all environmental and humanitarian injustice.
As for sticking to potholes – grassroots and local action has been instrumental in social justice movements small and large. We in this community are committed to building a better world, both within and beyond our region.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
