Israeli soldiers accused of atrocities were welcomed into the Sydney Marathon under the extraordinary guise of a ‘peace delegation’, writes Max Gross.
AUSTRALIA'S ANNUAL 42-kilometre Sydney Marathon was held on Sunday 30 August and involved more than 40,000 runners from more than 40 countries.
One of those countries was Israel and, as reported by Michael West, included:
As many as 40 former and current IDF soldiers and associates ... sponsored by AIJAC and the Zionist Council of NSW...
...Australian Chris Sidoti, UN Human Rights Investigator, has called for Israeli military personnel who have served in Gaza to be interrogated for war crimes.
The annual charity event hoped to raise $13 million. Last year, it raised a record-breaking $8 million, and a total of more than $36 million since its launch in 2000 — the money dispersed to genuinely worthy and needful causes.
So it's pretty disturbing that among those ‘former and current IDF soldiers’ are members of Israel's notorious Golani Brigade.
The Golani Brigade is linked to an attack on two ambulance convoys in Rafah, Gaza, where the bodies of murdered victims were buried in a mass grave, in March last year.
The Zionist lobby possibly invited these alleged war criminals to participate in the marathon to provoke an outraged public response that may then be labelled as "antisemitism".
But opposing Israel, opposing genocide and supporting Palestinian sovereignty, statehood and rights to self-defence and existence, is not antisemitism.
To be absolutely clear, the NSW Supreme Court has ruled that criticism of Israel does not breach the law, concluding that it is not antisemitic to criticise Israel.
The Australian Government could have and should have revoked the entry visas of those IDF soldiers. The marathon organisers could have and should have banned those Israeli soldiers from participating.
Despite online criticism and protests, the IDF soldiers participated in the prestigious race.
Meanwhile, Chris Minns, the Premier of my home state of New South Wales (NSW), used the Dural “antisemitism terrorism” hoax to rush draconian anti-protest legislation through Parliament in an attempt to outlaw public demonstrations against Israel.
Minns has also ordered police to attack people objecting to the morally and ethically grotesque state reception given to Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a genocide advocate.
He also proposes to arm Jewish-only “security guards” — a move opposed even by the NSW Police. The NSW Police that used Israeli spyware, Cellebrite, more than 30,000 times since 2022 despite claiming, under questioning during a Parliamentary Inquiry, that they never have.
Punters Politics nailed it, stating:
“You no longer need to do anything wrong before police use Israeli spyware to read every text that you ever sent.”
As NSW Greens MP Sue Higginson warns:
‘...the NSW Police, using data from an Israeli corporation… can access any message they have ever sent, any photo they have ever taken, their location at any moment, everything they have ever searched and biometric data about who they are.’
Anytime. Anywhere. Without a warrant. And that downloaded data – your data – may be kept indefinitely by police.
Actual antisemitism exists. Definitely. There are genuine antisemites who hate Jews for just being Jews, just as there are those who hate Muslims for being Muslims and those who hate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for having a dark skin tone.
But opposing Israel, opposing genocide and supporting Palestinian sovereignty, statehood and rights to self-defence and existence, is not antisemitism.
And the final obscenity? The Zionist Council of NSW calls those alleged war criminals a ‘peace delegation’.
Max Gross is a writer.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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