The dangers of Zionism behind closed doors

Campaigning in private by pro-Zionist parties against Palestinian supporters has intended public outcomes and must be addressed urgently, writes Tom Tanuki.

I KNOW OF a teacher who tried to provide an optional breakout space for students to discuss their despair and confusion over what they see happening to Palestinians every day, using smartphones and perhaps, if they wanted, to use their time together to write to MPs.

The teacher could see the issue was overwhelming to many of the students watching the daily devastation in Gaza and wanted to provide them with a safe, productive outlet for their feelings.

For their efforts, the teacher was dragged before the school's management and almost threatened with suspension. But not quite. Because, as management basically admitted, there weren't any legal grounds to fire someone for what they’d done. So, they wondered: perhaps the teacher might like to gently... suspend themselves? Resign?

The teacher, admirably, did not give management what they wanted.

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Recently, Sydney's Moriah College held a conference via its Moriah Foundation where President Judy Lowy admitted that their students were being encouraged to write letters of support to Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers. When this information began to be shared on Twitter, the video of the conference was removed. Perhaps it didn't serve Moriah College to have the public know what it was encouraging during school hours.

These are two examples of political action and pressure occurring in spaces that aren’t quite public but with intended public outcomes. If teachers are seen to be mysteriously “suspending themselves” after trying to demonstrate sympathy for Palestinians, everyone else will quietly get the message and shut up. If whole schools appear to be surprisingly united in rallying behind Israel, this might have a flow-on effect on broader community sentiment.

But if these clandestine actions are stymied by being caught in the act, they have the opposite effect. This was writ large for many Australian creatives recently when a WhatsApp chat log was leaked consisting of around 600 influential Jewish creatives and academics.

The logs showed that many members of the group coordinated effectively to impact the livelihoods and employment opportunities for prominent pro-Palestinian activists. After the leak, with industry peers now becoming concerned about their proximity to chat members, this effort was decisively scattered.

Earlier, Osman Faruqi wrote about the unfolding battle of competing open letters and withdrawals of public support and funding occurring in the arts space. These are all running battles over public spaces and who in the Israel/Palestine conflict gets to own them — or at least express themselves without fear of recrimination.

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Here, the lobbying battle by Zionists against anti-Zionists is often waged in secret to contest what counts as normal or accepted. The tacit guiding idea is that it may not currently be the norm to sack everyone for pro-Palestinian sentiment, but if we arrange enough clandestine firings, eventually it will be.

Zionist management at a place of work might skirt employment laws to fire someone for espousing pro-Palestinian views. Zionist creatives might covertly co-ordinate to limit work opportunities for pro-Palestinian creatives in secret so that the next round of creatives is more agreeably silent.

At the abovementioned Moriah Foundation conference, Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) head Alex Ryvchin spoke about encouraging professionals such as lawyers in their industries to sack prospective or new employees who attend pro-Palestinian rallies. The idea seems less about the politics of fear or intimidation — it’s more about undertaking actions that help to render what is the new Zionist normal.

The leaked WhatsApp chat caused many influential creatives and academics to scatter, particularly those who'd engaged in a visible amount of professional managerial class conspiring against their pro-Palestinian peers. But some people holding that information then released the log in full, along with a spreadsheet documenting all 600+ names in the chat, their professions/workplaces and social media account details.

This appears to have backfired, or at least become fodder for the optics-obsessed Zionist opposition; Zionists like Ryvchin and The Age's Chip Le Grand are already couching it as a “mass doxxing” despite the original chat involving coordinated harm to many pro-Palestinian activists. The fight over what constitutes reality or the norm – or who gets to do so – continues.

But Alex Ryvchin needs to encourage professionals to sack young pro-Palestinian employees in private because his Zionist cause is deeply unpopular in popular, public terms. Most people are like the children at the abovementioned teacher’s school: traumatised by unending videos of dying Palestinian children. This requires him, like the members of the chat, to agitate behind closed doors using their influence and address books to alter reality according to their liking.

Pro-Palestinian activism doesn't share this crutch because we have the numbers. We need to be aiming at the powerful political and business allies and sponsors of Israel, moving beyond our opponents’ clandestine scheming. Zionist power structures and political forces, locally and abroad, which enable the deaths of untold Palestinians, are our enemies. And we have the people needed to direct our focus on them.

Tom Tanuki is a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist. Tom does weekly videos on YouTube commenting on the Australian political fringe. You can follow Tom on Twitter @tom_tanuki.