The moral cleansing has commenced for the ultra-Zionists and their lackeys

As public opinion starts to shift, those in Australia who legitimised genocide must face accountability, writes Tom Tanuki.

A RISING DISGUST with unending Gazan starvation, death and pain has broken beyond the former boundaries of those of us who call ourselves anti-Zionist, or Palestinian, or Arab, or Muslim, or anti-racist, or ethical, or political.

Or even just possessed of a mobile phone whose social media algorithmic divide has allocated us daily videos of Palestinian suffering for about two years.

There have been many of us, but now there are many more. Some sort of tide, they all seem to agree, is turning.

I’ve read it described as a great "moral cleansing":

That’s the term psychologists use to describe all the behaviour aimed at restoring someone’s moral self-image. […] It’s going to include a lot of big newspapers, a lot of big celebrities, and eventually a lot of big politicians.

A lot of people have spent the last several years shirking their moral responsibilities, and now they’re looking for ways to wash away the stains. They’re looking for positions to adopt and stands to take. They’re going to shout them over the waterfalls.

Chris Minns and the Sydney Harbour 'Gaza Streisand effect'

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But I know it’s not my place, as it has never been, to gatekeep the cause of the Palestinians. I find all the ‘where were you?’-type posts a little tasteless and unnecessary. If even the grimmest calculations about Israel’s genocide are right, we still have hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s civilians – people, human beings – left to fight for. You can’t gatekeep in those dire circumstances.

And anyway, I’m reminded of Tasnim Sammak’s recent thoughts on shaming late-comers discourse:

Ordinary working people who are joining us are not only welcome, we have been waiting for them. We can only win with the masses on our side.

The Free Gaza campaign began after the Second Intifada and solidified in 2008. If you are 30 or over, and you only recently joined the Free Palestine movement in the last two years, you weren't here either.

You missed solidarity with the entire SWANA/Arab Spring and Great March of Return. You can't act holier than thou for joining a few months before your family and friends.

I’ve always valued the big, open-armed approach to solidarity of the Free Palestine and Free Gaza movements, to that end. I’ve admired the generosity it takes to accommodate the sympathetic in their oceans of kuffiyehs, and to allow for chants like “In our thousands, in our millions / We are all Palestinians”.

There’s a big energy about that that I’ve always fancied would eventually create watershed moments. Spur a critical mass of the working class to unify, in their thousands and millions, and, finally, dwarf Zionism.

Perhaps that’s what’s happening.

And that would be beautiful; late, but not a moment too soon.

However.

If the tide is turning, then I demand that the people who have worked the hardest to furnish popular or institutional consent in Australia for the continuation of this genocide experience recriminations. Or are, at least, made into pariahs.

The pro-Israel, Zionist lobby and their attendant lackeys in academia, the not-for-profit and research space, journalism and so on. Parasites that we can’t punish by voting out.

For example:

I am aware that the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW has accepted a formal complaint of racial and religious vilification against the Australian Jewish Association (AJA) due to the usual sort of disgusting anti-Muslim bile produced on their Twitter account. I’m just a layperson but I don’t feel sure this would have happened a year ago, prior to the moral cleansing. It’s an excellent start.

I hope that after this process concludes that the affiliated registered charity that this far-right hyperpartisan organisation has outrageously managed to produce is killed off. I demand that the AJA is sent back to the marginal scrapheap of far-right cranks it was previously relegated to, before October 7, 2023 produced many new ultra-Zionists to keep them company.

Many other organisations ought to join them on their scrapheap. For one, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).

Their fake, dishonest statistics on antisemitism have informed several waves of deeply anti-democratic, anti-protest policy and legislative changes. They have grown so arrogant as to demand that we scrap academic and protest freedom, trash the Migration Act to deport people who don’t adhere to their crank ideology, and force universities, the arts and the charity sector to kowtow to ultra-Zionism to continue to receive funding. They’ve received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for this. All of that funding must cease.

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The Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal should be sacked. Her absurd special appointee position should be immediately abolished. She lifted all of her disgraceful anti-democratic policy proposals from the ultra-Zionist cranks at the ECAJ, because she used to lead them. She should join them in the scrapheap.

Chip le Grand should be fired from The Age, for spending two years being a mouthpiece for the Zionist lobbyists who fed him almost every story he produced on Israel/Palestine affairs locally. About half of The Australian’s staff needs to go. Journalists who have been on Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) junkets to Israel only to bring home the propaganda home should be exposed – if they haven’t already in their hundreds – and fired.

There are researchers who served to furnish the hyperpartisan counter-terrorism apparatus with bunk or hyperpartisan analysis or commentary. That, in turn, accelerated the criminalisation of the anti-genocide movement in this country. They knew what they were doing, and they knew which side their bread was buttered on. They must not be sought for their insights on "far-right extremism" ever again. They have demonstrated they like "far-right extremism" just fine when it suits their careers.

If the great moral cleansing is commencing, fine. But I’m not feeling like aiding the Australian pro-Israel lobby in washing its hands. They have too much blood on them.

Tom Tanuki is an IA columnist, writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear on YouTube. You can follow him on Twitter/X @tom_tanuki.