The decision by the Adelaide Festival Board to exclude Palestinian Australian author and academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers’ Week on the grounds of “cultural sensitivity” is based on a dangerously broad and vague criterion for suppressing free speech. The board appears to have overruled Writer’s Week director Louise […]
Israel
Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters have filled the streets of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in one of Australia’s largest coordinated demonstrations, held just days after the United Nations confirmed famine in Gaza. Organisers estimated crowds of about 100,000 in both Melbourne and Sydney, while in Brisbane they put the […]
Recent images of an emaciated Gazan child, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, provoked global outrage. Some sought to minimise this harm, attributing it instead to pre-existing conditions or disability. But framing starvation deaths in Gaza in terms of underlying disabilities or comorbidities is misleading. It is essential to recognise these conditions do not justify suffering […]
A new vision for Middle East peace emerged this week which proposes the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza and the West Bank, the disarming and disbanding of Hamas and the creation of a unified Palestinian state. The plan emerged from a “high-level conference” in New York on July 29, which assembled representatives of 17 […]
Australia has joined 28 international partners in calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and a lifting of all restrictions on food and medical supplies. Foreign Minister Penny Wong, along with counterparts from countries including the United Kingdom, France and Canada, has signed a joint statement demanding Israel complies […]
From 2015 to 2018, I spent 15 months doing research work in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. As an anthropologist, I was interested in everyday life in Iran outside the capital Tehran. I was also interested in understanding whether the ambitions of the 1979 Revolution lived on among “ordinary” Iranians, not just political elites. I […]
Donald Trump’s latest forthright outburst was made as part of his attempts to create a peace deal with Iran and Israel. “I’m not happy with Israel,” he told reporters on June 24. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re […]
Freelance journalist Antoinette Lattouf has emerged victorious in her unfair dismissal case against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), with the Federal Court ruling that the national broadcaster unlawfully terminated her employment. Justice Darryl Rangiah’s judgment found that Lattouf’s removal from her role as a fill-in host on ABC Radio Sydney’s […]
After prevaricating about whether the United States would enter Israel’s war on Iran, President Donald Trump finally made a decision. Early Sunday, US warplanes and submarines struck three of Iran’s nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, where the Iranians have a uranium enrichment plant buried about 80 metres beneath […]
Antoinette Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case against the ABC took an emotional turn on day two, as the journalist broke down in court while recalling the fallout from her abrupt removal from the airwaves. The Federal Court heard distressing testimony detailing the toll her sacking has taken on her career, mental […]
