Support BDS in Marrickville – write to Council
13 January 2011
If you want to send the Marrickville Councillor a note of encouragement for their important stand for human rights for all please email them at the addresses below.
Mayor Fiona Byrne fbyrne@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
All councillors – just copy the whole of the list in green into the address field of your email:
“Fiona Byrne” <fbyrne@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Maurice Hanna” <mhanna@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Sam Iskander” <siskander@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Maria Kontellis” <mkontellis@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Vic Macri” <vmacri@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Peter Olive” <polive@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Mary O’Sullivan” <mosullivan@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Cathy Peters” <cpeters@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Max Phillips” <mphillips@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Dimitri Thanos” <dthanos@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Emanuel Tsardoulias” <etsardoulias@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>, “Laura Wright” <lwright@marrickville.nsw.gov.au>
Individual Councillors
- Emanuel Tsardoulias etsardoulias@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
- Maurice Hanna mhanna@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
- Mary O’Sullivan mosullivan@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
- Peter Olive polive@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
- Deputy Mayor Sam Iskandar siskandar@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
- Max Phillips mphillips@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
- Vic Macri vmacri@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
- Cathy Peters cpeters@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
- Laura Wright lwright@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
- Marika Kontellis mkontellis@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
- Dimitri Thanos dthanos@marrickville.nsw.gov.au
You may also wish to let the Carmel Tebbut, <marrickville@parliament.nsw.gov.au> State Member for Marrickville, and her husband Anthony Albanese in the Federal parliament, <A.Albanese.MP@aph.gov.au>, know that you support Marrickville council’s right to make this decision.
For more about the debate around the Marrickville BDS decision click here…
Please also consider sending a letter to any or all of the following local newspapers:
- Mark Kirkland, editor, Cooks River Valley Times,
Ph: (02) 9795 0000, Fax: (02) 9795 0096
mark@torchpublishing.com.au - Inner West Courier, Editor: John Bilic, Phone: (02) 9018 3519,
Email: editor@innerwestcourier.com.au
Address: 181 First Avenue, Five Dock, NSW 2046 - The Australian (Sydney)
letters@theaustralian.com.au - The Daily Telegraph (Sydney)
Go to this page and scroll to the bottom to find the form for your letter:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/your-say - The AltMedia Group – write “Letter to Editor” in subject field of email
cityhub@alternativemediagroup.com
citynews@alternativemediagroup.com
independent@alternativemediagroup.com
marrickvillebds 
Can we also do something about the violations against Afghanis perpetrated by USA and convince Julia Guillard that the Australian armed forces need to leave Afghanistan & return to Australia.
Thank you.
Nadejda Letat
Thank you for this Najejda. There are several organisations doing their best to convince our government that the Australian armed forces need to leave Afghanistan & return to Australia. If you are asking why there is not boycott, it may be because there has been not request from the Afghani community for this. The boycott, divestment and sanction campaign is a response to a direct request Palestinian civil society, for individuals and organisations to take action until Israel complies with international humanitarian law.
Boycott of Israel is aimed at expressing disagreement with religious racism. Many progressive Jews support this boycott. It is the correct signal to disassociate oneself with racism, apartheid and fanaticism, which also exists in others societies. This move emerges out of compassion for all sides
in the MiddleEast to consider Humanity First in their identity, Humanity which we all share.
Safwan
instead of worring about footpaths and rubbish collection, you’re trying to solve the mid east issues
Admirable – but what of the local issues council should focus on?
I say your efforts are supremely gracious but is this all worth the backlash and resentment you get from your own backyard?
You fix this issue in this generation – why waste your publicity on it?
Local issues are what Council does focus on. I attended the meeting when this decision was made. I sat from 6:30 until after 10pm while Council considered local issues, they then continued after we left until 1am next morning. You only have to attend a meeting or read the minutes to see the tremendous amount of work done by Councillors and Council staff. As a local resident for 25 years, I know how very lucky we are in Marrickville and we can afford to spare a little time to think of others.
Marrickville was the first home of the Australian Consumers Association. That great icon of the “fair go” visits shops and service organisations to bring us the stories that we all need to hear. Some day – and that day will surely come – one of those shops will display goods that triumphantly display their origin – “Produce of Palestine”. That will be all the proof I ever need that the Marrickville Council was made of the “right stuff”.
If you’re to survive as an exporter you need more than a factory, a van, and a market. You need solidarity on the factory floor. You need people to say “Yes, we do what we do for the firm and for its owner but above all we do it for each other.”
The vital thing right now for the Marrickville Council is their solidarity. The world is getting ready to delegitimise Israel; a few minutes work with Google will soon convince you of that. But Israel could mount a devastating counter-attack, hoping to find disunity amongst council members. Arguments and facts are for courts-of-law. What the television audience is hungry to see are signs that councilors speak as a single body in support of Palestine.
As the duty officer in a police show says “Be careful. It’s dangerous out there.” I would add “And look after each other.”
Eric Carwardine, in Perth, Western Australia
Be brave, show integrity, and be intrepid in your pursuit of human rights and speaking out against the injust and inhumane treatment of Palestinians, both in Gaza and on the West Bank. At present, and on a daily basis, Israel steals Palestinian land, destroys their homes, mosques and infra-structure, their water, their freedom of movement, their rights to live safely and without fear, and their dignity, and regularly Palestinians lose thier lives. Children do not have the rights of other children, and grow up living in fear. Palestinians also have an escalating suicide rate – compared with Australian Indiginous people. Israel’s treatment of Palestinians not only renders them powerless, helpless and feeling life is hopeless, but also creates divisions in Israeli society and leaves a pathological legacy that will undermine Israel from ever being a psychologically healthy country, and responsible neighbour in the Middle East.
By having the guts to speak out like this the Marrickville councill will go down in history as a council which is committed to true liberal politics, equality and democracy rather than just revenue raising. This sets an enormously important example for other Australian groups who are likely to be afraid of being villified by the Jewish communities in this country for criticising Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The council’s support of the BDS also show that you not only support United Nations policies and decisions but are prepared to insist that UN resolutions be adhered to.
The council’s example also restores my hope in political groups having the capacity to act for the benefit of all people rather than from self-interest or to satisfy the interests of select groups in Australia, and behaving with the same level of blatant hypocrisy.
I think it is terrific that you have all risen above parochial local issues and taken on this vitally important task; contrary to what many people will say, Palestine has become a point around which many things revolve, and our position on it is a barometer of our position on our whole foreign policy and some of our domestic policy. I believe that there are many Australians who support the rights of Palestinians in theory, even though they may not realise what those rights are.
The problem is that they are victim to a press and a polity which is profoundly pro Israel and pro US, and they don’t know it. They don’t know what the Palestine Papers have revealed – or proven – because they’ve hardly had a mention. They don’t know about the US veto of the settlement resolution, or what it means, and they don’t know that Israel has just approved another 500 homes in illegal settlements.
But they do know that a family of five in one of these illegal settlements were murdered in their beds by an Arab because all the papers say so and because Obama has condemned it, and probably Rudd and Gillard have condemned it too. Noone has suggested that the murderer had a motive.
And unfortunately the illegitimacy of our governments support for Israel’s ongoing violations goes unnoticed and uncondemned by this sycophantic press and ‘our ABC’, —- so what can one say? Be strong, and don’t waver!
My whole family & I would like to applaud your courage in supporting a boycott of Israeli products & contacts.
I can only imagine the pressure being brought to bear on you & your fellow councillors.
As with the South African anti-apartheid boycotts, powerful vested interests will try to hold back a developing groundswell of revulsion against Israel’s racist policies.
I personally have been physically assaulted on a public street by Israeli back-packers as I handed out boycott pamphlets.
It is amazing how difficult it is to make a principled stand on such a clear cut issue even in a liberal democratic country like Australia.
At least, so far, we haven’t had to face tanks in the street!
One day however, we will be able to tell our grandchildren that at least stood up for justice & human rights & were on the right side of history.
Keep up the good work & don’t lose courage!
As for those who say you should confine your activities to local issues:
1. As citizens of a democracy, Australians are responsible for their government’s support of Israel.
2. If this was 1935 & you were boycotting German products, would they say this was wrong?
3. Israel is not a liberal democratic society in the western tradition, it is an ethnocracy & the recently leaked “Palestine Papers” reveal the extent to which Israeli politicians are lying to the world in an attempt to maintain their apartheid state for as long as possible ( London Review of Books, Vol 33, no. 5, March 3, 2011, page24; Also New York review of Books, Israel & Palestine: Breaking the Silence, Feb. 24,2011, Shulman)
DR COLIN SHEPPARD MB, BS, FRANZCO
We encourage all of the councillors to visit Palestine and by that, we mean not on one the junkets that the “Lobby” organises for the politicians where all they see is what the israeli Govt wants them to see.
We in South Australia have begun a small scale awareness project about Israeli goods especially those produced in the Occupied areas like the Dead Sea region — Seacret cosmetic products.
See http://www.youtube.com/user/AustralianFOPA#p/a/u/o for more.
We feel that the only way we can make an impact is a grass-roots campaign as we do not have access to the media.
So the support you have given to the BDS Campaign is invaluable, so please vote to continue the momentum.