Dear friends & comrades,
Welcome back to the Radio Reversal podcast! Happy Sunday, and Eid Mubarak to those of you celebrating this week.
We are very excited to be releasing Episode 7 of our current podcast series, following the Justice for Palestine movement here in so-called brisbane, and working to understand the political and moral imperatives of this moment. This series is a small labour of love and solidarity dedicated to everyone who is contending with the relentless violence of colonial racial states: from the Palestinians in Gaza and worldwide who are grieving for their loved ones and for their lands, to West Papuans struggling against Indonesian occupation, to First Nations peoples across the world fighting against ever-changing forms of settler colonial violence and dispossession.
In this series, we are working to honour the commitment of everyday people struggling here on the ground, as well as learning from the long-standing and sustained struggle of Palestinian people across the world in their ongoing fight for their homelands. One of the things that comes up consistently across this series is the recognition that struggles against oppression and colonisation must be fought everywhere at once. If you’ve been listening to the past few episodes of this podcast, you’ll know that this is what we’ve been tracing for the past few episodes. We’ve been following both long-standing and emergent solidarities: between people struggling against colonialism and racism globally, between people fighting systems of incarceration and surveillance, between people experiencing the brutality of oppression and subjugation in diverse forms.
In this episode, we begin to turn to the everyday work of liberation, and the ongoing struggle to build modes of resistance that can disrupt systems of oppression wherever they take root. We begin in this episode with the Palestinian-led movement that uses strategies of Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions to build global support for Palestine. In broad terms:
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.
Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.
BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world. Since its launch in 2005, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.
This episode is timed to coincide with a major upsurge in global BDS organising. As many of you likely already know, April 15th has been called as a date for a global economic blockade of Israel, including a call for workers across the world to strike from their jobs and participate in direct action to disrupt business as usual for companies complicit in and benefiting from the genocide in Palestine. Here in so-called brisbane, organisers from Shut Down Ferra have called for a half-day blockade of Ferra Engineering in Tingalpa, kicking off bright and early at 5am. You can find more details of that event here and here.
In this episode, Roshan digs into the archive to pull out some older conversations about using strategies of Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions here in so-called brisbane, as well as field recordings from Justice for Palestine events over the past decade. You’ll hear a lot in this episode from Justice for Palestine organiser Phil Monsour, who has been one of the architects of the BDS movement here in so-called brisbane. You’ll also hear some older interviews from the Radio Reversal crew, including the Anna’s (Cerreto & Carlson) speaking with the indomitable Palestinian organiser, writer and theorist Jeanine Hourani in 2021. You’ll also hear field recordings from the more recent Radio Reversal archive, including discussions of the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions strategy at community meetings and rallies. We’ve also borrowed some archival material for this episode from the Brisbane BDS YouTube page. You can find the videos of earlier Justice for Palestine events and BDS actions here: https://m.youtube.com/user/BrisbaneBDS
If you want to dig deeper into the material you’ve heard in this episode, we recommend checking out Jeanine & her sibling Hasib’s article for Overland, which is referenced in our 2021 interview: https://overland.org.au/2021/06/the-politics-and-solidarity-of-food/
You can find lots of detail about the origin and goals of the BDS movement and how it supports the struggle for Palestinian liberation by heading over to the BDS Movement website, the BDS Australia website, and the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network.
There’s also some helpful explainers in the following news reports from Al-Jazeera in 2018:
As always, another jam-packed episode of the Justice for Palestine Magan-djin podcast. A reminder, as usual, that the primary purpose of this podcast is to encourage listeners to get actively involved in the movement for Palestinian liberation, in whatever ways you can. If you’d like to get in touch with us to talk about ways you might be able to support the work of Justice for Palestine Magan-djin, Shut Down Ferra, Queensland Muslim Incorporated and other affiliated groups, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We strongly recommend that you sign up to the Justice for Palestine Magandjin mailing list, if you haven’t already, to make sure that you always hear about upcoming events. And if you have any questions, criticisms, or reflections on this episode or the podcast so far, please let us know.
Yours in solidarity,
Anna (for the Radio Reversal collective)
Share this post