Harold Zwier

This article was originally published in The Age in November 2012. The republishing of the Leunig cartoon in Pearl and Irritations brought my article to mind.

On 21st November 2012, The Age published a cartoon by Michael Leunig which commented on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Leunig used a parody of the famous poem composed by Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller about the need to be vocal when one sees a wrong – even if not directly affected by it.

First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

There are variations to the poem and it seems it was first used in speeches Niemöller gave in 1946.

In Leunig’s cartoon, there are four frames to match the four stanzas of the original poem:

First they came for the Palestinians and I did not speak out because I was not a Palestinian.

Then they came for more Palestinians and I did not speak out because I feared hostility and trouble.

Then they came for even more Palestinians and I did not speak out because if I did, doors would close to me, hateful mail would arrive, bitterness and spiteful condemnations would follow.

Then they came for more and more Palestinians and I did not speak out because, by then, I had fallen into silence to reflect upon the appalling, disgraceful and impossible aspects of human nature.

There is an almost universal view in the leadership of the Victorian Jewish community that Leunig’s cartoon is antisemitic. The media release from the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission quoted chairperson Dr Dvir Abramovich presenting the following arguments to support that claim.

“‘First they came…’ introduces a celebrated statement attributed to German pastor Martin Niemöller about the apathy of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and their gradual elimination of certain groups. ‘They’, of course, referred to the Nazis. In Leunig’s cartoon, however, it is the Israelis who are the Nazis.

“And Leunig’s second antisemitic theme? That anyone who supports the Palestinians will immediately be besieged by the all powerful Jewish lobby, similarly jackbooted, treading on all who oppose them, closing doors in their faces, spiteful, hateful and bitter. In Leunig’s black and white world, Palestinian/Arab/Muslim lobby groups are muzzled and The Age would never dare to publish an article (or cartoon) critical of Israel.”

My reaction to the cartoon was very different. The power of a cartoon is in the many ways in which it can be interpreted. Once the cartoon is in the public domain it lives its own life – as indeed does Niemöller’s poem. My comments should therefore be understood to reflect a personal view.

That Leunig comes to his cartoon with the perspective of a Palestinian supporter merely sets the scene. The baseline of the cartoon is that Palestinians are always the victims. We know this isn’t a universal truth, but the cartoon isn’t a balanced dissertation on the Israeli Palestinian conflict – it’s a cartoon. It uses exaggeration to tell us something.

The parody of Niemöller’s language is playful: “First they came for the Palestinians . . . Then they came for more . . . Then they came for even more . . . etc.”. And in this respect Leunig can be criticised – or maybe he is being self-critical. Is he being too playful about the plight of the Palestinians in complaining overtly about silence as a form of tacit acceptance and covertly that publicly criticising Israeli treatment of Palestinians will be met with anger – from the Jewish community and “the all powerful Jewish lobby” to quote Dr Abramovich?

However the cartoon is also clever, because the reaction of the Jewish community, as articulated in the ADC media release, is in fact encapsulated within the cartoon. As Leunig said, “bitterness and spiteful condemnations would follow”, duly obliged by Dr Abramovich in his comments about the “ugly, simplistic cartoon”.

And so the Jewish community has been wedged. A more thoughtful response might have been to silently reflect on the sometimes appalling and disgraceful level of the debate about the conflict – and not just from one side. But, the genuinely held perception of antisemitism mandated a public response.

The Jewish community is a wonderful community, but sometimes I wish it was a little less weighed down by its collective memory and a little more informed by it. Sigh.

Perhaps, in the end, we might ask whether the cartoon is really about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or in fact about the conflict between the Jewish community and Leunig. It’s all a question of perception and interpretation – the power of the cartoon.

Harold Zwier is on the committee of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/08/leunig-cartoon-antisemitism-or-valid-political-comment/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Francesca Albanese: Cut All Ties With Israel
BY
FRANCESCA ALBANESE

17 July 2025

The occupied Palestinian territory [OPT] today is a hellscape. In Gaza, Israel has dismantled even the last United Nations function — humanitarian aid — in order to deliberately starve, displace time and again, or kill a population they have marked for elimination. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, ethnic cleansing advances through unlawful siege, mass displacement, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, widespread torture.

Across all areas under Israeli rule, Palestinians live under the terror of annihilation, broadcast in real time to a watching world. The very few Israeli people who stand against genocide, occupation, and apartheid — while the majority openly cheers and calls for more — remind us that Israeli liberation, too, is inseparable from Palestinian freedom.

The atrocities of the past twenty-one months are not a sudden aberration; they are the culmination of decades of policies to displace and replace the Palestinian people.

Against this backdrop, it is inconceivable that political forums, from Brussels to New York, are still debating recognition of the state of Palestine — not because it’s unimportant, but because for thirty-five years, states have stalled and refused recognition, pretending to “invest in the Palestinian Authority” while abandoning the Palestinian people to Israel’s relentless, rapacious territorial ambitions and unspeakable crimes.

Meanwhile, political discourse has reduced Palestine to a humanitarian crisis to manage in perpetuity rather than a political issue demanding principled and firm resolution: end permanent occupation, apartheid, and today genocide. And it is not the law that has failed or faltered — it is political will that has abdicated.

But today, we are also witnessing a rupture. Palestine’s immense suffering has cracked open the possibility of transformation. Even if this is not fully reflected in political agendas yet, a revolutionary shift is underway — one that, if sustained, will be remembered as a moment when history changed course. This is why I came to this meeting with a sense of being at a historical turning point, discursively and politically.

First, the narrative is shifting: away from Israel’s endlessly invoked “right to self-defense” and toward the long-denied Palestinian right to self-determination — systematically invisibilized, suppressed, and delegitimized for decades. The weaponization of antisemitism applied to Palestinian words and narratives, and the dehumanizing use of the terrorism framework for Palestinian action (from armed resistance to the work of NGOs pursuing justice in the international arena), has led to a global political paralysis that has been intentional. It must be redressed. The time is now.

The atrocities of the past twenty-one months are not a sudden aberration; they are the culmination of decades of policies to displace and replace the Palestinian people.

Second, and consequentially, we are seeing the rise of a new multilateralism: principled, courageous, increasingly led by the global majority. It pains me that I have yet to see this robustly include European countries. As a European, I fear what the region and its institutions have come to symbolize to many: a sodality of states preaching international law yet guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vassals to the US empire, even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery — and when it comes to Palestine, from silence to complicity.

But the presence of European countries at this meeting shows that a different path is possible. To them I say: the Hague Group has the potential to signal not just a coalition but a new moral center in world politics. Please, stand with them. Millions are watching — hoping — for leadership that can birth a new global order rooted in justice, humanity, and collective liberation. This is not just about Palestine. This is about all of us.

Principled states must rise to this moment. It does not need to have a political allegiance, color, political party flags, or ideologies: it needs to be upheld by basic human values. Those that Israel has been mercilessly crushing for twenty-one months now.

Meanwhile, I applaud the calling of this emergency conference in Bogotá to address the unrelenting devastation in Gaza. So it is on this that focus must be directed. The measures adopted in January by the Hague Group were symbolically powerful. It was the signal of the discursive and political shift needed.

But they are the absolute bare minimum. I implore you to expand your commitment, and to turn that commitment into concrete actions, legislatively and judicially in each of your jurisdictions, and to consider first and foremost what must we do to stop the genocidal onslaught. For Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, this question is existential. But it really is applicable to the humanity of all of us.

In this context, my responsibility here is to recommend to you, uncompromisingly and dispassionately, the cure for the root cause. We are long past dealing with symptoms, the comfort zone of too many these days. And my words will show that what the Hague Group has committed to do and is considering expanding upon is a small commitment toward what’s just and due based on your obligations under international law — obligations, not sympathy, not charity.

Each state [must] immediately review and suspend all ties with Israel: their military, strategic, political, diplomatic, economic relations — both imports and exports — and make sure that their private sector, insurers, banks, pension funds, universities, and other goods and service providers in the supply chains do the same. Treating the occupation as business as usual translates into supporting or providing aid or assistance to the unlawful presence of Israel in the OPT. These ties must be terminated as a matter of urgency.

Let’s be clear: I mean cutting ties with Israel as a whole. Cutting ties only with the “components” of it in the OPT is not an option.

This is in line with the duty on all states stemming from the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion that confirmed the illegality of Israel’s prolonged occupation, which it declared tantamount to racial segregation and apartheid. The UN General Assembly adopted that opinion. These findings are more than sufficient for action.

Further, it is the state of Israel that is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, so it is the state that must be responsible for its wrongdoings. As I argued in my last report to the Human Rights Council, the Israeli economy is structured to sustain the occupation and has now turned genocidal. It is impossible to disentangle Israel’s state policies and economy from its long-standing policies and economy of occupation.

It has been inseparable for decades. The longer states and others stay engaged, the more this illegality at its heart is legitimized. This is the complicity. Now that the economy has turned genocidal, there is no “good” Israel and “bad” Israel.

I ask you to consider this moment as if we were sitting here in the 1990s, discussing the case of apartheid South Africa. Would you have proposed selective sanctions on SA for its conduct in individual Bantustans? Or would you have recognized the state’s criminal system as a whole? And here, what Israel is doing is worse. This comparison is a legal and factual assessment supported by international legal proceedings that many in this room are part of.

This is what concrete measures mean. Negotiating with Israel on how to manage what remains of Gaza and West Bank, in Brussels or elsewhere, is an utter dishonor to international law.

And to the Palestinians and those from all corners of the world standing by them, often at great cost and sacrifice, I say whatever happens, Palestine will have written this tumultuous chapter — not as a footnote in the chronicles of would-be conquerors but as the newest verse in a centuries-long saga of peoples who have risen against injustice, colonialism, and today more than ever neoliberal tyranny.

https://jacobin.com/2025/07/albanese-palestine-israel-cut-ties

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.