Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat, member of the Executive Committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, affirmed that the U.S. and Western imperialist powers, and the Zionist occupation and its genocidal crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, bear full political and moral responsibility for the events that took place in Sydney, Australia, on December 14. The state of boiling anger erupting in the streets of the world stems directly from the open genocide against Palestine, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Lebanon, and the unlimited support provided to it by the Western powers, especially the United States.
In a media interview with Palestine Today TV, Barakat stressed that those who commit mass massacres, destroy cities, starve populations, and kill children and women under official Western cover have no right whatsoever to claim innocence or play the role of victim. He argued that attempts by Western media to distort public consciousness and sever events from their colonial roots are nothing but a direct extension of a system of complicity with the Zionist project. He also emphasized that the Chabad organization, which organized the event, is a deeply Zionist institution that is involved directly in colonial settlement in Palestine, noting that during the genocide on Gaza, invading occupation soldiers publicly announced they were “establishing a Chabad House” in a Palestinian house occupied and defaced by the genocidal soldiers.
Barakat said that criminalizing solidarity with Palestine in Australia, Germany, and Britain; pursuing activists; and repressing anti-Zionist voices in Western capitals will not succeed in containing the rising popular anger. Rather, it will deepen the moral and political exposure of regimes implicated in supporting, arming, and shielding the occupation. He noted that Australia has continually aligned itself, as a fellow settler colonial state, with the United States and Canada, as well as Britain and New Zealand as part of the “Five Eyes” surveillance project, and in full alliance with the Zionist project, including repeatedly acting to suppress demonstrations for Palestine and labeling mass protest against genocide as “anti-Semitism.” The Australian government has repeatedly aligned itself with the warmongering of U.S.-led imperialism, including baselessly expelling the Iranian ambassador over nothing more than lies from the Mossad.
Barakat predicted that the world will witness further violence directed against the Zionist movement and the leaders of its organizations and instruments as a result of the crimes committed by the entity against the peoples of the region—particularly in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen– which have been allowed to continue with complete impunity, direction and support from the imperialist powers.
Barakat concluded by emphasizing that the occupation—not the enraged peoples—is the source of violence and instability, and that the only path to halting this ongoing explosion begins with stopping the genocidal war on Gaza, ending the occupation, holding the leaders of the Zionist entity accountable as war criminals, and recognizing the full right of the Palestinian people to resist and liberate their homeland from the river to the sea.