On October 11, I attended a vigil for Palestinians in Federation Square, Melbourne. The event did not attract politicians’ censure as it was sufficiently distanced in time from Jewish vigils on 7 October.

In the week before 7 October, Labor and Coalition politicians criticised organisers of events to memorialise the slaughter of more than 42,000 Palestinians. These gatekeepers of appropriate mourning declared that it was “inappropriate” to hold Palestinian events on the date of the Hamas attacks or on the preceding weekend. There were constant reminders that 7 October marked one year since the largest loss of Jewish life (more than 1,200) on any single day since the Holocaust. By conflating 7 October with the Holocaust, Jewish trauma was turned into a weapon of war, redirecting the grief of the Holocaust onto a people who had nothing to do with it. Remembrance of a twentieth-century genocide was used to block remembrance of a contemporary one.

Federal and state politicians from both major parties attended Jewish vigils; as far as I am aware, none attended events commemorating Palestinian deaths. “In the interests of moral clarity”, Peter Dutton reminded those at a vigil in Sydney of Israel’s right to defend itself and its people from existential threats. The differential distribution of political grieving was on full display.

As Judith Butler has written, “The question of whose lives are worth grieving is an integral part of whose lives are worth valuing.” One set of losses are more horrifying than another. The differential characterisation of Jewish and Palestinian deaths........

© Pearls and Irritations