After being arrested in Brisbane for wearing a T-shirt that read ‘Jews for a free Palestine from the river to the sea’, a 73-year-old Jewish protester writes that the law is suppressing dissent and targeting supporters of human rights.

Last weekend, I was one of 22 people arrested in Brisbane. Whether it was necessary for so many police to arrest one 73 year old Jew, I’ll let you decide. Perhaps unconscious echoes of a distant, but never to be forgotten, Jewish past.

This abjectly racist law was designed to suppress a liberation movement, targeting Palestinian and Muslim Australians. There is no mechanism in Queensland’s law to improve social cohesion or protect Jews or anyone else. The law is framed to cow supporters of human rights, carefully worded to avoid capturing the language of the Likud Party’s Zionist expansionism, while Queensland maintains the weakest gun laws in Australia. The contrast could not be more telling.

If you’ve already seen media and are sick of my appearances, honestly, I’m on your side. It seems, however, that people may still be interested.

In 1969, aged 16, I first became active in South Africa against apartheid;........

© Pearls and Irritations