Community members again protested outside the United States’s most important foreign spy base — Pine Gap — on November 9 over its role in the Western-backed Israeli genocide in Palestine. They also called for war criminals to be made accountable.
According to Professor Richard Tanter, it is “highly probable that Pine Gap data has been provided to the [Israeli Occupation Forces] after October 8 [2023] and is still provided today”.
David Shoebridge, Greens spokesperson for defence, told the protesters that Australia must divest from the global US war machine.
“Since the so-called ceasefire came into effect in Gaza a month ago, at least 241 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel in Gaza, and a further 10 Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Edi Donald said that Trump’s “peace plan aims to enforce the unjust ‘peace’ of colonialism … that allows Pine Gap to collect intelligence from stolen Arrernte land to be used in the genocide of Palestinian people.”
“This plan fails to mention Palestinians’ right to self-determination, ignores the International Court of Justice’s 2024 confirmation that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end and expects Palestinians, who have a right under international law to armed struggle against an occupying power, to unilaterally disarm.”
Jorgen Doyle said the biggest crimes being committed on Arrernte country — alongside the continued dispossession and mass incarceration of Aboriginal people — are “war crimes facilitated by the Pine Gap genocide base. That base sends intelligence to the Israeli military that is used to target journalists, medical professionals, scholars, schools, universities, hospitals and all civilian life in Gaza.”
Adam Abdullatief, from Mparntwe for Falastin, linked the struggles for decolonisation and dignity on Arrernte Country with the resistance to genocide in Palestine and Sudan.
A statement by Mparntwe for Falastin was read out, as were Palestinian poems of resistance. As the gathering ended, a replica of the Pine Gap radomes made of gym balls was dismantled by children.