By Sally Low
"The main concern of our group is that the Israeli government claims to speak for all Jews. It presents this picture that all Jews agree with whatever it does with regards to Palestine or international affairs. What that amounts to within Israel, but also within the Western press, is a censorship of other viewpoints."
Marta Romer, a member of Jewish Women in Support of an Independent Palestine recently spoke with Green Left about the group, which is based in Sydney, its origins and its attitude towards the war in the Gulf.
She explained that it grew out of a smaller group that had been meeting for about four years and talking about questions of identity and difference.
"All of us are feminists who have been active in the women's movement. We were looking at our position as Jewish women and how we were situated within a predominantly Anglo-Saxon feminist movement.
"For a lot of us, even before the intifada began, the issue of Israel and Palestine has become increasingly critical. We feel that as long as the Israeli government claims to speak for all Jews and presents itself as acting in the name of Jewish people in international affairs, we must voice our opposition. Our silence could be taken for agreement."
Marta said the group opposes the Gulf War while condemning the Iraqi government for occupying Kuwait "and for its abuse of its own people, including Kurds, and for its bombing of Saudi Arabia and Israel. Like many Jews, we have family and friends in Israel for whom we are afraid.
"At the same time, we support the view that the present military attack by America and allied nations will solve nothing and will only bring massive destruction to the people and the environment of the Middle East and beyond."
The women are worried by the increase of racism. "Our own individual experiences of anti-Semitism motivated us to speak out against the recent wave of persecution against Muslims and Arabs in Australia. We feel very concerned with the racism that has been inherent in the media coverage."
The group is opposed to "the Israeli military presence in the occupied territories and the appalling denial of human rights to the Palestinian people". It favours "direct negotiations with the Palestinians and their chosen representatives, the
PLO.
"We feel that Israel, like all nations, has a right to exist and that Jews, like all people, are entitled to a homeland, but it's the actual reality of the state of Israel, the policies of those who govern it, that cause us very deep distress."
Marta sees as "incredibly arrogant" the Australian government's recent decision to downgrade its contacts with the PLO and Senator Ray's statement that the credibility of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people would have to be considered. She calls it "indicative of the whole attitude of the West in its dealings with the Middle East. If you are in a situation of conflict with another people, those are the people you must negotiate with. It's not up to the United States or Israel to determine who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people."
On the links between the Palestine-Israel dispute and the war in the Gulf, Marta says, "In the Western press the link is obscured. But if you look at the history of the Middle East, the conflict of Israel and Palestine has its roots in the history of the colonisation of the Middle East, the intervention of the British and French and now the US.
"The Israeli and Palestinian people as well as the Iraqis have inherited the conflicts produced through this legacy of colonial intervention. We see that the present military intervention in the region is determined not only by America's need to be in control of the world's supply of oil but also by the desire to maintain Western hegemony in the Middle East. So the conflict of the Palestinian people is also a struggle against colonisation ...
"To be Jewish does not by definition mean to support a Zionist position. I think that needs to be said not just because other people need to know it but also for Jews who feel opposition to what Israel's role in the occupied territories has been but never hear this opposition voiced elsewhere. The opposition to Israeli policy isn't restricted to young Jews or radical or secular Jews, it includes people who are survivors of the holocaust, older Jews, religious Jews."