At a time when Israeli’s military continues its genocidal slaughter of the people of Gaza, mostly women and children, when torture of Palestinian prisoners reaches the depths of barbarity, when Lebanese citizens are murdered, their towns and villages destroyed, a so called international community watches. At least one principled Australian citizen has done far more than watch. In response to decades of Israel’s unholy trinity : destroy, destroy, kill, kill, lie, lie, Dr. Gideon Polya, a scientist, author, human rights activist, has crafted visions for a potentially socially just future for Palestinians as well as Israelis. He does so in the 761 pages of his voluminous books, ‘Free Palestine.’ This wide ranging work, marinated by scrupulously careful research, is a Wikipedia like achievement. It will therefore outlive the Israeli barbarities and the western world’s reluctance to hold Israel to account.
Gideon provides encyclopaedic sources to explain Israeli terror. Anyone delving into the book can identify Israeli colonialist aggression, their stealing of Palestinian lands and their determination to ethnically cleanse Palestine, a goal compounded by their macabre pride in slaughtering people whom their leaders do not regard as human. The book’s contents are so comprehensive as to be exhausting as well as exhaustive. Early chapters provide the detail of Israel’s genocidal activities long before the Gazan government, Hamas, revolted in October 2023 took over 200 hostages and killed more than 1000 Israelis.
Israeli leaders and their western supporters have spoken as though nothing happened before October 2023, as though everyone should be blind to decades of Israeli slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians, as though Hamas are the only terrorists. Gideon mocks and disproves those claims.
A compelling feature of Gideon’s attention to history, concerns his comparisons between Australia’s genocidal policies towards First Nation peoples and the terrifying violence of Israeli military, police and settlers towards the Indigenous people of Palestine. In both cases, colonialist invaders committed war crimes.
In a project which seeks to free Palestine by showing Israel’s racist, apartheid policies, which wants to ensure that every reader knows of US military and financial support for this discriminatory one religion state, there are highly significant sections. Special and unusually brief attention to specific people and events comes from a smorgasbord menu. Take your pick.
Engaging topics include Israel’s lying about their murder of renowned and loved Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, evidence showing Israel leading the world in killing children and journalists, plus revelations about cowardly, thoughtless Melbourne University adopting the IHRA’s sloppy, controversial definition of anti-Semitism. As befits a scientist scrupulous in attention to details, Gideon is careful to distinguish between aggressive, land grabbing, terrorist oriented Zionism and Judaism. As the yardstick for assessing Israel’s Zionist policies, he quotes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
Scrutiny of those documents leads to chapters on the similarities between racism and apartheid in Australia and in Israel, plus similar practices across the US and Canada. Gideon expresses the outrage which readers should surely feel, and does so with massive accumulation of evidence and in a few cases with his taste for a welter of adjectives. Not hidden by the characteristically empirical nature of his inquiries, Gideon nevertheless makes clear his concern with kindness, with non violence, with deep respect for human rights and for a common humanity.
This is a work to consult as much as to read, to use as basis for future research not just ponder the past. But Free Palestine is a powerful present indictment of Israel’s horrific, end of time atrocities.
‘Free Palestine’ invites protest and outrage at Israeli genocide and at the connivance of powerful governments, the US, UK, Germany, Australia who aid and abet Israel. I waded through Gideon’s analysis at the same time that 1000 writers, including Arundhati Roy and Sally Rooney, have commented on the seriousness of the events which Gideon Polya describes. Those writers state that in regard to Israeli slaughters, ‘We face the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century.’ Gideon must have anticipated that judgment. In his painstaking presentation of evidence to explain why Palestinians should be freed, he teaches that when witnessing the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians, no one should remain silent. Each of this book’s 36 chapters will tell you why.
Stuart Rees AM , is Professor Emeritus, University of Sydney, founder of the Sydney Peace Foundation, recipient of the Jerusalem (al Quds) Peace Prize and author of the recent Policy Press book ‘Cruelty or Humanity.’
