School strike for Palestine

A correction -- and some links

Dear subscribers

My piece yesterday on the school strike for Palestine wrongly stated that the strike in Victoria and NSW is scheduled for today — Thursday. The strike is called for today in Victoria and South Australia, and for tomorrow, Friday, in NSW. Apologies for the Melbourne-centric error. The story has been updated.

Now that you’re here, some links that may be of interest.

Here’s me and the indefatigable Melbourne writer Lee Kofman interviewed on J-AIR’s The Israel Connexion (the conversation starts at 31:31): https://omny.fm/shows/israel-connexion/reactions-to-the-gaza-war

And here’s me sharing again my tale of doors closing and doors opening with Jon Astro & Ricky Allpike on their hit heterodox podcast, The New Flesh (the interview was recorded before October 7):

Here, Susie Linfield unpacks how the hell “the left” has arrived at a place where it finds common cause with an Islamofascist death cult: https://quillette.com/2023/11/18/the-return-of-the-progressive-atrocity/

For people understandably confused about Israel and Palestine today and yesterday, Ezra Klein gets Yossi Klein Halevi to explain the Israeli perspective, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-yossi-klein-halevi.html and Amjad Iraqi the Palestinian (Iraqi has some illuminating observations towards the end).

And elsewhere in the relentless war on Enlightenment values, Hobart City Councillor Louise Elliot is being forced to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to defend an allegation she “incited hatred on the basis of gender identity,” by saying women don’t have penises and all the rest: https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/i-spoke-the-truth/

Finally, a bit of an ad — for me and for the media ecosystem in which I’ve naturally landed. October 7 and the Israel-Hamas war have shown the critical importance of media diversity in informing global opinion. The more polarising and combustible the issue, the more we need reporting and analysis that resists groupthink and brings a range of stories and perspectives to the surface. It’s frankly a matter of life and death. When journalists at The New York Times instinctively believe unsubstantiated claims about Israel illegally targeting civilian infrastructure, the violent backlash is soon felt in cities around the world.

I’d like to think I’m doing my own tiny bit here. I can’t do it without your support so a massive thank you, in particular to my paid subscribers — you’ll be getting exclusive content soon. And from now on paid subscribers only will have access to the comments section. I love the robust debates on this site; echo chambers are terribly unhealthy. But at this stage I think it’s fair to restrict comments to people who have pledged financial support for my work.

Till next time.

Julie