Press Release
Proposal to Ban Hizb ut Tahrir: Who is importing foreign conflict into Australia?

Under the banner of protecting social cohesion, successive governments have repeatedly emphasized the need to not import foreign conflicts into Australia. The instruction is premised on the view a managed ‘peace’ has already been established in Australia, and importing foreign conflicts only disrupt this ‘peace’ by amplifying old or distant grievances.

But are these grievances old and distant, and can Australia’s claim to neutrality withstand interrogation?

Australia’s Foreign Minister Dr H.V. Evatt, who at the time chaired the UN General Assembly’s Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine, was responsible for the introduction of the Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 and ensured Australia was the first country to vote in favour of the resolution. Indeed, Australia has long contributed to the dispossession of the Palestinian people, proud of its role in capturing Gaza and Jerusalem on behalf of the British in 1917 that paved the way for its mandate over Palestine and subsequent transfer to Zionist control.

Palestine is not only not a foreign conflict, it is a conflict of Australia’s making. Calls to abandon this conflict are only impressed upon Palestinians and their supporters, as Australia has consistently supported, and continues to support, the Zionist occupation.

Australians, who pledge their loyalty to the Zionist entity and build their entire identity around it, continually advance Zionist demands in this country, even when it goes against Australia’s interests like the past fake Australian passport scandal in the UAE. Zionist advocates in this country participate directly in war crimes in Palestine, raise funds supporting such efforts and provide political and ideological cover for such crimes.

But rather than being prosecuted for such criminality - efforts that are deemed criminal by Australian standards - Zionist demands are instead accommodated through a host of political, legislative and economic imperatives.

Pro-Palestinian activists’ efforts, on the other hand, are consistently demonised, and increasingly, outright criminalised. Even if it is the mere raising of words protesting such abomination.

In the context of Palestine, the call to abandon foreign conflicts is a call for advocates of Palestine to abandon efforts aimed at redressing Zionist occupation, dispossession and genocide. It is a criminal demand designed to normalise the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
in Australia