Some judged a weekend. We lived three years
'Some seem to believe that unless everything changes immediately, nothing has changed at all. Politics doesn't work that way'
Following my article in the The AJN and my interview with Josh Burns on Behind The Headlines about the ALP National Conference in late July, I received a familiar chorus of criticism.
“Traitor”. “Capitulators”. And the mildest rebuke, “Deeply troubling.”
Apparently, after nearly three years of fighting inside the Labor movement for our community, we have somehow become the problem.
Let me set the record straight. Those offering these judgments were, for the most part, not the ones sitting in branch meetings after 7 October. They were not the ones walking into State Conferences wondering whether today’s abuse would be verbal or physical. They were not the ones being called “filthy Zios”, watching Palestinian flags dominate political events, facing motions built on falsehoods, enduring intimidation and harassment, or seeing the Jewish state caricatured as uniquely evil.
Many of us were, week after week, month after month across ALP branches, conferences, unions and internal forums. In chats and txts, and endlessly vicious online abuse. It was exhausting and frequently demoralising. But we understood what the moment demanded.
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