Moral outrage, simply untrue: Marcia Langton slams Blak sovereignty’s Palestine stance

Distinguished Indigenous leader Marcia Langton has condemned the ‘Blak sovereignty’ movement’s proposition that Indigenous Australians feel solidarity with Palestinians.

Indigenous leader and Melbourne University professor Marcia Langton. Picture: Peter Casamento

Distinguished Indigenous leader Marcia Langton has condemned the “Blak sovereignty” movement’s proposition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians feel solidarity with Palestinians as “simply untrue”, saying there is very little that is comparable in the two peoples’ situations.

Professor Langton offered a withering assessment of the pro-Palestinian strand of the Indigenous rights movement after Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni wore a pin with both Aboriginal and Palestinian flags on his jacket during a discussion of the Israel-Hamas war on ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night.

President of the Australia Paestine Advocacy Network Nasser Mashni wore a pin with both Aboriginal and Palestinian flags on his jacket on Q+A. Picture: ABC

It follows a decision by independent senator Lidia Thorpe – the voice of the Blak sovereignty movement in parliament – to announce on social media last month: “I stand with Palestine!”

Jewish leaders such as Liberal MP Julian Leeser and prominent lawyer Mark Leibler were longtime and vocal supporters of the campaign for an Indigenous voice to parliament, which remote Indigenous communities mostly supported on referendum day but which the Blak sovereignty movement vocally opposed.

Professor Langton is the first Indigenous campaigner for the voice to write in the mainstream media about the Israel-Hamas war. Writing in The Australian on Wednesday, Professor Langton begins by describing the loss of thousands of lives in Gaza as unjustifiable. She condemns Hamas and says she is horrified and deeply saddened by the loss of lives in the Levant, the Israelis who were murdered and kidnapped by Hamas and the innocent Palestinians who are being used as human shields by Hamas.

“As an Indigenous Australian, I can have little effect in stopping these horrors but it is necessary to be clear about a few matters,” she writes.

“‘Blak sovereignty’ advocates have entwined two extraordinary propositions – one that is simply untrue and one that is a moral ­outrage.

“First, they claim that ‘Indigenous Australians feel solidarity with Palestinians’. This is false; it is the view of a tiny few, if put in those words. Most of us are aware of the complexity and that there is very little comparable in our respective situations, other than our humanity.

“Second, they refuse to condemn Hamas. I am aghast and embarrassed. They do not speak for me. I fear and loathe the possibility of further loss of life in this terrible crisis.

“I fear also that our multicultural society is being torn apart by people deluded about terrorism who have used their protests as a cover for anti-Semitism. Our Jewish and Palestinian communities deserve respect and compassion. I do not support the violence we have seen in Australia recently as a result of this conflict.”

Professor Langton is categorical that Hamas are terrorists and that Palestinian Islamic Jihad are terrorists.

“The slogan ‘Not all Palestinians are Hamas’ denies the fact that innocent Palestinians are being used as human shields by these terrorists,” she writes.

“No legitimate Aboriginal leader will permit our movement to be associated with terrorists. I can state confidently, based on my long experience in Aboriginal communities and giving advice to Indigenous corporations, that the majority Aboriginal view is a repulsion of terrorism.”

Australian Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe wears a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf as she speaks in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra.

On Tuesday when The Australian sent questions about the Israel-Hamas war to Greens Senator Dorinda Cox – a Yamatji-Noongar woman from Western Australia – she did not answer them. Instead, her office referred the newspaper to Sydney-based Indigenous community organiser and activist Meriki Onus. On November 2, Ms Onus signed an open letter to University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell accusing him of stoking anti-Palestinian racism in a statement to staff and students on October 25 in which he condemned “all acts of violence and terrorism”.

While Professor Maskell referred in his statement to “horrifying numbers of Israeli and Palestinian citizens, and indeed citizens from other nations” who had been killed and injured, Ms Onus and others who signed the letter said he was on the wrong side of history.

“The Vice Chancellor’s statement references anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, but fails to assert the Palestinian People’s rights to self-determination,” the letter states.

Ms Onus told The Australian on Wednesday that she saw the colonisation of Australia as very similar to the dispossession of Palestinians.

“I can’t speak for all Aboriginal people but certainly in my circles in Sydney and Melbourne, almost every Aboriginal person I know understands the position of Palestinian people experiencing genocide and dispossession,” Ms Onus said.

In August, former Referendum Council co-chair Mark Leibler marked the 70th anniversary of his law firm with a speech in which he noted the land-based identity that Jewish and Indigenous people share.

Mr Leibler famously mentored a young Noel Pearson in the 1990s. They have remained close. “My sense of the ties between my Jewish heritage, the centrality of the state of Israel, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditions and cultures grew even stronger through my former articled clerk and great friend, Noel Pearson,” Mr Leibler said in his address to guests at the celebration of Arnold Bloch Leibler in Melbourne.