Supporters of the Palestinians’ struggle for justice might well be amazed to see the Labor government criticising Israel.

The campaign group Students for Palestine, successfully launched in 2009, is back for another year.

Groups like AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) are undeniably powerful. However the argument that the US supports and funds Israel because of the pressure of the pro-Israel lobby does not see the full picture.

The similarity between Israel today and South Africa under apartheid does not end with the racist nature of both systems.

Whether we are talking about the more conciliatory “negotiations” path inside the UN or the more defiant-sounding “unilateral” declaration, proclaiming a national state is a step backwards for the Palestinian national movement. 

December 6 saw the should-be Hague dwellers Ehud Olmert and Silvan Shalom picketed by protesters in Melbourne.

The Palestinian struggle is at a crucial juncture. Mahmoud Abbas's treasonous collaboration with Israel and the US to try to bury the UN Goldstone report, which raised the prospect of trials of Israeli leaders for war crimes committed during the January 2009 assault on Gaza, has unleashed an unprecedented barrage of condemnation throughout Palestinian society.

In an important step forward for the international Palestine solidarity campaign, the British Trade Union Congress (equivalent of the ACTU) has voted to back a boycott of Israeli goods.

In mid-September, a visiting Palestinian-American academic told a Melbourne lecture that Israel is an apartheid state, more extreme in its policy against Palestinians than South Africa had been against its Black population. Professor Saree Makdisi is one of a growing number who make such a comparison - usually provoking an outraged response from pro-Israel commentators.

In 2002 the former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Force Moshe Ya'alon stated: "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." Looking at the situation for Palestinians today it is clear that there is continuity in the aspirations of Israel Defence Force chiefs.

Hajo Meyer, author of the book The End of Judaism, was born in Bielefeld, in Germany, in 1924. In 1939, he fled on his own at age 14 to the Netherlands to escape the Nazi regime, and was unable to attend school. A year later, when the Germans occupied the Netherlands he lived in hiding with a poorly forged ID. Meyer was captured by the Gestapo in March 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp a week later. He is one of the last survivors of Auschwitz.

Since their election to the Palestinian Legislative Assembly in January 2006 Hamas seems to be at the centre of a maelstrom of Israeli violence and Palestinian resistance.