Renegade Activists have been involved in several of the campaigns against weapons manufacturers who are arming the rogue state of Israel in its genocide in Palestine and the West Bank. You can find research and information on some of these companies here.

ACTION STATEMENT – 4 JULY 2024

Today, anti-genocide activists ascend federal parliament – den of cowards, war criminals, and genocide enablers – in an act of solidarity with our Palestinian, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kin.

We are guided by their courage, staunchness and resistance to imperialist and settler-colonial violence.

This 4th of July, we draw attention to the sub-imperial role Australia fulfils in its obsequious subservience to the US empire.

Many of the war crimes committed and enabled by Australia have been carried out as an underling of US imperialism, and of its own exploitative capitalist interests at home and abroad. On this occasion of blood-soaked American flag waving, we declare to the Australian government, we will continue to unmask you, and resist the US imperial, hegemonic and capital interests you devote yourself to.

Of which the most pressing is US support for the genocidal state of Israel. Recipient to the lions share of US military aid since 1946, and acting as a strategic imperial outpost and enforcer in the SWANA region.

For nigh on 9 months, tens of thousands have protested to end Australia’s military and political relationship with the Israeli regime.

And yet despite this popular pressure, the Albanese labor government’s persistent support for this genocidal settler-colonial state comes as no surprise.

Australia is a nation founded upon genocide.

Since the invasion and illegal occupation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands in 1788, Australia has been relentless in its genocidal intent and actions carried out against the First and Forever Peoples of this continent.

Inaugurated by the Frontier Wars, extending into the missions, stations and reserves (which were early progenitors of the concentration camp), through to the Stolen Generations, Northern Territory Intervention, and the ongoing mass-incarceration and state-sanctioned murder of First Nations peoples.

Sovereignty was never ceded.

There can be no justice, no peace, on stolen land.

Successive Australian governments’ crimes have not been confined to this continent alone.

There has been a steady complicity in, and enabling of, war crimes and genocides abroad.

Whether through assisting the British empire in the Zulu wars, all the way through to Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Timor Leste, West Papua, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine (the first war crime Australia committed against Palestinians was the Surafend al-Amar massacre in 1918 – we have a long and sordid history here).

Until very recently, Julian Assange was facing 175 years of imprisonment for exposing US war crimes. Australia endorsed this persecution for years. This week, Julian Assange landed in Canberra a free man.

Yet, none of us are free until we are all free.

In this capital, upon its most hallowed of institutions, we emphasise the point that Australia continues to enable and commit war crimes as a lackey of our “great and powerful friends”.

Presently, the Australian government is selling arms and parts for the weapons systems being used by the Israeli regime to commit war crimes and genocide. Murdering and maiming tens of thousands of Palestinians, and displacing 1.7 million people. Destroying entire cities, towns, ecologies and homes, bombing refugee camps, killing aid workers, and supporting the murderous Israeli regime in its 76 year long colonisation of Palestinian people and land.

Exposing the masters of war is only the first step.

To the Albanese government, and the wretched legacy of every Australian government, we will not forget, we will not forgive, and we will continue to resist.

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.

ALWAYS WAS, ALWAYS WILL BE, ABORIGINAL LAND.