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The avowed aim of Hamas is the complete destruction of Israel. Israel believes she cannot rest until Hamas is utterly annihilated. These are the starting positions in the Middle-East negotiations, and more bloodshed seems inevitable. Or is it?
A student activist group from Australia has emerged as an influential power player in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called a press conference in Jerusalem yesterday to announce that the Cross-Campus Gaza Defence Committee (CCGDC) had convinced the Israeli government to reverse their approach to the conflict in Gaza. The next two months will see the adoption by Israel of the CCGDC’s main platforms – a withdrawal of all Israeli Defence Forces personnel from Gaza, an end to the blockade and a complete cessation of Israeli military aggression.
Formed in late January 2009, the CCGDC is a coalition of Australian student activists from the University of Sydney, University of Western Sydney and Swinburne University who have campaigned on their campuses for their student bodies to pass motions mourning Palestinian deaths in the conflict and condemning Israeli aggression. They have also pushed for formal expressions of solidarity with the Palestinians, and all students in Australia affected by ‘Israel’s war’.
The group amassed clout quickly, evident from this move by Israel. Prime Minister Olmert stated - “The activism of the CCGDC opened our eyes and convinced us to forgive the ongoing terrorist attacks on our citizens and adopt the policy model formulated by these brave Australian students. I know some of you here have previously labeled them ‘raving mad 20-something punks from the Antipodes’, but I respectfully disagree with that assessment. They cannot be refuted when they say ‘Killing is Bad’. It’s a truth that the CCGDC helped me – helped us all - to see.”
Why is Israel’s PM taking advice on international relations and military strategy from Australian students? Olmert explained: “the force of their reasoning and moderate approach won [him] over.” He also stated that had Swinburne and the University of Western Sydney been members of the Group of Eight, a group of Australia’s most prestigious universities, he may have heeded their calls for change even earlier. An embarrassed Olmert added “Like most people, up until recently we thought they were both some sort of technical training college, like TAFE… but once we became aware that they were actual universities, with such clear-minded activists amongst their students, we fell in line with them quick smart!”
It’s not just the soft power of the CCGDC that forced Olmert’s hand. An unnamed IDF commander told us “It became untenable to maintain our opposition to the CCGDC. A highly-trained, well equipped army supported by the world’s only remaining superpower can do little against their arsenal of posters, badges and tables outside Fisher” Our source then turned and wept into his matzo-ball soup.
Noah Whyte, current SRC president, has been a focus of condemnation for dismissing the demands of the activists as “pie-in-the-sky” and “laughably blinkered.” Noah has refused the CCGDC’s demands to convene an emergency executive meeting on the issue. Unfortunately for Noah, his is an increasingly lonely position after Israel’s announcement was followed by a chorus of similar statements from Britain, Germany, Japan, the US and pretty much the entire UN General Assembly. Said a US State Department spokesperson “We just had no bargaining chips left. You don’t argue with influence like that of the CCGDC, not for long.”
What’s next for the student activists? They achieved camaraderie and peace in perhaps the most strife-torn region of the modern world, and they made two groups previously Hell-bent on the destruction of the other into the best of friends. With Israel-Palestine finally solved, they’ve set their sights on ‘The Big One’, making sure that nobody in the world ever dies again.
