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Teacher Wasim El-Haj - a Palestinian-Australian teacher and member of NSWTF council, was banned from wearing the keffiyeh at Sydney Girls High School, after wearing it without issue for months. He was then forced out of his job by the NSW Education Department.
Sheik Wesam Charkawi - convenor of the Muslim vote, was suspended from his job by the NSW Education Department after comments on social media criticising the 'selective moral outrage' and Islamophobia behind the response to the video of Sydney nurses who threatened Israeli patients. He was reinstated after significant community pushback including two student protests at Granville Boys High where he works.
Dr Andrew Brooks - Lecturer in Media Cultures and on the branch committee of the NTEU at UNSW, has been part of organising to succesfully prevent UNSW from implementing the McCarthyist Universities Australia antisemitism definition, which is aimed at stifling Palestine solidarity and criticism of Israel's genocide in Gaza.
As Israel starves millions of people in Gaza, and has announced plans to permanently occupy Gaza and ethnically cleanse Palestinians, sanctions are being applied by the Australian government Education Departments and Universities, not against Israel, but against those who speak out against genocide.
This is part of a wider political backlash that has seen journalist Antoinette Lattouf sacked, academic Randa Abdel-Fattah have her funding frozen, cricket commentator Peter Lalor sacked, artists Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino dumped, and Queensland private school teacher Kellee Green suspended from her job - all for supporting Palestinian human rights. Come and discuss successful efforts to resist this backlash, what more needs to be done, and how solidarity against the backlash can contribute to the fight to free Palestine.