Issue 1: Editorial

December 2021

To produce creative work on this continent is to reckon with the violence of the Australian state. It is to reckon with the relentless racism and propaganda of a settler-colonial occupation. It is to reckon with massacre, with displacement, with the destruction of land and the theft of childhood, with a catastrophe of dispossession.

During 2021, from the vantage of the Australian colony, we watched the the state of Israel murder entire families in besieged Gaza. We watched Israeli settler organisations threaten the homes of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem. We watched brutal assaults on peaceful worshippers at Al-Aqsa mosque. We watched the mass arrests and killings of those who assembled to oppose their own ethnic cleansing. These events, of course, are familiar and recurrent episodes in the violent colonisation of Palestine by zionists.

This year, we also witnessed the Unity Intifada – the most recent iteration of a deep tradition of revolutionary politics, in which Palestinians have organised for land back and to resist colonisation, mass surveillance, arbitrary incarceration and apartheid. 

For years, the anti-Palestinian directive of Australian publisher Schwartz Media has been an open secret amongst journalists, acting to chill any reporting and commentary that is critical of Israel. Due in large part to the work of Palestinian activists, knowledge of this racism has spread, and this year a number of writers and artists withdrew their creative labour from Schwartz’s various platforms. These platforms include: The Saturday Paper, 7am Podcast, The Monthly, Black Inc. Books, Quarterly Essay, The Culture Podcast, Australian Foreign Affairs and Anna Schwartz Gallery.

The Australian state directly contributes to the occupation of Palestine. This furthers our obligation to oppose zionism on this continent, especially when it masquerades as progressivism. Schwartz has sought to occupy progressive spaces and absorb progressive voices. Their proactive silencing and deliberate erasure of Palestinian voices enables the violence of Israel. 

Unsurprisingly, many speaking out against Schwartz Media are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. People who share the experience of settler-colonial violence, uphold a courageous tradition of radical resistance and share deep and eternal connection to their homelands. Their actions sit in a long history of Black-Palestinian solidarity and the ongoing context of First Nations sovereignty on this continent.

With this in mind, we started to discuss the possibility of an alternative platform to centre Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Palestinian voices in boycott of Schwartz. A publication both staunch in its defiance of colonialism and uncompromising in its love and solidarity. You are holding  the result in your hand.

As three non-Indigenous and non-Palestinian people, launching this project has been an enormous privilege. The Sunday Paper has been shaped by the fierce, articulate people who have offered their labour and guidance to this project. We hope that, like us, you are enriched and enraged by this work.

Yul Scarf, Alex Moulis and Matt Chun

Working across Yuin and Eora lands

Contact: hello@thesundaypaper.com.au