Published: 19 April 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
SYDNEY’S INNER WESTERN SUBURB of Marrickville is a busy, noisy place. Located five kilometres from the airport, it lies directly under a flight path. Every hour a continuous stream of jets roar above. The ground level isn’t much better either: chronic traffic perpetually clogs the major arterial roads that crisscross the suburb.
Although Marrickville’s planes and traffic might be the subject of notoriety, the suburb enjoys a proud cosmopolitan past. Successive waves of migrants from the post-war period on, have seen it dubbed “the birthplace of Australian multiculturalism”.
But in December 2010, the suburb’s local government (then known as Marrickville Council, now Inner West Council) created noise on a different level altogether. At the Council’s final meeting of the year, Greens-aligned councillors decided to join the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a move that attracted national and international media attention.
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Greens Councillor Cathy Peters, a long-time activist and anti-Israel voice, moved that Council support the principles of the BDS global campaign; beginning by divesting from any existing commercial arrangements with Israeli-based companies and boycotting all future links, goods or sporting, academic, government or cultural exchanges.
With the support of their Labor counterparts, Peters and her Greens bloc secured an emphatic 10-2 victory in favour of the motion – becoming the first local government in Australia to join the BDS movement.
Independent councillor Vincent Macri was one of two dissenting voices that night. "The Greens were always putting up hair-brained motions. When I saw the motion on the Order of Business, I didn’t take much notice. I thought it wouldn’t get voted up,” he explained to The Jewish Independent.
Any person with common sense could tell you this was just crazy. We are not the Foreign Affairs department. This was wrong 101 - VICTOR MACRI
“When [the Greens councillors] colluded with the Labor Party, that’s when it became real. I was in shock.”
A straight-talking barber shop-owner of 40-plus years, Macri was incensed – and remains so today. “Any person with common sense could tell you this was just crazy. We are not the Foreign Affairs department. This was wrong 101.”
What Macri and others didn’t know at the time was that the NSW Greens had been angling towards BDS for months.
Earlier in the year the federal body rejected the NSW State party’s move to make BDS motion a party policy. Unbowed, Greens members took support for BDS to the NSW Delegates Council in December 2010. The forum unanimously endorsed the motion.
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A few weeks later Peters and her colleagues saw an opening at Marrickville.
Retired teacher and Council resident, Janet Kossy, was one of several Jewish residents stunned by the motion. “I am not a religious Jew. At the time, I had never been to Israel. I didn’t have family or friends in Israel. But I grew up with Israel as a part of my Jewish identity,” she told The Jewish Independent.
“To do this – without any consultation with the Council’s Jewish residents – was a blow.”
She contacted Peters, her ward councillor, to request a meeting. “I told her, ‘the Jews are part of the multicultural community here in the inner west and we’ve been blindsided by this. It affects us’.”
I remember [Cathy Peters] just lending me a book to read. She was uninterested in what I had to say - JANET KOSSY
Peters was polite but unmoved. “I remember her just lending me a book to read. She was uninterested in what I had to say.”
A month later, in the depths of a balmy Sydney summer, a concerned Kossy joined 80 other mostly Jewish residents packed into the ageing community hall of the historic Newtown Shule in the nearby suburb.
The small inner western Jewish community was attracted to the area’s diverse and socially progressive character. But BDS was unacceptable.
There had been no consultation or engagement with Jewish residents. Many of whom were sympathetic to Palestinian national aspirations, yet still felt a boycott of Israel by their local government was wrong, even anti-Semitic.
They were angry and wanted it stopped. “The atmosphere was really tense,” remembers Uri Windt, the publisher of The Jewish Independent, who attended the meeting.
“We all felt (Marrickville’s support for BDS) was no way to produce peace in the Middle East. Not only was BDS going to maintain the conflict there but was also introducing conflict here in the inner west.”
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A campaign group dedicated to overturning Marrickville’s boycott was formed. Their name: the Inner West Jewish Community and Friends Peace Alliance (iwJAFA).
Windt, together with Kossy and another concerned inner west resident, Gail Kennedy, took a leading hand in coordinating iwJAFA.
In the months that followed the group worked assiduously, behind the scenes, to rescind Council’s resolution. They began by putting their case to councillors. They spoke with Marrickville residents and gathered hundreds of local signatures for a petition.
“There’s something so powerful about peer-to-peer dialogue. Here you had local Jewish residents, members of the community, speaking authentically about their experience of BDS,” Windt says.
“We spoke one on one, and helped them realise this (BDS) was only dividing the community. Our message was [that] a much better alternative approach was joint Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives; that’s how you build peace.”
We spoke one on one, and helped them realise this (BDS) was only dividing the community. Our message was [that] a much better alternative approach was joint Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives - URI WINDT
The group canvassed a crucial piece of data: results from a poll of the Marrickville community conducted independent market research, Vivid. Their report conclusively showed locals valued Marrickville’s multicultural, tolerant character and were resistant to a Council-led boycott of Israel.
While iwJAFA lobbied council and highlighted the community’s opposition to the plan, the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies was monitoring the situation closely.
Advocacy on Jewish community interests was traditionally the strict domain of the Jewish leadership. But in 2010, their President, the South African-born Yair Miller, adopted a different approach.
The Board left much of the campaign and advocacy work to iwJAFA; recognising the group’s local knowledge and connections were a more effective tool in tackling the boycott.
“We delegated responsibilities and allowed the local community (iwJAFA) to take ownership. The Board also took guidance from them (iwJAFA) about how to manage relationships with council,” Miller told The Jewish Independentmedia.
“We didn’t always agree 100% on tactics but by and large there was a very cooperative feel. There was a lot of communication between us.”
Miller, whose working life has been spent in leading Jewish communal organisations, is respected as a canny strategic thinker. He described the approach as “subtle and nuanced”.
“We didn’t go in with a scorched earth approach and burn everybody. We didn’t target all the Greens as being anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. We targeted the proponents.”
Public awareness of Marrickville’s BDS increased as the months wore on. International figures such as Desmond Tutu, Naomi Klein and John Pilger leant their support to the resolution. Australian mainstream media commentary was relentlessly negative, pinning the blame on an out-of-control activist Greens Council.
The political pressure on Marrickville Council cranked up too. In early April 2011, NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell wrote to Marrickville mayor Byrne and her Council warning they could be sacked unless they overturned their boycott.
In the background, a state election campaign was underway. Fiona Byrne was the Greens candidate in the Labor held seat of Marrickville. Prior to BDS she was poised to take the seat. But talk of the boycott consumed Byrne’s campaign; she lost in a narrow contest and Labor retained the seat.
On April 19, 2011, ten years ago this week, a new motion calling for the rescission of the BDS was tabled at Marrickville Council.
Council’s chambers were packed that evening. Hundreds of people turned out to champion or oppose Marrickville’s BDS. Security guards kept angry, opposing attendees at bay. Hundreds more stood outside awaiting the results.
This time the boycott was defeated, 8-4.
A decade on, while wounds have healed, the tense and vexed atmosphere of those first few months of 2011, has not been forgotten.
The BDS proponents kicked up a hornet’s nest in the community. It was a terrible time for Council. It put a stain on Marrickville - VICTOR MACRI
“It wasn’t a positive experience,” Miller said. “It was a very unpleasant period, very unnecessary. A lot of people got damaged in the process and relationships were strained.”
Kossy says she still finds the hypocrisy from the councillors, who celebrated Marrickville’s diverse, multicultural community to be the “most egregious” aspect of the period.
“That’s what I hold against the people who were in council at the time. Not so much their support for BDS – as their lack of concern for what they were doing to the community.”
Victor Macri agrees. “They (the BDS proponents) kicked up a hornet’s nest in the community. It was a terrible time for Council.
“It put a stain on Marrickville. It made us look like a bunch of nutcases, like poor leaders. “You can have your own personal views but don’t hijack council to make your political statements.”
The Jewish Independent contacted Fiona Byrne on several occasions for a comment for this article; she did not respond. Cathy Peters was unable to be contacted.
Windt says the episode, while unpleasant, brought unintended consequences. “No local government or political party has pursued BDS since. There has been a revival of Jewish community in the inner west. The Newtown Shule also regularly engages with Christians and other parts of the non-Jewish community.
“None of that would have happened were it not for Marrickville BDS.”
Photo: Residents gather in Marrickville Council chambers for the meeting in April 2011 (Wolter Peeters)
