Former Greens candidate Ray Goodlass (right) has hit back at Member for Riverina Michael McCormack (left), who labelled Mr Goodlass’s weekly column in a local newspaper as anti-Semitic. Photo: Jarryd Rowley/Chris Roe.
Wagga-based activist and Greens Party member Ray Goodlass has hit back at Member for Riverina Michael McCormack’s claim that he shouldn’t have an ongoing newspaper column following the Bondi terrorist attacks.
Mr Goodlass regularly writes opinion pieces for a local newspaper, in which he expresses his views on political events both in Australia and abroad. Over the past two years, he has written about the situation in Gaza and Israel several times.
The former Greens election candidate favours a two-state solution for Palestine and believes the Israeli Government should be held accountable for alleged actions it has committed against Palestinian civilians in retaliation to the Hamas terrorist attacks launched on 7 October, 2023.
Following the terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, Mr McCormack called for more to be done to restrict alleged anti-Semitic behaviour both in Wagga and around the country.
He specifically called out Mr Goodlass’s column and regular protests held in front of his office (which Mr Goodlass attends) at a press conference on Monday (15 December).
“We need to take stock and reflect, but we also need to ask the right questions and see what we can do to prevent any further incidents from occurring,” Mr McCormack said.
“Just the other day, I mean, we had our local columnist, Ray Goodlass, write ‘river to the sea’ again.
“That can’t happen again. He shouldn’t even have a column, quite frankly.”
”From the river to the sea” is a controversial phrase calling for Palestinian freedom between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which some interpret as a call for the destruction of Israel.
Mr Goodlass defended himself and hit back at Mr McCormack.
“Censoring my column would be interfering with the freedom of the press, and that’s something that I would have thought Michael McCormack would not support,” Mr Goodlass said.
” I absolutely support a free and independent Palestine, and I have expressed that, not often, but a few times in my column; it is not an anti-Semitic thing at all. The Palestinians are, in fact, Semitic people.
“Holding Israel to account is not anti-Semitic because it is not an attack on Jewish people. It is an attack on a particular Israeli government and its actions. And I am not at all anti-Semitic, and my columns have made that quite clear.”
Mr Goodlass said a majority of members in the United Nations recognised Palestine as an independent sovereign state and that even Mr McCormack was once in favour of a two-state solution for Palestine.
“While I am not the organiser of the weekly demonstrations in Wagga calling for the freedom of Palestine, I do attend regularly,” he said.
“We are not anti-Semitic.
“We are calling for a free Palestine, which is recognised by a majority of UN members. Even Michael himself was in favour of this solution.”
