Guest
GUESTS: Senator David Shoebridge, fmr Senator Lee Rhiannon (AUS) Dimitri Lascaris (CAN), Diana Johnstone (fmr EU Greens spokeswoman) With the dangers of a wider Middle East war threatening to break out and the perilous conflict in Ukraine far from over, where do Green parties around the world stand on the question of peace or war? The Green Party movement began in the Australian state of Tasmania in April 1972, when the first Green Party in the world contested in state elections. Later that year the first Green Party in Europe was founded in Switzerland. The next year saw the first British Green Party, which began as the Ecology Party. From the first, an anti-War and non-violent position was at the core of Green Party politics worldwide. Indeed peace was one of the Four Pillars of the Green movement, along with ecology, social justice and democracy. In the Australian capital Canberra in 2001, the Global Greens Charter was adopted by 800 delegates from 72 national Green Parties. It called for: ecological wisdom social justice participatory democracy nonviolence sustainability respect for diversity So peace was a bedrock principle of the Green movement from the start, including in what became the largest and most influential Green Party in the world — in Germany. They began as an anti-war party in 1980. But within 20 years, the German Greens had broken with this tradition, supporting NATO’s attack on Serbia in 1999, and then NATO’s war in Afghanistan in 2001. This split the Global Greens movement. Today under the leadership of Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, the German Green Party is one of the most pro-war parties in the world, rivaling the U.S. Democratic Party. Baebock is infamous for saying that “We,” meaning the West, “are at war with Russia” over Ukraine. Last week she was in Israel giving unqualified support for Israel as it pursues policies of shutting off water, food and electricity to 2.2 million Gazans; demanding hospitals in the north of Gaza evacuate 2,000 patients in a war zone; had already killed more than 2,500 Gazan civilians with aerial bombardments and is poised to launch a ground war that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East in war. Indeed differences with the global Greens movement were starkly demonstrated earlier today, Monday, in Australia when federal Green Party leader Adam Bandt, according to The Australian newspaper, “tried to amend a statement of support for Israel with one condemning ‘war crimes perpetrated by the State of Israel, including the bombing of Palestinian civilians.’” The newspaper said: “Mr Bandt said The Greens condemned the Hamas attack on innocent Israelis and called for Israeli hostages to be released, saying there was ‘no place for anti semitism and Islamophobia’. But he said the upcoming invasion of Gaza loomed as ‘not just a humanitarian catastrophe, but a war crime’. ‘Australia cannot stay silent and, indeed, back that invasion,’ Mr Bandt said, backing UN condemnation of Israel’s decision to prevent food, water and fuel from getting into the enclave. The Greens’ amendment was defeated 107 to seven, with a number of MPs outside the chamber at the time. The motion was ultimately supported overwhelmingly, 134 votes to four, with only the Greens voting against it.”
