Mass Murdoch attacks Palestinian candidate for Moreton

I went to Ambrose Treacy College (then called Nudgee Junior) in Witton Road Indooroopilly from 1959-1963. I support my old school inviting the candidate for Moreton to the college. Remah Naji is a role model for any young person and in a few weeks time may well be the first Palestinian to be elected to the Australian parliament.

It is important that young people understand the difference between the education they receive here and the difficulties faced by Palestinian children who are denied schools because of frequent bombing by the Israeli occupation. Also Israeli military tribunals have imprisoned Palestinian children for decades. For decades!

The Murdoch Press that owns the Courier Mail is shameless in its support for the genocide of school children in Gaza. The school principal should have supported his guest. What did he expect? How can you soften mass murder, 70% of whom are women and children? The Courier Mail article is posted below – Ian Curr, ed., 6 March 2025.

A Bris­bane Cath­olic school has been accused of being pro-Palestinian after a Greens can­did­ate spoke at an assembly about the war in Gaza. – Courier Mail, 4 March 2025.

An elite Cath­olic boys’ school is accused of being pro-Palestinian, with angry par­ents and Jew­ish com­munity lead­ers slam­ming Ambrose Treacy Col­lege for invit­ing a Palestinian woman to speak to stu­dents about the Gaza con­flict.

Remah Naji, the Greens can­did­ate for the fed­eral seat of More­ton, was the guest at a school assembly where she shared the impacts of war on

Palestinian chil­dren. Ms Naji also showed dis­tress­ing pho­to­graphs of Gaza chil­dren car­ry­ing signs say­ing “Free Palestine, stop the gen­o­cide” and “one child killed every 10 minutes in Gaza by Israel”.

Alarmed Ambrose Treacy par­ents con­tac­ted The Cour­ier-Mail, say­ing they feel Ms Naji should not have been invited, describ­ing it as “deeply troub­ling” and “just so wrong”.

Fol­low­ing her address to years 4-12 boys, Ms Naji, who was flanked by Greens MP Michael Berkman, encour­aged other schools want­ing stu­dents to “feel empowered to take action on gen­o­cide” to arrange for her to visit.

One par­ent said Ms Naji’s pres­ence at Ambrose Treacy was “com­pletely unsuit­able”.

Another said: “It is deeply troub­ling to have someone speak to impres­sion­able chil­dren about this war, and take the side of Palestine.

“We do not pay fees for a polit­ical agenda; we pay for a school, and to have a Palestinian woman come and talk about the war is just so wrong.”

Queens­land Jew­ish Board of Depu­ties pres­id­ent Jason Stein­berg said any dis­cus­sion on chil­dren in Gaza must acknow­ledge actions of Hamas and a dis­tor­ted nar­rat­ive could make schools here unsafe.

“Her com­ments ignore the role of Hamas, a ter­ror­ist organ­isa­tion that gov­erns Gaza and uses civil­ians as human shields, diverts human­it­arian aid for mil­it­ary pur­poses and indoc­trin­ates chil­dren,” Mr Stein­berg said.

Ambrose Treacy Col­lege prin­cipal Chris Ryan said Ms Naji was never invited to the school in a polit­ical capa­city.

Mr Ryan said the col­lege was address­ing the impact of war on chil­dren gen­er­ally.

“The col­lege sought assur­ances about the speaker’s focus and con­tent, which were accep­ted by the speaker. Unfor­tu­nately, those assur­ances were not fully upheld.

“In hind­sight, the col­lege erred in invit­ing the speaker.

“Ambrose Treacy Col­lege has had a strong con­nec­tion with the Jew­ish com­munity.”

Kylie Lang and Tayla Cou­a­caud
4 March 2025
First published in the Courier Mail