Simon (Simcha) Gnieslaw for Senate (VIC)

Hello, my name is Simon Gnieslaw. But you may call me Simcha. 👋

I am a 38-year old IT Specialist with my own IT Small Business, serving as a trusted IT person for other Small Businesses.

I am proudly Jewish and proudly neurodivergent, leveraging the differences which are my strengths, such as thinking differently to what is typical, questioning everything, and the first hand experience of being part of the Jewish and Neurodivergent communities.

Picture: Me in front of a train. My core platform for this election is not about trains. But I do like trains.

We live in dangerous and unprecedented times. Tensions have never been higher and the world is on the brink of World War III, while the issue of climate change hasn’t gone away.

The billionaire-captured media pretend that we only have two choices: Left or Right, Albanese or Dutton. While Labor has been making progress, it is nowhere near enough when we require urgent action.

The Liberals and their allies actively work against everyday Australians and divide us, in order to serve their masters.

How Fusion is different

Fusion offers a better way. Where other parties punch down on people, we lift up. Where they sow division, we build unity. We create actionable plans and actually do them even without even necessarily being elected. We are anything but meaningless virtue signallers. We build. We create. We celebrate people who add to our multicultural society, who think differently, or just add to the tapestry of difference in some way.

I'm especially proud that Fusion is:

The architect of the Climate Rescue Accord - a last ditch effort to rescue the planet from climate change disaster by using bold and innovative technologies - now endorsed by multiple other parties including the Animal Justice Party and Legal Cannabis Australia.
The only party with a tangible plan for peace in the Middle East - with a focus on supporting both Jewish and Muslim Australians, and the challenges we face here and around the world. This is not tokenism or wishful thinking, we have like minded champions actually working on implementing our plan behind the scenes.
Leading the push for more innovative technology - breaking our dependence on foreign governments and global corporations who threaten our sovereignty.
Celebrates people’s differences and welcomes people of all backgrounds and cultures. We stand for a future that doesn't leave anyone behind.
Promotes science-based, innovative and outside-of-the-box ideas to get the best solution possible, rather than following the status quo.

We don’t make empty promises, we offer real solutions. Our top priority needs to be investing in Innovation to fight the Climate Emergency, rather than fighting each other, which only delays Climate action.

My personal take on Jewish & Fusion values

The Fusion values fully align with my Jewish values, particularly of Tikkun Olam - which means "repairing the world" and Pikuach nefesh - which means "saving a soul".

I am also a Utilitarian Pacifist - my goal is to maximise happiness and minimise suffering in the world, which aligns quite nicely with all of Fusion's values and policies no matter how big or small.

My journey with the Fusion Party started with my involvement with the Pirate Party, which still exists separately and as part of Fusion. Our concerns for Digital Rights, especially in the era of AI and increasing levels of software lockouts, are more relevant than ever.

I have endless respect for my grandparents, particularly given that they beat the odds to survive the Holocaust. I can feel the horrors which they have been through. I can recognise the intergenerational trauma. This motivates me to not simply say "never again" to us, but rather "never again" to anyone. Human Rights are for everyone, not something which you can pick and choose who it is important for.

Although by background is in Orthodox Judaism, I am most aligned to Humanistic Judaism, and support all religions and the people who keep their faiths going.

If elected to Parliament, I will be guided solely by Fusion's values and the Australian people. While I hold personal beliefs and support the beliefs of others, I firmly support the separation of religion and state in Australia.

Summary of Fusion's 5-Part Tangible Peace Plan for the Middle East:
In order of importance, not the order of implementation.

Reject Violence & Enact Ceasefire: It is impossible to wipe out ideologies through violence. The cycle of violence only deepens suffering and prolongs the conflict.
We need to work hard to convince Hamas & the Israeli authorities of this to stop all the hostilities while while this peace process is underway, and release all hostages/legally innocent people.
Help Rebuild & Aid: Australia can help solve the immediate humanitarian crisis, by helping build a safe and secure place for displaced people to live with full access to services.
We aren't going to be able to move forward if Gaza is still in rubble and the people of both sides are still broken from all the trauma.
Services Needed: Clean Water, Food, Electricity, Medicine, Shelter, Sanitation, Mental health, Strong security (provided by a neutral third country under agreed supervision).
Mental Health: Counselling for Israelis and Palestinians, and their international supporters, provided by Australian Jewish and Muslims mental health practitioners. We are well placed to provide a culturally-sensitive telehealth service.
Dialogue at Home: Support re-establishing dialogue between Pro-Israel Jewish-Australians and Pro-Palestine Muslim-Australians. Not just leaders but also people-to-people. Talk to each other and understand each other's trauma and needs for there to be peace, and rebuild trust. We need to set an example of co-existence and peace being done right.
This is not putting aside the issues, rather it's explicitly part of the process to fix the issues, setting up
Deep Trauma Healing: Psychological support for everyone affected for everyone affected by this conflict, here in Australia and in Israel and Palestine. We need specialist programmes developed which takes into account this specific trauma of this conflict, in a structured and comprehensive way. It needs to be able to be scaled up to entire populations, and involves medical research (including pharmacological supports) and controlled studies to be fully documented and measured
Advocate Dialogue to the Middle East to do the same: Once the Australian Pro-Israel Jewish community and Pro-Palestine Muslim community can go back to living side-by-side again (Due to steps #1, #3 & #4) in our beautiful multi-cultural society, including being able to enjoy the footy and eat felafel together, then we can use the lessons learnt to talk to our overseas counterparts to do the same. This will be a very powerful statement to the Middle East on how peace can be done, kicking off movements of people in Israel and Palestine to do the same process as we did.

Full Plan (With full sensitivities to be clear enough for Jews and Muslims to accept)

Brothers

Real graffiti I randomly found in the City of Yarra which I caught from the
corner of my eye while I was working on the plan on my phone.

How would I fight Anti-Semitism itself?

Of course I support improvements to the law, but laws alone can’t stop anti-Semitism - We need community action

Anti-Semitism is not only coming from the Gaza issue, there is deep-rooted anti-Semitism passes intergenerationally which has nothing to do with the Middle East. Without blaming ourselves, the best thing that we Jewish people can possible do is be upstanding moral citizens who set a good example of Jewish people, by putting our best foot forward in all arenas. Sadly there are racists out there find examples of bad behaviour and amplify that to it is something which applies to all Jewish people. Let's just always be good people in the first place anyway, which the vast majority of us already are. We need to understand that when we act, we are not just representing ourselves, but our whole community, and outbursts are used by media outlets to discredit us.

Laws:

Politicians are acting as if making another law can magically fix problems, or worse, are just trying to look tough without any substance.

Many proposed laws are redundant, excessive, or counterproductive - such as mandatory minimum jail sentence which could punish unintended edge cases, or make us look bad by appearing as if we are getting special treatment, making the problem worse.

What I hate the most is driving hatred back underground without actually solving it, where the hate will wait until it's time for it to rear it's ugly again. This is the exact thing our parents and grandparents warned us about.

Anti-Semitism then persists because it’s still learned early from those hiding it - in homes, schools, and other parts of society.

Laws don’t erase hate. The only way to solve the problem for good is to build bridges.

Going beyond laws - what is the solution?

Engage the community: Invite non-Jews to Shabbat dinners, demystify Jewish life.
Reform education: Schools need anti-bullying programs and interfaith initiatives to teach tolerance early.
Stay vigilant: Complacency is our own worst enemy. It's simply not enough to leave it to others. Change requires proactive effort, not just reliance on laws.

I know that our community are very passionate about anti-Semitism and are very eager to help fight the problem in any way that we can. We very fundamentally do want peace, but some of us has given up because it seems unreachable. Well, it is within reach. Elected or not, I am providing a new pathways where peace and harmony is now within reach. We just have to take the opportunity.

Picture: "Do you do Tefillin?" "Yes, every Friday Night" - Simcha Gnieslaw

Other political parties and candidates who aren't anti-Semitic

Labor and Teals: I don't consider them to be "anti-Semitic", rather they have been ineffective, lost without any cohesive plan. They have nuggets of brilliance but also nuggets of letdown. They are just trying to please everyone, but actually pleasing no one. As bad as some particular MPs of Labor have been outside of the Jewish areas, overall, I think that Labor do actually care and are at least making an effort.

I also get the sense that they don't seem to be genuinely listening to the community, but rather they are focused on appeasing big lobby groups rather than doing any actual leading of the community itself to bring the whole community and all our diverse views on board. They always seem to have excuses after the fact.

Libertarian Party: While their candidates seem to care a great deal, officially they are non-interventionist.

Australia's Voice in the Victorian Senate: This group has a lot of Muslim supporters, and their lead candidate Mohamed El-Masri has been incredibly supportive towards our tangible peace plan ideas.

They will be on our how-to-vote-card. I think very highly of him.

Anti-Semitism by the other political parties, including the Liberals and The Greens

when it comes to spending any government money. But people working out between themselves - they seem supportive of that, and they put up people who are actually from our community, so that is admirable.

As for Greens, Liberal (as a party), Vic Socialists, their playbook is simple: Manufacture culture wars to divide and conquer us, while their billionaire backers pull all the strings to consolidate power.

As a Jewish-Australian, I've seen first hand how anti-Semitic The Greens and The Liberals are, by the way that they exploit communities like mine for political gain. They misappropriate cultural identities like ours to demonise others, and to manufacture outrage. This only leads to more anti-Semitism, while offering only tokenistic support for the Jewish people.

The Greens and The Liberals are two wings of the same bird: the left-wing and the right-wing. They can only exist by finding things to fight each other on.

Just as The Greens are upsetting Jewish people and sucking up to Muslim people, the Liberal Party are upsetting the Muslim people and sucking up to Jewish people.

Just imagine how much more we could achieve if we were able to defeat both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, so that there are no more culture wars, and especially no more actual wars.

For example:

[Greens] Referring to Jewish people as having 'tentacles'.
[Greens] Greens oppose the Universities Australia definition of anti-Semitism. I support the Universities Australia definition, it is quite accurate.
[Victorian Socialists] Unapologetic support for October 7 attacks.
[Friends of the Liberals] Staging a fake "UNDERCOVERJEW" stunt [Video Link] to deliberately drive further anti-Semitism.
[Liberals] Liberal MP Michael Sukkar MP (not Jewish) heckled Labor Mark Dreyfus MP (2nd-generation Holocaust survivor) for trying to talk about anti-Semitism.
[Liberals] Moving a corflute of a Teal over a Hostage poster for a photo op to pretend that the Teal did this.
[Liberals] Dutton purposely hiding the true nature of the Caravan Explosives threat, to cause extra fear unnecessarily.
[Friends of the Liberals] Distributing flyers to random neighbourhood around Australia to make outlandish claims about what Jewish people think, causing embarrassment for us.
[Friends of the Liberals] Weaponizing anti-Semitism by making false claims against our candidate. Owen Miller, a dear friend of mine and supporter of all people, who was simply running for election to make the world a better place. Owen is not anti-Semitic at all, and they used our Jewish identity to start a fight which had nothing to do with us.

We deserve better than to be used as political pawns.

Warning for Macnamara Voters!

There is a mathematically probability that voting for the Liberal Party could result in a Greens win - AJN

(As a bit of a democracy nerd, the logic is correct)

Labor & Liberal Candidates a people:

I have looked at Josh Burns, Tim Wilson and Benson Saulo

I think that they are quite genuine in their support for the Jewish community

Unfortunately, the Liberal candidates are backed by their party which are anti-Semitic as I explained, not to mention bad policies (or lack of policy) and Peter Dutton is just going to make everything worse for us by driving up tensions.

As I said before, the Labor party also lets Josh down by not being as supportive as they should be. Maybe they would do better with the Fusion tangible peace plan :)

Why not to vote for the Liberal Party in particular

I am particularly disappointed with the Liberal Party, who are a shell of their former selves and no longer stands up to their original values. They now only stand for greed and being nasty, while undermining the vast majority of Australians at every turn. We need to stand up for our personal values and principles in the way that we vote, and I certainly was not raised to support such things.

The Liberals have offered us very few policies this election:

Defence: The Liberals would hand our rare earth minerals to the US, despite the $6bn we've already paid for their submarines.
Infrastructure: After sabotaging the NBN, they are now pushing Musk’s Starlink - a plan so flawed, it would slow our internet 166 times (0.6Mbps vs 100Mbps).
Lunches: All I can really say is, if you are a worker, make sure that you invite yourself to go to lunch with the boss all the time, so that he can pay and you are helping him claim that sweet tax deduction.

Absolutely hopeless policy platform. They are not fit to be in government.

Ultimately, the Liberals support Big Business. We support Small Business, Workers, and co-operatives.

Even if you think that you are quite well off and successful, you actually (probably) aren't, compared to all the Rupert Murdoch's of the world. If you actually are, great, my donation box is to the right.

Please don't turn Australia into a hateful place with tanked economy, a tanked planet, tanked internet, and raging anti-Semitism to keep us distracted.

Who to vote for and working with others

Vote for FUSION of course! The only party with a tangible peace plan!

I am proud to back Kammy Cordner-Hunt running with me for the Victorian Senate. I have worked with Kammy for many years, she is a very intelligent and well reasoned person, a fearless advocate for the Environment, and has as Masters of Human Rights. It is my honour to be standing behind Kammy on a joint ticket for Fusion. Kammy understands the issues, and is someone you can trust to have a balanced and well rounded position, and like me, advocates for all people.

If voting below the line, you can put either Kammy or I first, it makes no difference to me, we are aligned.

Please give low preferences to extremist parties trying to stoke tensions in the lower house, or no preference to them at all in the upper house (as long as you meet the minimum number of preferences).

Regardless, if elected, I am willing to work with anyone.

Let's do what's best for everyone!

FAQs below

Simon Mark (Simcha) Gnieslaw

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Contact: [email protected]

FAQ Below

Picture: I thought this tree was quite a powerful message. We have such a strong connection with the Aboriginal people.
If you know where this is, you will know what I am not going to be politicising for a photo op. Also, do you like my shirt?

FAQs - Personal takes on Israel and Peace from an Australian-Jewish perspective

What do you mean by "Peace"?

Peaceful co-existence, and non-violent collaboration, in a framework in which the groups are on an even playing field, in which all the needs and long standing issues faced by the Israeli and Palestinian people are meaningfully addressed to solve the underlying root problems and fix it properly.

What do you think the chances are of this plan actually working? What if you don't win government?

This is not fanciful.

Jewish people know that we have already been through a process of reconciliation with Germany. We don't hate Germans who were born after World War II or were just a young child. There was a process of De-Nazification. Reparation payments are important. Perhaps it was not done to modern standards, but it still did the job.

The majority of Jewish and Muslim people have been quite clear with me that they fundamentally want Peace, in the form of coexistence. It is quite a common reaction when telling one side about the other "Oh, I didn't realise that the other side actually wanted peace, that is really great to hear! Given that I now know this, we should definitely be doing it."

I would say that the top barrier to reconciliation is language. Even though we are both appearing to speak in English, some English words carry very different meanings to the two groups (explained more below). When that is cleared up, there is usually alignment.

There are also language problems arising from the human condition where people, being the emotional beings that we are, don't say what they actually mean.

For example, someone might say that they "don't want peace" but when you probe a little bit harder you can find out that the opinion is actually more along the lines of "I do want peace, but I know that this is never going to happen, so I don't want something that I am never going to get". I'm sure that with progress, this plan will seem more realistic and we will be able to change minds.

This is a long term project over many years, possibly over generations. We of course need to make little steps to promote peace along the way to reach the goal of having complete peace.

I'm not guaranteeing success, but the effort to at least try is worth it. The alternative is never ending death, even for our own loved ones.

I understand that some would accept the risk of death as being worthwhile to reach political goals, but why risk your life (especially the lives of others who don't agree to the sacrifice you are making on their behalf), if we can achieve the vast majority of goals without dying. It is an unnecessary waste of life.

It is a many year process, but we have to start somewhere.

If FUSION is elected, this would really help with an ongoing platform to promote peace. It is very difficult for smaller organisations to be heard.

And believe it or not, we actually have other views outside of this one issue, and we will do a great job to represent the community on all matter of issues and drive the future forward by improving all aspects of our lives in the way that we would advocate our ideas to the other players in the Parliament to get results and make Australia better.

Are you a Zionist?

(Relating to Israel as a State, The Nation of the Jewish people, Nationhood of all, Zionism and Anti-Semitism when criticising Israel)

I support the right of all nations to self-determination and the existence of states that represent them - whether Israel, Palestine, Catalonia, Ukraine, Australia or others. However, supporting a nation does not mean endorsing every action of its government.

Terminologies:

Zionism, as most Jewish people understand it, simply means supporting Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people as a state established by their collective will, with no further connotations (such as support for Ultranationalism). This is the definition I align to.
However, I prefer to identify as Pro-Israel because "Zionist" carries vastly different connotations for different groups, often leading to misunderstandings.

Criticising Governments vs. Denying Legitimacy

It’s legitimate to criticise the Israeli government (e.g. for their ultranationalist policies) just as in any democracy.
However, denying Israel’s right to exist or blaming all Jewish people (most of whom identify as Zionists) for its government’s actions is anti-Semitic and unacceptable. Most Jews don’t control Israel’s policies and don’t want violence. Even in Israel, their electoral support comes down to feeling unsafe and having someone who makes false promises about security.
The best way to criticise the Israeli government without being anti-Semitic is to direct the criticism at it's government or political leader (e.g. "The Netanyahu ultranationalist Israeli government" rather than to call it "Zionism").
I open minded to leaning more about Zionist ideology and what Pro-Palestine people consider to be problematic, however this is not widely understood on an deep ideological level beyond the basic definition.

Why Israel’s Existence Matters:

A Jewish state ensures Jewish survival, especially given historical persecutions. Many Palestinians now accept Israel’s right to exist, especially of the Israeli people, and this is backed by polling data, so this should no longer be a barrier to peace

My Hope for Israel:

I want Israel to thrive as a secure, peaceful nation with full reconciliation and peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. "The land of milk and honey". I just want the best for them. The goal is not just survival but a future where its existence is uncontested, free from conflict.

Why do you use unusual language to describe these things or directly say that you support my cause?

Because language matters

As briefly touched on in the previous question, some people have noticed that I avoid using particular loaded words. That's because there's a lot of confusion when different people have very different understandings of the words being used.

It might seem 'obvious' in meaning by the person using it, and it might 'seem' like the other person understood the word being used. But actually nothing can be more further from the truth. This leads to mass confusion because people are thinking that they understand each other, but they absolutely don't.

My best explanation for this discrepancy is that 'Pro-Palestine are at the forefront of evolving language, commonly using words in ways which the dictionaries have not yet caught up on'.

Unfortunately, this ends up being massive distraction to the issues themselves, because it is disruptive to being able to have meaningful conversations when people think that they understand each others words, but actually don't. Sadly, I have spent far too much time re-hashing definitions, even though the alignment of ideas are there. This process needs a common dictionary of terms.

This is why my previous answer was phrased in a certain way, because I have to be very clear as to what I actually mean. The word meaning of the 'Zionist' is very obvious to a Jewish person, but carries a whole different meaning to a Pro-Palestine who would typically believe that it also carries of meaning of "Colonialism, Expansionism, etc".

Hopefully everyone can tell I am a supporter of everyone, so even if I don't use the exact language which either side might be looking for, I trying my best here and just wanting to find peace, rather than making an effort to either dodge questions or control the framing to any particular narrative.

I am very open in my views, and I am happy to explain anything in full detail where I at least try to get the wording right.

What is your perspective on the October 7 attacks as a Jewish-Australian?

Israelis are deeply traumatised from October 7 attacks, most losing loved ones directly. Per-capita it is worse than September 11 was for Americans. They are deeply affected and this has a deep emotional cost and weight. Without the hostages being returned, it feels like the initial attack by Hamas is still ongoing. The Israelis live in fear that they might be the next victim.

The thing is as Jewish Australians, we still feel deeply connected to the Jewish people of Israel, because religious or not, we are connected culturally and by family. Especially in the modern age of the internet, we aren't limited by borders, we talk with them all the time, and their pain is our pain. October 7 happened to us, even if we weren't actually in Israel at the time, it feels like we were actually at ground zero. There is going to be a lot of intergenerational trauma to address coming from this as well.

Getting all our hostages returned, ending the offensive on Gaza, prisoner exchange, international peacekeepers and a massive influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza, are all important immediate steps which need to be taken now. The longer this waits, the harder it will be later.

I would say to Jewish people that the safety and security for Israel or Jews worldwide is at stake, and we need to be smart about this in how we handle the problem. Israel has a strong Knowledge Economy, let's use our brains to figure out a solution.

What do you think about the violence which Israel is doing as part of their counter-invasion of Gaza?

I am aware that there is violence going back over 75 or 100 years, on both sides, this commentary is about the immediate humanitarian crisis on our hands now that the October 7 attack aside from the remaining hostages has passed. The number one thing which Hamas can do to reduce tensions is to release all the hostages. I also point out that the October 7 attack on civilians more than likely constituted a war crime.

I want to be very clear that fundamentally, we are a people rooted in principle of Pikuach Nefesh (the sanctity of life). We are against killing unless it is to save more lives or in self-defence.

The word "Genocide" is being used a lot, and has commonly been understood to mean "physically wiping out a population", although there are other interpretations (which I am not disputing).

The Pro-Palestine side seems to have an expectation that in order to be taken seriously be them, you must "Admit that it is a Genocide".

As we enter into a new era of asymmetric warfare, I am hesitant to use this word for a few reasons:

Many people get stuck arguing about the definition of the word rather than looking at the point of the overall suffering, causing a distraction.
The typical contention of point #1 is that Gaza still maintains a positive birth rate (from 2.7% to 1%).
There is a limitation of the English language where "Genocide" doesn't go far enough to fully and accurately encapsulate the entirety of the situation. I would suggest a new word should be made which carries more specific meaning.
If I used this word, which is so politicised due to points #1 #2 and #3, that it would seem like I am taking on pro-Palestine terminology therefore I would only be on their side, when actually I am on the side of innocent people on both sides.
I would agree with the sentiment behind the word that there is a terrible atrocity happening involving mass murder of civilians.
I would go further that the never ending murder of civilians due to population replenishment is worse than Genocide and is even more cruel (more below).

I want to make it clear that Gaza's Ministry of Health are reliable in their reporting, even according to Israel.

Despite the overall population not declining due to the replenishment, there are still the following cruel conditions not typically being considered:

Women are giving birth in the most deplorable conditions.
Mortality is high, so they are having larger families to compensate.
This could be a deliberate tactic by the IDF to keep Gazans in a constant state of trauma and grief as a form of revenge for October 7, although they cannot legally admit that.

The IDF have the best technology in the world to make a hyper targeted attack. We have seen their impressive capabilities in planting explosives in phones and radios, with only just enough to kill one person.

They are well known for their intelligence gathering and technology. They should be making more of an effort to be more targeted to genuine targets and leave civilians out of it.

I have been following along the death toll for some time, and at certain points the figures of how many Hamas combatant kills were roughly lining up between the Hamas and Israeli estimates.

Death isn’t even the only outcome - it’s the prolonged suffering, which can be crueller than death itself. This agony is hard to measure but it also adds indirect casualties.

Facts about how many civilians are being killed:

Wikipedia reports the immediate death toll of October 7 attacks to be 1,195, with 815 being Civilians. 68.2% Civilians (about 2/3rds) / 31.8% Israeli Forces (about 1/3rds).

As I linked above about the births, the Israel accepts the Gaza's Ministry of Health data as reliable, and as of 9th April 2025, this is what Israel's own data says about deaths/murders in Gaza:

Gaza Strip,* Updated 10:00 09.04.25
Terrorists Killed More than 17,000
Casualties According to Hamas 50,810
* Sources: IDF Spokesperson report, the number of dead and wounded in Gaza according to the reports of the Palestinian Ministry of Health, under the control of Hamas, and includes deaths as a result of failed launches by the terrorist organizations. These reports do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Source: Tel-Aviv University, first slide, second page

This is 66.55% Civilians (about 2/3rds) 33.45% Hamas (About 1/3rds)

Compared to other wars, this is a horrendous ratio for civilian casualties (Not that I would support any level of preventable innocent loss of life as being acceptable).

What is also quite interesting about this data is that

Hamas murders were about 2/3rds Civilians.
IDF murders are about 2/3rds Civilians.

Terrifying this ratio might not be a coincidence. What if the IDF are trying to make the Palestinians "feel" their grief by replicating the same kind of suffering, but on a larger scale.

What do you think of extremists?

If you are asking "who even is a civilian" (especially when it comes to Children) or excuse everything as "it's a war" (usually followed by a justification), I have had these questions coming from extremists of both sides. If you say anything like this, you are both part of the problem and need your head checked.

The data doesn't even support that this level of destruction is even happening.

This mentality only causes further radicalisation, which has knock on effects around the world.

Both sides are hyperaware of what the extremists of the other side have been saying, because this is what their information feeds promote, and it this is deeply unhelpful to become part of it because extremists opinions are getting conflated with mainstream opinions.

If this applies to you, please, disconnect yourselves from information bubbles because you are hindering any possibility of peace, not helping, which hurts your own people.

Peace is within reach - with this plan - violence is unnecessary in order to reach goals.

What do you think of the 'Jewish Council of Australia'?

I am not affiliated with them in any way.

I hear a lot from the Muslim community and Pro-Palestine people that they hold respect for them. So I am pleased in this regard that they are building bridges there and putting forward a friendly face to make sure that they know the difference between a Jewish person and an Israel Supporter. I am certain that this has eased tensions towards communities from being even worse.

Unfortunately, they have not done anything to build bridges with the mainstream Jewish community. They popped up out of nowhere - they call themselves the "Jewish Council" but they are not actually representative of any other Jewish bodies or of many mainstream Jewish opinions, unlike the other Jewish Councils (who could also improve). The only issue they seem to care about is Palestine, or anti-Semitism when it's a way to attack Israel. Not always, but most of the time.

They have co-opted radical pro-Palestinian terms and talking points rather than pushing back on incorrect word usage. They completely reject Israel as being the nation of the Jewish people and reject anti-Semitism definitions which consider Israel as a State being of part of the Jewish people. All this has led to themselves being poorly received by other Jewish people.

Overall, I think that although they do some good in building a bridge there, I am just disappointed that they took unbalanced stances against their own community which has led to a lack of progress.

I don't have any plans to ever work with them, but I always keep an open mind in case their efforts could be of actual use towards the problem itself in some way, so I keep them in the back of my mind.

But I got some questions about if I am with them on their views, and I would say no, absolutely not.

What about Information warfare?

There also seems to be a bit of a problem of "echo chambers", which is not limited to just this issue, where depending on your leanings and groups of friends aligning to that, it is very easy to be inundated with non-stop traumatising content and word of mouth stories which only show one side of the conflict. It is basically impossible to get unbiased accurate information from anywhere I know of, and of all the news sources out there, although mostly factual, none of them show the whole picture due to their biases. For example, the Recent IDF massacre of very clearly marked Palestinian medics is not well known among Israel supporters, despite very clear video evidence, simply because this hasn't been widely reported.

"I thought the people in Gaza don't want peace"?

Videos of people who celebrated the October 7 attack around the world just made everything worse, and has set the tone for what followed.

From this, there is an opinion out there that most Palestinians/Pro-Palestinians support the Hamas' attack on civilians, that we reaffirmed because there were many media articles cherry picking figures such as "72% of Palestinian respondents overall - voiced satisfaction with the role of Hamas in the war".

But actually this is quite misleading, by checking the primary data sources (PCPSR), we can see that this figure is skewed by the fact that most Gazans are oblivious to the civilian killings done by Hamas and had not watched that footage, and it also included data from West Bank Palestinians (it's easy to cheer on from afar).

In Gaza December 2023, 56% preferred violence. In September 2024 (latest data), this figure is down to 36%. Not great, but even still, it is a war zone, and nowhere near as high as reported and we were led to believe. There certainly is a willingness to use violence, but it is not their preferred means. Also, there is a large enough amount of Gazans who are open mindedness to peace, and perhaps with a viable solution on the table, there would be a further shift in opinion.

I also note that in the PCPSR research, 'trust' as the biggest obstacle to Peace. This website and it's data is actually very interesting.

What about people who support violence?

I think that it's only natural to have a stronger connection to the "in group" compared to the "out group". We need to reconnect as humans again, and that is part of the plan.

So far with my conversations with Muslims and Jews, I have yet to find someone who actually wants violence deep down in their heart. Without defending it, these ideas are coming more from a place of reluctant acceptance as "the only way to defend ourselves, due to a lack of other viable options" and the emotional trauma of it is affecting how they come across. Of course, I always speak out and push back on this.

This highlights why the Fusion Tangible Peace Plan is so important. Violence will never bring peace.

What about Land Borders?

I don't support expansionism of the Israeli side from it's current borders into Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon. Gaza and the West Bank needs a large scale withdrawal by transitioning the security to trusted international organisations with joint oversight, because healing will be impossible while Israeli boots are on the ground, not to mention the risk to Israeli lives. The Trump Gaza plan is actually insane, according to peak Jewish Australian groups.

There are significant disputes about exact alignments of hypothetical borders. Palestinians often call for 1949-1967 borders but Israelis oppose this, primarily on security grounds. First and foremost, I think that is up to Israelis and Palestinians to figure out the structure together, as part of the peace process. This is a trust building exercise to figure this out. I would love for someone to pull out a detailed map and everyone starts drawing on it to fully document all the significant locations and the history, that would be pretty cool. Our role should only be to facilitate, because that is far too detailed of a process.

Some creative solutions may be needed, particularly for Jerusalem (i.e. similar to Brčko District, the Schrödinger's cat of land borders) but whatever the model is, the most fundamental thing is to have actual peace between people so that it doesn't matter so much about the exact borders, as everyone is friends and can freely cross over anyway.

We need international partners to step in as peacekeepers to ensure security (as per the plan) as any transitions are made.

We can heal and build a genuine peace so strong, that the security situations wouldn't even need to be so much of a concern - because the underlying issues would already be solved by the time that happens. There will need to be some transitional phases and goals, with milestones.

I thought that Fusion supported a separation between Religion and State, so why are you supporting any "ethno-state"?

FUSION is officially in support of the separation of Religion and State. While idealist, this is not something which is possible at least for Israel at this time. I am not sure about Palestine.

The Israeli laws and the will of the Jewish people makes this impossible, and I would suggest that this should be respected as a hard requirement for anyone wanting to be taken seriously. If this will was to ever change, for starters there needs to be complete peace before having that conversation would even be possible, this mindset is being partially driven by the need for self-preservation. If Israel became secular, it basically would not exist at all, because the Jewish ideology is core to the identity of the State itself, and it's purpose of being a State of the Jewish people, so without that, it's just not the same.

As far as the connection between religion and state goes, yes there is a strong link, but Judaism is so much more than just a religion that it is hard to even describe it as being deeply theocratic or even an ethno-state given that of the Israeli citizens (not including West Bank and Gaza), it's only about 75% Jewish ethnicity. For comparison, China and Australia are far less diverse. I don't find this type of conversation particularly meaningful or helpful to the situation at hand to be honest, even if Israel is far from a perfect society on multiculturalism.

Of course, I support any fixing any domestic problems in Israel, and there are too many feral cats, but they seem so distracted by war that they don't get anything else done.

Do you support Netanyahu?

Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are far-right ultranationalists. This is not anti-Semitic to say. Just as I criticise the Australian government out of love for Australia, Israel is - despite Netanyahu's best efforts - also still a democracy which allows criticism. These criticisms are also coming from a place of love. My goal isn’t to undermine Israel or it's security, but actually it is quite the opposite - I want to help Israel succeed.

Netanyahu being a fascist is an easily provable fact - despite also having corruption charges pending, he literally tried to overthrow the Israeli Judiciary by giving himself the power to overrule the Supreme Court. Every functional democracy has a separation of powers.

The established Political Class seem to be under some kind of impression that Netanyahu is highly respected, almost like a second God (we only believe in one God by the way), but that couldn't be further from the truth. Most Jewish people don't have any special connection to him or what he stands for, only his most hardcore supporters. His hardcore supporters would only vote for far-right parties anyway. I don't think that this is the kind of vote which the Major Parties should be concerning themselves with.

Even of Israeli people specifically, they were doing mass protests against him before the war due to how he tried to overthrow democracy by making himself the supreme authority of law. I look forward to the next Israeli election where the Israeli people will get the chance to boot him out, not just for his failures to prevent October 7 physically (despite promises of safety and security), but also failing to prevent it by being deliberately antagonistic to the Palestinian people for over 30 years.

Historically his support has barely been a majority, at one point there were 5 elections in 4 years because the country was so deadlocked as to whether to support him or not, so he has a vested interest in keeping war going for his own political survival because he re-election chances aren't good.

Does this affect your section 44 eligibility?

To be clear and for s44 reasons, any messages I make in support of the State of Israel or Judaism does not constitute any form of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to the State of Israel or foreign power. My allegiance is to Australia and the Australian people only. I am not their citizen of Israel nor do I currently have the right to be one. I doubt that they would even give me a visa at this point. But hey, wouldn't it be funny if they gave me an unsolicited citizenship just to disqualify me from parliament.

How can I support this Peace plan further?

I have had reached some good milestones but it is still not ready to go fully public. Please send me an email if you are interested in being part of it.

Please also consider spreading the word and distributing my How-To-Vote-Card - Please send me an email.

Also feel free to throw me a few bucks in donations to help cover the cost of this campaign.