Antony Loewenstein

Following what feels like years of comical attacks on anybody who dares breath any criticism of the sanctioned Zionist state, today’s Murdoch’s Australian publishes a response to the endless lies and explains that BDS against Israel isn’t akin to Nazism. Well, who knew? The author, Stuart Rees, sent me his original article yesterday and I can happily report that the paper only makes minor changes:

“Anti-Semite!” “Racist!” “Despicable values!” “Should be sacked!”

I received these comments and accusations following an article by Christian Kerr in The Australian on May 14. He correctly quoted me saying Liberal MP Christopher Pyne’s support for the London Declaration against anti-Semitism was “populist”.

Kerr may not have expected the subsequent vendetta against me, let alone the demands last Friday by former Speaker of the federal parliament Peter Slipper that, as an anti-Semite on a public payroll, I should be sacked.

My point was that the London Declaration against anti-Semitism is a consensus document. Politicians are applauded and often applaud themselves for signing it and take no risk in doing so. Pyne’s press release was a “pat myself on the back eulogy” and a gratuitous attack on the Palestinian-initiated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions supporters whose campaign is seldom explained in mainstream media and easily depicted as controversial.

You can support both the London Declaration and the BDS campaign. However, that distinction is easily lost when individuals are demonised and Israel’s constant flouting of international law is deliberately diverted by discussion of other countries’ human rights abuses.

If attitudes to Israel and the BDS campaign are distorted, it can have serious repercussions. For that reason I’ll detail the events that prompted Kerr’s article, the accompanying editorial in The Australian and the subsequent abusive emails.

First, a woman I’d never heard of asked me to comment on Pyne’s support for the London Declaration and his manifestly nonsensical claim that university activists who support BDS undermine the right of Jewish people to live in their Jewish homeland. I naively assumed that a quick response was the end of the matter. It wasn’t. She wrote back saying the Prime Minister had also signed the declaration and asked if I had the same sentiments about her as about Pyne.

Somewhat impulsively I replied “of course”, meaning that signing the London Declaration as a sign of moral virtue was an easy decision. By contrast, Stephen Hawking’s support for the BDS campaign is a much more politically and intellectually demanding decision.

My exchange with this lady finished up on Kerr’s desk and led to a heading next day saying I had lashed out at the Prime Minister. Really?

Kerr’s article was accompanied by an editorial headed “Strange way to promote peace” with the subheading, “Critics of Israel should turn their attention to Iran”. This implied that by criticising Israeli policies I was siding with Iran’s supreme leader, who was quoted as saying “any deal that accepted the Jewish state’s existence would leave a ‘cancerous tumour forever’ “.

This technique of deflecting attention from the cruel and illegal policies of Israel depends on misinformation. It is implied that if you support BDS you must be anti-Semitic and are therefore no different from Israel’s religious fanatic opponents. Guilty by association. Positions polarised.

Projects run by the Sydney Peace Foundation and the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies include support for the struggle of indigenous West Papuans, advocacy for the vulnerable Tamils in Sri Lanka and criticism of capital punishment in Iran and Saudi Arabia. The centre also provides English classes for refugees on temporary protection visas.

It is false to suggest, as in The Australian’s editorial subheading, that we pay attention only to Israel. I have just returned from Paris, where the Sydney Peace Foundation honoured the widow of the late Stephane Hessel, a Jew, a survivor of the Holocaust, an architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, author of the bestseller Time for Outrage, a hero of the French Republic and an enthusiastic supporter of the BDS campaign.

Hessel wrote: “When governments cannot be relied upon to defend humanity it is the role of us, the people, to lead the struggle for justice.”

The BDS campaign is grounded in international law and has nothing to do with anti-Semitism or delegitimising Israel. Israeli professor Ilan Pappe contends that it is a sacred duty to end Israel’s oppressive occupation as soon as we can and that the best means for this is a sustained BDS campaign.

There are other reasons for turning to BDS. Negotiation and diplomacy have produced nothing but the enlargement of settlements, the continued siege of Gaza and the absurd claim that a two-state solution is possible when the two sides are so imbalanced, economically, militarily and politically.

The peace process is a sham. Politicians play a cruel game if they do not recognise this but it requires vision and courage to say so.

As for Slipper’s demand that it was outrageous that I was paid public money to explain and support BDS and that I should therefore be sacked, for the past 13 years I have been a volunteer at the centre and foundation.

I have not been paid any salary, nor claimed any expenses. I have worked in diverse campaigns, often in dangerous places, and have been committed to raising funds for students from the poorest countries.

Such activities are fuelled by the values that The Australian said, albeit delicately, were strangely skewed but that Slipper described as despicable.

Stuart Rees is a professor emeritus at the University of Sydney and the chairman of the Sydney Peace Foundation.

Care to imagine what an editorial meeting is like at Rupert Murdoch’s Australian? No, me neither – “look, over there, a Muslim country the West hasn’t bombed, let’s fix that immediately!” – but there’s a weird obsession over supporting the Israeli government. There’s a direct line from the Israeli PR department to the writers at the Murdoch organ and don’t they milk it for all it’s worth? It’s not about intellectual rigour or facts but blind ideology. From comments about how Palestinians and critics should be grateful for Israel to today three articles that all tackle BDS, Palestine, human rights, anti-Semitism, TERRORISM, ice-cream and pandas.

The word “occupation” is typically absent.

First, a “news story”:

Sydney Peace Foundation head Stuart Rees has lashed out at Julia Gillard for signing the London Declaration on Combating Anti-Semitism, calling the gesture “childish, thoughtless but easily populist”.

Professor Rees is on the staff of the University of Sydney’s controversial Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, which last year denied a request for co-operation from the only Israeli academic to create a civics curriculum for both Jewish and Arab school students.

The centre cited its support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which explicitly equates Israel with apartheid-era South Africa.

Last month the Prime Minister became the first Australian parliamentarian to sign the London Declaration. “This declaration reminds us that combating anti-Semitism is an active process, not a passive one,” she said. “It demands vigilance. It means remaining alert to new vehicles by which hatred and social poison can be spread.”

Professor Rees originally made his comments in an email responding to comments made by opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne when he attacked the BDS movement on Friday.

“Activism, boycotts and sometimes sanctions campaigns aren’t always anti-Semitic, but when you target individual businesses because they are Jewish, it is clearly anti-Semitic,” Mr Pyne said in a statement on the declaration, pointing to BDS activity at universities in NSW.

“It is sad that 70 years after the second world war and the discovery of the Holocaust we are still having to defend the right of Jewish people to live in their Jewish homeland in Israel free from this kind of anti-Semitic campaign.”

Professor Rees dismissed his remarks as “the usual childish, thoughtless but easily populist response” in the email, which was obtained by The Australian. “Justice for the Palestinians and indeed security for Israelis deserves more than predicable ‘happy to get on any easy bandwagon’ approach of this politician.”

Asked if his criticisms also applied to Ms Gillard, Professor Rees responded “of course”. “The resort to charges of anti-Semitism regarding the world-wide criticisms of the internationally illegal policies of the government of Israel is an age-old technique to stifle any criticism of blatant human rights abuses,” he said.

Mr Pyne said: “It is disappointing that Professor Rees is the director of the Sydney Peace Foundation and yet also a supporter of the BDS movement that seeks to delegitimise Israel, targets Jewish businesses and prohibits a healthy cultural exchange between universities and in so doing damages the prospects for peace.”

Professor Rees declined to comment yesterday, saying he had just returned from overseas.

And an op-ed by Bruce Loudon, a man who praises Israel for its glorious democracy but just happens to ignore the minor detail of millions of Palestinians under a brutal, Israeli occupation:

There is a fundamental flaw in the argument that forms the centrepiece of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.

Israel, supporters of the campaign maintain, is an “apartheid” state where the evils being perpetrated against Palestinians are equivalent to those committed in South Africa in the darkest days of racist oppression. They demand the same international response (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) that, they argue, succeeded in undoing the white regime.

They see successfully labelling Israel in the eyes of the world an “apartheid” state as the key to forcing it to change course.

It’s an argument that has attracted support around the world, not just among those het up by what they ludicrously perceive to be the threat posed by Max Brenner chocolate shops in Australia. Even that most eminent and widely esteemed of scientists, Stephen Hawking, has bowed to Palestinian pressure and decided to boycott a scientific conference in Israel that he was previously happy to visit.

But it is an argument many with first-hand knowledge of South Africa under apartheid rule and Israel today would regard as a cockeyed distortion of historical reality that should be resisted, for the very basis of it is plain wrong: conveniently ignored is the fact that from its inception in 1949 until Nelson Mandela won power for the African National Congress in the 1994 “freedom election”, the policy of apartheid in South Africa involved the oppression of a vast black majority, purely on the basis of race, by a tiny white minority.

Crucially, it involved the creation of a state in which there was no democracy as we know it – one in which political and most other rights were the exclusive preserve of the privileged white minority. The black majority was disenfranchised and subjected to the most outrageous forms of discrimination in every aspect of their lives. They had no representation in the national parliament.

Black lives were regulated simply because people were black. Segregation was ruthlessly enforced. Blacks were allowed to live only in specified, mostly rundown areas. They had to go to separate, backdoor entrances at post offices. They could not go to white hospitals. Marriage and sex across the colour line was barred.

A lunatic system of race classification deemed what people could or could not do. Blacks couldn’t place funeral notices in the same columns as whites in newspapers. Schools were segregated, beaches were for whites only, and blacks were barred from playing sport with whites.

Israel is vastly different; it bears little relation to the madness of apartheid in South Africa. It is, after all, a country in which there is, yes, an overwhelming Jewish majority, but in which Arabs make up 20 per cent of the population. Crucially, where South Africa, under apartheid, was a racial dictatorship, Israel is a vibrant democracy, a country whose declaration of independence at the time of its foundation specifically promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture”.

While the black majority in South Africa was for decades disenfranchised, in Israel, every citizen, of whatever faith or ethnic background, has an inalienable right to vote and to speak out, even against Israel’s existence.

There have been Arab members of the Knesset in every parliament since the country’s formation, and while in South Africa discriminatory laws were administered by a race-based white judiciary, in Israel, an Arab judge was part of a Supreme Court bench that convicted a former Israeli president on misconduct charges.

Arab Israelis have served as government ministers, ambassadors for the country in key diplomatic postings abroad, and in top public service and police posts.

Yet Israel is flogged by the BDS campaigners as an “apartheid” state that deserves to be punished and ostracised by the international community in the way South Africa was. Nothing is heard, of course, about the “apartheid” being enforced by Hamas in Gaza, where strict Islamic law is being imposed, with women barred even from running in a local marathon, while schoolchildren are being segregated and forced to wear Islamic dress. There is also silence on the rank discrimination that is enforced in so much of the Arab world. That South Africa, because of its grotesque system of apartheid, was fair game for the sort of campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions that contributed substantially to the ultimate demise of white rule is hard to argue against.

But comparisons between South Africa then, and Israel now, are neither fair nor sustainable. And they certainly do not accord with reality.

The two situations are vastly different, and it is a pity people such as Hawking allow themselves to be persuaded otherwise. Israel is far from perfect. It has many shortcomings. But it is not an “apartheid” state in the sense South Africa was.

It is a vibrant democracy – significantly, the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. And it deserves better than the gross distortion of reality being espoused by BDS campaigners.

And finally an editorial where readers are told to stop picking on Israel and focus on the real menace, Iran (a nation that this peace-loving newspaper has said in the past could deserve to be bombed):

The Sydney Peace Foundation’s stated purpose is “to promote universal human rights and peace with justice” as the building blocks of any civil society. Foundation chairman Stuart Rees, however, has cast a cloud over the organisation’s bona fides by dismissing the London Declaration on Combating Anti-Semitism as “childish, thoughtless but easily populist”. His condemnation of Julia Gillard and opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne for “cowardice” in signing it almost beggars belief.

The Prime Minister and Mr Pyne are two of more than 125 politicians from 40 countries who have signed the declaration, which is a well-modulated affirmation of “democratic and human values” advocating societies built on respect, combating anti-Semitism and discrimination. As Mr Pyne said last week, it is sad that, 70 years after the Holocaust, it remains necessary to defend the right of Jewish people to live in Israel – the Middle East’s only mature democracy – free of anti-Semitic activities such as the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions campaign.

Professor Rees’s stance, in line with many on the Left, contains a curious anomaly. In recent years, while the Left has become more critical of Israel, its Palestinian opponents have become more jihadist. Israel’s critics also pay little heed to the encroaching influence of Iran, one of the world’s most oppressive and menacing regimes. Late last year, after supporting the Palestinian Authority’s bid for statehood at the UN, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated his nation’s attitude to Israel when he said any deal that accepted the Jewish state’s existence would leave a “cancerous tumour” forever threatening Middle East security. Such hostile influence further diminishes the prospect of a workable two-state solution. Unfortunately, that prospect has receded since the death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004, as the influence of Fatah, the Palestinian faction prepared to negotiate a two-state solution, has been usurped.

Through Sudan and Egypt, Iran has been shipping major new weapons supplies to the Hamas terrorists in Gaza, who have governed there since winning a majority of parliamentary seats in 2006. The rockets and missiles are being stockpiled in anticipation of military conflict with Israel, to be sparked by action over Iran’s nuclear ambitions or the civil war in Iran’s ally, Syria.

Iran also has cemented its influence in the Middle East by arming its other surrogate, Hezbollah, with Iranian-supplied rockets in Lebanon. The evidence is incontrovertible that the Assad regime in Damascus, in close collusion with Iran, is seeking to transfer stockpiles of Fateh-110 missiles, with the capacity to carry a half-tonne warhead more than 300km, to Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. Such a prospect represents a serious threat to Israel.

Against such a background, the focus of Professor Rees’s “peace” foundation is what he calls “the internationally illegal policies of the government of Israel”. While claiming that Ms Gillard and Mr Pyne “have a lot of serious reflecting and reading to do” and that they should accompany him to Gaza, the professor fails to address the religious fanaticism of Israel’s main opponents. For the head of an organisation ostensibly committed to peace, such bias suggests underlying values that are strangely skewed.

In the real world, away from propaganda for any state or its policies, lies the reality of Israeli actions and the importance of boycotting and challenging this mad normality. Here’s why.

While Israel continues daily to brutalise Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and Stephen Hawking’s decision to back BDS causes waves around the world, it’s comical to read Rupert Murdoch’s Australian desperately hoping that the Zionist state would just get some love. After praising Israel for singing lullabies to Palestinians recently, today’s editorial merely deepens the level of delusion. Long may it continue:

An outbreak of common sense at the University of Sydney is welcome. Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence has rejected support from the student council (and one of his own academics) for the anti-Israel boycotts, divestment and sanctions campaign.

“I do not consider it appropriate for the university to boycott academic institutions in a country with which Australia has diplomatic relations,” said Dr Spence. As it should, one of our premier seats of learning is standing up for freedom of expression, democracy and liberal intellectual engagement. The BDS push came from Associate Professor Jake Lynch – a paradoxical show of intolerance given he heads the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Student activists and Greens MPs who have given succour to the often anti-Semitic BDS campaign should pause to think. Incongruously, these pro-Arab demonstrators focus on one of the few Middle Eastern countries where Arabs have a free vote and hold seats in a democratic parliament. We could take their commitment to human rights more seriously if occasionally they protested against atrocities inflicted upon Arabs by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, or blood-letting between Hamas and Hezbollah, or, in the past, the cruelty of Saddam Hussein. But on Arab aggression the protesters see, hear and speak no evil.

Fair journalism is hard, isn’t it? Getting all the facts, putting them into sentences and writing them down accurately. I’m tired just thinking about it.

The following article appears in today’s Murdoch’s Australian. The selectivity of the piece is startling but unsurprising:

The NSW Greens have outraged Jewish leaders by organising a fundraiser cruise to support a plan for Palestinians to build an “ark” in Gaza and try to ruin the Israeli naval blockade of the territory.

Greens MP David Shoebridge used his office and website to promote a “sail in solidarity” voyage on Sydney Harbour last night to raise money for the “Gaza’s Ark” campaign.

“The economic situation in Gaza is desperate, with most of its land trade shut down by Israeli border guards, its airport destroyed by Israeli bombardments . . . and its fishing fleet coming under Israeli fire if it moves beyond six nautical miles from the coast,” Mr Shoebridge’s website says.

“Gaza’s Ark will challenge the blockade by rebuilding a boat in Gaza using Palestinian shipbuilders, load the vessel with Palestinian goods and products and sail to international waters with both Palestinians and internationals on board.

“The goal is to challenge the ongoing, illegal Israeli blockade and focus worldwide attention on Gaza and the complicity of the governments that support it or look the other way.”

The description of the project on Mr Shoebridge’s website is mild compared with the international Gaza’s Ark website, which focuses on alleged Israeli atrocities and what is claimed to be a policy of “apartheid” towards Palestinians, as well as promoting the international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against the Jewish state.

Mr Shoebridge said the Gaza’s Ark project was not a BDS campaign, though he said BDS was “one of the legitimate ways” to fight against what he said was Israeli oppression.

Prominent NSW Greens who joined Mr Shoebridge on last night’s fundraiser included senator Lee Rhiannon, who has supported BDS, his fellow state upper house member John Kaye, and the preselected candidate for a Greens state upper house seat, Mehreen Faruqi.

About 50 other Palestinian supporters disembarked after a three-hour cruise on Sydney harbour last night. “It’s an excellent fundraiser and we support it as Parliamentarians for Palestine,” Senator Rhiannon said.

Mr Shoebridge has had the occasional run-in with the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, including claiming that a parliamentary visit by some state MPs other than Greens to Israel was a one-sided Israeli PR tour supported by the board.

The board’s chief executive, Vic Alhadeff, said: “The reality which Mr Shoebridge and his colleagues mischievously ignore is that all people of goodwill support the citizens of Gaza in their aspirations for a better life.

“The problem is that they suffer under the brutal Hamas regime which wages war on Israel.”

Some facts that may get in the way of a Murdoch hatchet job. Labor state and federal politicians had purchased tickets to support the event, including Laurie Ferguson, Shaoquett Moslemane and Amanda Fazio (they didn’t attend in the end, though). Union figures attending included Greg Shaw (PSA), Caroline Staples (PSA), Rita Malia (CFMEU), Ivan Simic (CFMEU), plus a number of representatives from the PGFTU and Young Labor.

Besides, since when are “Jewish leaders” monolithic and solely represented by the pro-settler and racist Zionist lobby?

Finally, opposing Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza, in a peaceful way, is wholly vital and legitimate in a democracy, unless of course you believe, as does the Israeli spokespeople who claim to be “journalists” at the Murdoch rag, that we must blindly support Israeli government policy.

I’ve attended many fund-raisers for Gaza Ark and wish I had been there last night.

The following statement was issued today by the Palestine Action Group (Sydney):

Supporters of Palestine have responded to a May 2 report in the Australian asserting that Max Brenner Israel has no direct shares in Max Brenner Australia as irrelevant to the solidarity campaign for justice in Palestine.

Palestine solidarity activists are bemused that the Australian has given front page coverage to this “scoop”. The Youtube of the rally in question, which took place on September 21, 2012, has also just been released.

The “exclusive” report quoting Patrick Harrison, a spokesperson from the Palestine Action Group, is taken from in a sarcastic Youtube made by Jeremy Moses from Varietygarage.com.

The article tries to make out that Mr Harrison is undermining his own cause by “acknowledging” that boycotting the Max Brenner outlet in Parramatta will have no financial impact on its parent company in Israel.

It also alleges that Max Brenner International “has absolutely no holding” in Max Brenner Australia.

But just because the parent company doesn’t hold shares in the Australian Max Brenner doesn’t mean that the franchisee is not connected to the parent company. Often the franchise company takes a cut and charges the franchise holder fees for the name and sometimes the equipment and supplies.

In fact, the Australian just a few days ago admitted the connection.

On April 29, the newspaper stated in a report on a protest against the establishment of a Max Brenner outlet on the University of NSW campus which took place on April 30 that:

‘Max Brenner is a brand of food and beverage Strauss group, which has been a supporter of the Israeli armed forces, including ‘adopting’ a platoon in the army’s Golani brigade.’

“This is the reason that those concerned about Israel’s apartheid policies towards Palestinians have made Max Brenner a target for protest over recent years”, said Mr Raul Bassi, another member of the Palestine Action Group.

“As Patrick Harrison and other activists explain in the Youtube in question, the protests outside Max Brenner are largely a consciousness-raising exercise. They are aimed at letting people know how close the Strauss Group – the owners of Max Brenner – is to the current Zionist government of Israel.”

Mr Patrick Langosch, another member of the Palestine Action Group, said: “The protests outside the Max Brenner outlets are also about letting Australians know about the non-violent Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign which was launched 6 years ago by Palestine civil society organisations.

“In these aims the rallies outside the Max Brenner cafes have been very successful. So much so, Australian supporters of the Israeli government – including Michael Danby MP and Paul Howes of the Australian Workers Union – have had themselves photographed patronising Max Brenner cafes”, said Mr Langosch.

The Palestine Solidarity Group also rejects the Australian’s efforts to argue that any protest against a Max Brenner store is “anti-Semitic”.

“Anti-Semitism is the belief or behavior hostile toward Jews just because they are Jewish. The solidarity actions in support of Palestine are not anti-Semitic; they are opposed to the apartheid-like policies of the Netanyahu government, as are many Jews and Israelis”, said Mr Langosh.

Antony Loewenstein, independent journalist and author of My Israel Question, says that BDS is a legitimate and non-violent tactic, thriving globally, that targets the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.

“Anti-Semitism has nothing to do with this movement; this is a convenient distraction by the Murdoch press and complicit Zionist lobby and I totally reject this as a Jew myself. Freedom for Palestinians will only come when Jews, Palestinians and others join together to demand justice for an occupied people. Universities and corporations who profit from this occupation deserve to be named, shamed and boycotted.”

The Palestine Action Group is calling on all supporters of Palestine to attend the Al Nakba rally on May 15. The rally marks the date that Israel was created by illegitimate means. Between 1947-1948, around half of the 1.4 million Palestinian Arabs were driven from their homes or fled to neighbouring Arab states.

The protest will call on the Australian government to speak up against the ongoing displacement of Palestinians from their land, and the laws that discriminate against Palestinians within Israel.

Today’s editorial in Rupert Murdoch’s Australian is a classic case of receiving a press release from the Israeli government and it somehow, mysteriously, appearing in the paper. Occupation is invisible. Hell, Israel is praised for cuddling Palestinians babies at West Bank checkpoints. Well, nearly. If the editors need some assistance to better understand the brutal, racist reality of Israel’s occupation of Palestine see here, here and here.

Read and weep/laugh:

It says a great deal about the illiberal tendencies of parts of our academic community that the anti-Israeli boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – which often borders on the anti-Semitic – finds support in the humanities faculties of some of our universities.

Given the right of people to go about their legal business, and shop where they please, it is questionable that the University of NSW should even tolerate protests against a chocolate shop being established on its site. But it is beyond question that it should take action against protesters using blatantly racist and anti-Semitic language as part of these protests. We expect that, quite rightly, there would be forceful action to stamp out any vilification of, say, Muslim or Asian students. Yet seemingly the targeting of Israeli-linked companies and Jewish people throws up a confected moral quandary.

The BDS movement wins support not just from jejune students eager for an anti-establishment cause but also from some academics, perhaps for the same reason. If it were not so tragic it would be a hilarious paradox that the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies backs BDS, including preventing academic exchanges. It is difficult to think of an act that is more close-minded or less conciliatory than banning an exchange of ideas between people in liberal democracies. Still, this is what passes muster in some parts of the academy these days.

The blatant dishonesty of this campaign should be identified and condemned. The legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people present a worthy cause, yet to couch their campaign in hateful language about “apartheid” and “war crimes” is demonstrably inaccurate and offensive. No objective view of history could fail to recognise Israel’s offers to surrender territory to the Palestinians in return for peace. The landmark Oslo Accords cemented this reality but the olive branch has never been grasped, primarily because Hamas, like Yasser Arafat’s PLO before it, simply will not recognise the right of Israel to exist. A peace based on two secure states can hardly be delivered without that fundamental acceptance. When Israel evacuated its citizens and withdrew from Gaza in 2005 it wasn’t peace that ensued but bloody battles between Hamas and Fatah. Israel was rewarded with indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza into its territory, targeting its civilians. Unless Palestinians accept responsibility for their actions, there can be no serious consideration of a peaceful resolution to their rightful claims for territory, statehood and the return of refugees.

As a pluralistic democracy that provides for the security and well-being of Palestinians, Israel is not remotely comparable to apartheid South Africa. For decades Arabs have had greater democratic and human rights in Israel than in any Arab country. They make up about a sixth of Israel’s population and Palestinian Muslims hold seats in the Knesset on a platform of creating a viable Palestinian state. Israel is not perfect and the Palestinian issue must be resolved. But demonising Israel and Jews is not only wrong because it is racist, it is also an incorrect and deceptive interpretation of reality. Julia Gillard is right to condemn the BDS campaign, now so marginalised it has been disowned even by the Greens. We are entitled to expect our universities to take a stronger stand both against racism and in favour of facts.

Another day and yet more faux outrage by the Murdoch press and Israel lobby in Australia.

First this (via the Australian on its front page):

Julia Gillard has denounced the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement ahead of anti-Israeli protest action planned at the University of NSW today.

BDS action at UNSW has turned ugly, with anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying material appearing on a Facebook page opposing the opening of a Max Brenner chocolate shop on campus. Postings on a Facebook page promoting today’s protest have attacked “Jews and Jew lovers” and said the figure of six million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany was an exaggeration.

“Tell us again how there was no hidden Zionist agenda with the Holocaust and the eventual creation of the state of Israel,” one reads.

The Prime Minister said yesterday through a spokeswoman that the government had always been firm in its opposition of the BDS movement, which equates Israel with apartheid-era South Africa.

“This campaign does not serve the cause of peace and diplomacy for agreement on a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine,” she said.

“I welcome the strong ties our universities have with Israeli researchers and academic institutions, and I hope those ties will deepen in the years ahead.”

The University of Sydney Student Representative Council this month called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, including severing the university’s ties with the world-renowned Technion in Haifa.

The Prime Minister’s comments come a week after she became the first Australian politician to sign the London Declaration on Combating Anti-Semitism.

“In the face of anti-Semitism, there can be no bystanders,” she wrote. “As citizens, as leaders and as nations, we must act.”

The gesture has been seen as bridge-building after a row with the Jewish community last year over Australia’s abstention from a UN vote giving Palestine non-member observer state status.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry chief Peter Wertheim welcomed Ms Gillard’s remarks yesterday.

“The BDS campaign against Israel over the last few years has been a spectacular failure,” he said.

“It has been forcefully repudiated by every political party represented in the federal parliament and in every state and territory parliament.”

Some Greens, including NSW senator Lee Rhiannon, have backed the movement in the past. Support for BDS is credited with dashing the Greens’ hopes of winning the seat of Marrickville in the 2011 NSW election.

The group Students for Justice in Palestine has called for a boycott of the University of NSW Max Brenner outlet, due to open in June.

BDS activists claim the chain is owned by the Israeli Strauss Group of food and confectionery manufacturers, which produces some rations for the nation’s defence forces and accuse it of complicity in “Israeli war crimes”. However, the local management insists it is wholly Australian owned and operated.

Australian Union of Jewish Students spokesman Andrew Goldberg said: “The boycott Max Brenner movement has turned into a hotbed of blatant anti-Semitism. Classical anti-Semitic comments have been made, clearly irrelevant to discussion about Max Brenner. The organisers have effectively endorsed these comments by dismissing legitimate concerns about anti-Semitism as ‘trying to shut down debate about Israel’.”

Mr Goldberg called on university officials to “ensure that those with an anti-Semitic agenda will not be allowed to spread their hateful and discriminatory agenda on campus”.

The Australian was unable to contact the Facebook site’s operators. However, one prolific poster apologised “to any of the Jewish people on this page who were upset and offended by comments”.

Then this:

When the University of NSW surveyed staff and students about which new stores they wanted on campus, a Max Brenner chocolate shop was the equal second most popular choice. This has not deterred the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine UNSW from seeking to impose its own preferences on the rest of the campus community.

They accuse UNSW, and presumably staff and students who voted for Max Brenner, of supporting “Israeli war crimes” and “apartheid”.

Beyond this baseless calumny against Israel, local Max Brenner shops are wholly Australian owned and operated.

Yet if that was the extent of SJP’s response, it would hardly rate a mention.But what began as student activism, has ended up in a social media campaign of anti-Jewish vilification, to the point where many Jewish students on campus feel unsafe.

The Facebook page RALLY! Say no to Max Brenner at UNSW was set up by SJP via the Boycott Max Brenner at UNSW Facebook group. It has hosted dozens of comments that cover the gamut of anti-Jewish stereotypes, claiming that Jews are cursed by God, are money-hungry, control the media, and are dirty and evil.

Other posts deny the Holocaust and simultaneously, with textbook cognitive dissonance, blame the Holocaust on the Jews.

The racist postings include a reference to “evil greedy money-loving nature of Jews”, and the claim that “Only news (that) Jews are happy with goes through via media”. Another post reverts to classical religious bigotry: “Of course I have a problem with Jews. You are not the cursed people and were not Banished from the holy land for nothing lol.” Non-Jews who defend Jews come in for opprobrium with the comment: “Tip rats = Jew lovers.”

An especially vicious post rails against “the dirtiest most evil people on earth using the holocaust to their advantage as leverage to establish the state of israel. it was all planned.”

The UNSW Student Representative Council Ethnic Affairs Officer, Charlotte Lewis, was so shocked she posted: “Reading over these comments has left me gobsmacked at the outrageous anti-Semitic slanders mentioned on this event. If I see one more antisemitic comment, I’m taking this to the University.”

In a later post, Lewis stated: “I am the Ethno-Cultural Officer, meaning I need to look out for any hate speech towards any ethnic group. I have witnessed many accusations that the Holocaust didn’t exist, and that Jews are money-hungry pigs. Due to this, several Jewish students actually feel unsafe to step foot into the University, meaning I actually DO need to solve this problem.”

Lewis informed the page owners that the UNSW Chancellery had been made aware of the page, and its anti-Jewish content, but the university administration appears not to have taken action.

The present National Anti Racism campaign slogan, “Racism, it stops with me”, seems to have fallen on deaf ears among the administrators at UNSW, which has one of the most culturally diverse campuses in Australia.

It has been left to other UNSW students who share Lewis’s disgust to establish their own Facebook page Defend Max Brenner at UNSW, featuring screenshots of the anti-Jewish posts on the RALLY page to highlight the racism it has spawned. These students posted their own comments on the RALLY page, protesting its anti-Semitism and demanding an end to the anti-Jewish vitriol. For the most part, their demands went unheeded. Some anti-Jewish posts were deleted, but were replaced by others.

SJP has yet to ask itself why it provides a sympathetic home for naked Jew-hatred. SJP organisers wax indignant at the merest suggestion they are complicit in fomenting anti-Semitism. Instead, they accuse anyone who points out the raw racism they attract of trying to “censor” them with the intimidating charge of anti-Semitism. It is difficult but necessary for them to understand their own role in attracting and hosting content which expresses racism against Jews. It is easy, but false, simply to assume any claimed offence is merely feigned for political or other advantage.

Peter Wertheim is executive director and Julie Nathan research officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the national peak body of the Australian Jewish community.

Familiar and tired tactics. Anti-Semitism should be condemned whenever and wherever it occurs. No tolerance allowed. But note the complete absence of any discussion about why BDS is growing globally. The Israeli occupation of Palestine is deepening and becoming more brutal. Whatever accusations are throw at peaceful activists trying to raise these points will have no impact on Palestinians. The reality on the ground is what’s being suppressed by whatever means possible. Israel will become more isolated. Sanctions will come. Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch’s minions and the Israel lobby will be writing articles about the anti-Semitism of breathing the word, “Palestinian.”

Today’s protest?

A small group of protesters has gathered at the University of NSW to protest about a chocolate shop which they say has links to Israeli war crimes.

The protest against the Max Brenner brand was organised by Students For Justice in Palestine (SJP) UNSW, with 175 people indicating on the group’s Facebook page that they would attend.

However, by midday Tuesday only around 20 protesters had gathered on the lawns of UNSW to hear speeches.

The SJP says the Max Brenner brand is owned by the Strauss Group, a corporation which sponsors the Golani and Givati Brigades of the Israeli Defence Force.

The group has accused the brigades of war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing.

Protester Lutfi Zayed, 20, accused Max Brenner of being complicit in Israeli war crimes, but denied the group was anti-semitic or had made anti-semitic comments on its Facebook page.

“Those comments made on Facebook, we don’t know about them,” he told AAP.

“What would you say about Islamaphobia on Facebook? We see that too.”

A university spokesman said the chocolate shop was under construction and due to open in June.

He said the university had no plans to revoke the lease signed with the operators.

Comment was being sought from Max Brenner.

Last night I appeared on ABC TV’s The Drum (video here) on the 10th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq war.

We discussed the appalling legacy of the Iraq invasion, the massive loss of life and continued chaos of the country. Accountability, in the political or media elites, is far and few between.

I argued that the visit by Barack Obama to Israel changes nothing about the reality of ongoing Zionist occupation in the West Bank. Apartheid is here to stay.

Finally, the idea that big media players in Australia, including the Murdoch empire, shouldn’t be regulated in any way is laughable and goes against what the general public wants in survey and survey. Bullying is what media owners do before breakfast. Free speech in a democracy means transparency towards journalists and owners has to include ways in which citizens can get answers from wayward outlets.

Late last year Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newsletter ran a campaign against the head of Sydney University’s Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies, Jake Lynch, for bravely rejecting institutional links with occupation-supporting Israeli universities.

Today former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appears in the same paper with quotes implying that boycotts are anti-Semitic and concerned people should trust the diplomatic process. This is comical. The reasons BDS against Israel is growing is precisely because years of “peace talks” have only led to further Israeli apartheid:

The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, which supports the boycotts, divestments and sanctions campaign against Australian businesses with Israeli connections, has “just got it wrong”, Kevin Rudd said yesterday.

The former prime minister used a visit to Sydney University, which is home to the centre headed by director Jake Lynch, to lash the policy he said was ineffective.

“I think people who engage in that sort of activity around businesses who are associated with the Jewish community frankly have just got it wrong,” he said.

“It doesn’t help. There is a much more important debate about how we mobilise international diplomatic action around a durable peace settlement in the Middle East.”

The centre earned widespread scorn when Mr Lynch cited the BDS campaign – usually designed to break businesses with links to Israel as a de facto show of support for Palestine – in rejecting a request for assistance from Israeli academic Dan Avnon.

Mr Avnon, a professor with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is credited with work designed to bridge the divide between the Jewish and Arab communities in the Middle East.

The University of Sydney has repeatedly distanced itself from Mr Lynch’s support of BDS and said the institution itself did not endorse the protest measure.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim has previously told The Australian the stance of Mr Lynch was a “continual embarrassment to the University of Sydney”, but Mr Rudd yesterday wouldn’t be drawn on whether the university had ridiculed itself.

“It’s a matter for the authorities within this university,” he said.

“Frankly, this is a matter of diplomacy, it’s a question of putting proposals on the table which work in bringing about a durable peace settlement as opposed to targeting campaigns against businesses which happen to be owned by members of the Jewish community.

“I think that’s just wrong. We should remember history.”

Professor Avnon still hopes to visit Australia this year if his research projects gain funding.

Higher Education Minister Chris Evans has criticised academic supporters of the BDS movement.

And Sydney University professor Suzanne Rutland, a member of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies council, has criticised the centre’s support of the BDS movement.

One of the team behind the Watergate story, Carl Bernstein, unloads:

So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch‘s ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America’s democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.

In the American instance, Murdoch’s goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election.

Thus in the spring of 2011 – less than 10 weeks before Murdoch’s centrality to the hacking and politician-buying scandal enveloping his British newspapers was definitively revealed – Fox News’ inventor and president, Roger Ailes, dispatched an emissary to Afghanistan to urge Petraeus to turn down President Obama’s expected offer to become CIA director and, instead, run for the Republican nomination for president, with promises of being bankrolled by Murdoch. Ailes himself would resign as president of Fox News and run the campaign, according to the conversation between Petraeus and the emissary, K T McFarland, a Fox News on-air defense “analyst” and former spear carrier for national security principals in three Republican administrations.

All this was revealed in a tape recording of Petraeus’s meeting with McFarland obtained by Bob Woodward, whose account of their discussion, accompanied online by audio of the tape, was published in the Washington Post – distressingly, in its style section, and not on page one, where it belonged – and, under the style logo, online on December 3.

Indeed, almost as dismaying as Ailes’ and Murdoch’s disdain for an independent and truly free and honest press, and as remarkable as the obsequious eagerness of their messenger to convey their extraordinary presidential draft and promise of on-air Fox support to Petraeus, has been the ho-hum response to the story by the American press and the country’s political establishment, whether out of fear of Murdoch, Ailes and Fox – or, perhaps, lack of surprise at Murdoch’s, Ailes’ and Fox’s contempt for decent journalistic values or a transparent electoral process.

The tone of the media’s reaction was set from the beginning by the Post’s own tin-eared treatment of this huge story: relegating it, like any other juicy tidbit of inside-the-beltway media gossip, to the section of the newspaper and its website that focuses on entertainment, gossip, cultural and personality-driven news, instead of the front page.

…

Murdoch and Ailes have erected an incredibly influential media empire that has unrivaled power in British and American culture: rather than judiciously exercising that power or improving reportorial and journalistic standards with their huge resources, they have, more often than not, recklessly pursued an agenda of sensationalism, manufactured controversy, ideological messianism, and political influence-buying while masquerading as exemplars of a free and responsible press. The tape is powerful evidence of their methodology and reach.

Yesterday the ABC published as its lead opinion story my piece about the reasons why an academic boycott should be imposed on Israel. The hundreds of comments below are a fascinating if mostly despairing insight into the mindset of people who want to label any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. Oh well.

Today’s Rupert Murdoch’s Australian briefly extracts my article and then attempts to dismiss my claims of Israel being an apartheid state by printing what amounts to talking points given by the Israeli government and Zionist lobby. Yes, this really helps the case of Israel to endlessly repeat how well the Jewish state treats Arabs despite the overwhelming evidence proving the opposite:

Depend on Aunty to defend the right to misinform. Antony Loewenstein, ABC Online’s The Drum yesterday:

ISRAEL is not a normal country and proudly practises apartheid against Palestinians. Jake Lynch has taken one small step in publicly stating his opposition to our complicity in these crimes. His decision is an example of how principled academia should behave.

Just a few facts. Mitchell G Bard, Jewish Virtual Library:

Today, within Israel, Jews are a majority, but the Arab minority are full citizens who enjoy equal rights and are represented in all the branches of government. Arabs are represented in the Knesset, and have served in the Cabinet, high-level foreign ministry posts (e.g., Ambassador to Finland ) and on the Supreme Court. Under apartheid, black South Africans could not vote and were not citizens of the country in which they formed the overwhelming majority of the population. Laws dictated where they could live, work and travel.

And, in South Africa, the government killed blacks who protested against its policies. By contrast, Israel allows freedom of movement, assembly and speech. Some of the government’s harshest critics are Israeli Arabs who are members of the Knesset . . . It is likely that a final settlement will allow most Palestinians to become citizens of their own state.

Today Rupert Murdoch’s very serious broadsheet organ The Australian continues its brave reporting on, well knows anymore, the countless stories about Dr Jake Lynch at Sydney University. It’s beyond parody. Thankfully, Lynch is standing firm and he has received the full support of his Peace and Conflict Studies board.

News story:

Australia’s peak Jewish body has criticised the Sydney University Centre for Peace and Conflict for “misguided and obsessive zeal” after it rejected a request for assistance from an Israeli academic who has worked to bridge the Arab-Jew divide.

The comments from Executive Council of Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim come as the opposition yesterday savaged Labor Senate leader and Higher Education Minister Chris Evans for refusing to take a stand on the ban.

The centre supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which explicitly equates Israel with apartheid-era South Africa.

Centre director Jake Lynch cited the BDS campaign when he rejected a request by Hebrew University of Jerusalem academic Dan Avnon to be a contact person on an application for a Sir Zelman Cowen Fellowship.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr has declared the government “fiercely, unequivocally, strongly opposes BDS” in a statement in September. But Senator Evans has refused to answer questions on whether the government considers it appropriate for bodies such as the centre to maintain a BDS policy.

He has also declined to say if the government has concerns that academic staff who implement BDS policies may be in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act.

“It is time for the government leadership to be honest about its position on the anti-Semitic BDS campaign and to take a principled stand against it,” opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said.”I call on Senator Evans to declare his opposition to the BDS campaign and to assure taxpayers that he will raise his concerns with the head of the Centre for Peace and Conflict studies and the vice-chancellor of Sydney University.”

Ms Bishop said the government’s silence on the issue raised serious questions about its true position on BDS.

Mr Wertheim described the centre as “a continual embarrassment to the University of Sydney”. He said the centre was “viewed with scarcely concealed disdain by many in the academic community”.

He slammed the ban on assisting Professor Avnon. “This would have been a golden opportunity for an Australian university centre to play a constructive and effective role in peace-building in the region,” he said.

Letters:

I agree with Jake Lynch of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies that he should have the freedom to criticise, even ostracise, academic peers representing Israeli universities (Letters, 11/12).

But I find Lynch’s letter confusing. If others criticise his choices, is that “a political attack on freedom of expression” or an exercise of their freedom of expression? Do members of his staff have freedom of association, even if that means breaching his boycott to work with an Israeli?

And suppose the academic board of the university were to review the merit of having a research centre that subordinates truth-seeking to political rhetoric: would that be an attack on his freedom, or an exercise of their freedom, or just a logical consequence of the free choices he makes?

James McDonald, Annandale, NSW

Jake Lynch accuses opposition frontbenchers of “a political attack on (his) freedom of expression”. Yet he has no qualms about the most egregious attacks on political freedom: banning from his centre an Israeli academic, thereby engaging in political censorship, and supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, specifically designed to damage Jewish businesses for what he considers to be inadequacies in Israeli government policy.

And not content with mounting attacks on political and economic freedoms, he justifies them on racial grounds. In democracies, freedom of political discourse must always be defended; racism and censorship should always be denounced. But in Lynch’s world, it appears the opposite is true.

Christopher Pyne, Opposition spokesman for education

George Brandis, Opposition spokesman for attorney-general

Jake Lynch shows it does not take brains to be called an academic these days. It takes skill at politically correct postulations and a belief in being as sycophantic as possible to those one is crawling up to.

In his letter he accuses the opposition of attacking freedom of expression but apparently has forgotten this is exactly what he is trying to enforce on people from Israel.

Maybe he is fishing for a job with the Greens. I have no idea how pointing someone out as an enemy encourages peace, but I am no academic.

Graham Gordon Thomas, Kadina, SA

Your editorial (“Ugliness lurks in the cloisters”, 11/12) says what has long needed to be said by those who retain the notion of a university being a bastion of scholarship with the freedom to express and exchange ideas, especially those that challenge prevailing orthodoxy.

Your suggestion that Sydney University should act must be heeded before a virus of intolerance spreads to further damage its reputation.

John Kidd, Auchenflower, Qld

Your editorial is as ridiculous and misleading as your reporting. If my and the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement had anything to do with the

nationality of Dan Avnon, how come we have hosted recent talks by professors Ilan Pappe and Jeff Halper — two prominent Israelis who appeared in a personal capacity?

You end by raising the red herring of a putative ban on Muslim scholars — repeating, by implication, your imputation of anti-Jewish racism. If that was our motivation, how come we awarded last year’s Sydney Peace Prize to Noam Chomsky, a prominent Jewish intellectual? How come we organised a well-attended talk a couple of years ago by Michael Lerner?

The boycott is of institutional links with Israeli universities. Your attempts to cloud that issue arise from an intention to intimidate those of us who take action in protest against Israeli policy, where governments refuse to do so.

Jake Lynch, director, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Sydney University