Month: October 2013

The right to criticize the policies of another country are at stake

Today an Israeli based law centre, Shurat HaDin, filed a case in the Federal Court of Australia, against Professor Jake Lynch from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. They claim that he has supported policies which are racist and discriminatory by his specific endorsement of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and individuals representing them. Jake Lynch has refused collaboration with Hebrew University because of its support of the illegal occupation of Palestine and close connections with the Israeli armament industry.

This lawfare attack against academic freedom and freedom of speech has been condemned by over 2000 Australian and international human rights advocates from some 60 countries, who have all signed a pledge supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel because of its well documented and clear violations of international and humanitarian law, and offering to be co-defendants in any legal action taken against Lynch.

Shurat HaDin has taken many similar actions internationally against groups who support the BDS movement. Professor Stuart Rees comments, “It seems that this firm, Shurat HaDin works in the civil courts as a proxy for the Israeli government and security forces, seeking to shut down any criticism of the state of Israel and its ongoing human rights abuses and violations of international law.”

In August, Shurat HaDin lodged a complaint in the Human Rights Commission against Jake Lynch’s refusal to sponsor an Israeli academic from the Hebrew University, now they want to silence this highly regarded academic, by taking their complaint to the Federal Court. This challenges the right to take non violent action in support international human rights law and the rights of the dispossessed Palestinians. Australians for BDS condemns racism in all forms, and specifically anti-Semitism.

“Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing machinery continue unabated but the moral force that used to drive that process is fast eroding and, as out of touch as the Abbott government and anti-BDS activists in Australia may be, there is an undeniable shift in the balance of moral power. International civil society is holding Israel to account in a way no government has ever been able to do”.

Press release by Randa Abdel Fattah, Australian Palestinian lawyer and writer.

Press conference with Professor Stuart Rees and Professor Peter Slezak
Date: WED Oct 30th (today)
Time: 2pm
Location: Queen’s Square, Junction of King, Phillip and Macquarie Streets, Sydney (St James Station)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen’s_Square,_Sydney

UPDATE

Professor Peter Slezak speaks at the press conference:

tabloid burnt offerings
grovel to my dictates
shock horror twerking scandal!
if you could ask Elvis,
would he not say
my heaving gyrations
transcend colour, sex,
class and race?
your acquiescence
in this rotting pop corn age
my attention-seeking militates.

tread those egg shells lightly
i throw down each day,
my name writ smooth and broadcast,
to remain in orbit, you must obey.
i have no allies,
only competitors in crimes
of appropriation,
fickle backslappers –
fans are not fans who disagree,
my privilege is to make decrees,
blogged, statused and tweeted.

form inverted Vs,
witless adoration fuels
my trajectory,
that dance i made my own?
there’s nothing new under the sun
that has not been borrowed or
stolen in show biz
from non-white cultures,
just ask Elvis –
from above i may watch,
so twerk your tail feather
and coyly brush your crotch.

yet this sympathetic magic
can never transmute you to me –
are exploiter and exploited,
voyeur and object,
entertainer and entertained
on the same branch of the tree?
trust me, this industry enslaves us all,
i need you more than you need me,
get busy, buy my song,
pity me, and dance my dance.

Jinjirrie, October 2013.

Focus on elite individuals and their manufactured victimhood serves as a bait and switch – instead of challenging the structure of capitalist patriarchy, we are baited to participate voyeuristically in the divide and rule show enabled by the ruling elite and their oppressive structures, especially the media. There’s something to be said for the Australian tradition of tall poppy lopping.

It benefits the ruling capitalist patriarchy if women are seen to be attacking other women, if folks are absorbed with their own gripes and not on the structures of oppression. The ‘meritocracy’ divides, rules, disempowers and kneecaps the coordinated class struggle.

Month: October 2013

Australian academic faces Israeli lawfare attack from the Shurat HaDin

Victim Diva