Australian Senator RYAN slams "Australians for Palestine" and their despicable BDS campaign

From THE SENATE PROOF MATTERS OF PUBLIC INTEREST: Israel: SPEECH, Wednesday, 6 July 2011, by Senator RYAN (Victoria).
Senator Ryan:
...At the second conference of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism last year in Ottawa, which I was fortunate enough to attend, Stephen Harper said:

… when Israel … is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand.

• Demonisation,
• double standards,
• delegitimisation, 

...the three Ds, it is the responsibility of us all to stand up to them.

Sadly, this continues today...what I would like to speak about is this socalled BDS campaign.

... I note the public debate over the last three to four months that has thankfully exposed the lies and double standards upon which this campaign is based. Today I want to raise a few examples of this campaign in detail and consider the so-called BDS handbook produced and distributed by Australians for Palestine. I believe it was distributed to nearly all members and senators in this place.

In this manual we find some extraordinary lies and we find a use of language that is extraordinarily concerning. This booklet and the language in it refuses to even accept the partition by the United Nations in 1948. It refuses to accept the state that was created to be Israel. It goes on to talk about Israel's alleged conquest in 1967 of the Palestinian territories as if it were a unilateral invasion rather than yet another battle for Israel's very existence. It alleges racial discrimination against the Palestinian people without providing anything other than assertions and slurs.

Israel more than any nation surrounding it goes to extraordinary lengths to accommodate its Arab Muslim and Christian minorities, amongst others. This allegation is itself a distortion of this very tolerance and the exemptions from duty such as national service that are granted to the non-Jewish minorities of Israel. More troubling is the linking of the wars of independence and defence with the Holocaust which is the last refuge of the intellectually pathetic as well as those who seek to diminish the horror of that unique historical tragedy.
Some of the words the booklet uses are:

Just as Jews expected to Germany to accept responsibility for what it did in the Holocaust so, too, will the refugee issue continue to fester and frustrate attempts to bring peace to the region …

This is both a historical inaccuracy as well as a baseless slur.

Of course, the truth is that the so-called refugee issue is unique in the world. Nowhere else have refugee camps been used for such political purposes by the neighbours but opponents of a nation to continue to create angst and tension against the state that they wish was not there—in this case Israel.

Of course, nowhere else do we legally define refugees on such an intergenerational basis. The refugee issue is the tool with which some hope to destroy Israel through simply swamping it with people.

There is never mentioned the great yet intermittent expulsions of Jews from Arab lands that followed in the second half of the 20th century. Hundreds of thousands of Jews in nations that they had been at home in for centuries were expelled from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Morocco and Egypt, amongst others. Jews were forced to leave their homes. Their possessions and all their wealth were stolen often after arbitrary imprisonment or detention.

To talk about the movement of people in the Middle East in the second half of the 20th century and only refer to the refugee issue outlined allegedly in the terms by Australians for Palestine without considering the mistreatment of Jews throughout the Middle East at the same time is selective use of history.

This booklet also gives away later in the contents what its agenda is. It refers to the BDS campaign:

Thus it does not endorse either a one-state or a twostate solution.

The truth is this booklet gives away with those words the very point of this campaign. The campaign is to remove the state of Israel as a Jewish state.

...We also have outlined in this booklet a way to target Israeli goods. It outlines that if you look for the Israeli barcode which begins with the numbers 729 you can avoid purchasing products that originate from Israel. I would not like that to become a modern digital version of the Star of David on products.

Possibly, apart from its reference to the Holocaust, the most offensive example in this booklet is that it actually provides excuses for Hamas. It says:

In fact, Hamas has demonstrated a flexible approach to pragmatic politics. It has held to unilateral ceasefires and key leaders have even expressed a willingness to implicitly recognise Israel's existence as part of a genuine two state solution.

Hamas is an organisation that retains to this day in its charter the most vile references to the Jewish people, the most vile anti-Semitic references and that pledges itself to pushing the Jews into the sea. It pledges itself to the destruction of the Jewish state. Yet here in this booklet attempting to hide the truth of this campaign it actually provides excuses for an organisation that intentionally targets civilians.

... in Australians for Palestine we have a group of people that provides excuses for people who target children on school buses and in their schoolyards with rockets and with bombs.

What is the BDS in reality? The truth is that it represents the third wave of the attempt to eliminate Israel. Of course, not all those who supported it are necessarily aware of this objective but the campaign against Israel since 1948 cannot be ignored and this is the latest weapon of those who seek to eliminate it. Sadly, as is often the case with fellow travellers they are sometimes unwitting in the campaign they have been joined to.

The first wave was war. In the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s Israel's neighbours attempted to eliminate the Jewish state by means of traditional warfare.

In 1970 the second wave commenced ...that of asymmetrical warfare, terrorism—targeting civilians throughout Israel and in other parts of the world and using tactics that are utterly repugnant to civilised society.

But those campaigns were both failures. Israel could not be broken militarily despite the often extraordinary odds, and the various intifada and terror campaigns did not break its society, which I am in constant admiration of.

This campaign is now aimed at undermining support for Israel in the West. The use of names like Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela is a sign that this campaign is aimed at middle-class Australia, not the Arab street.

Of course, this comparison is utterly flawed. Martin Luther King, one of the truly great men of the 20th century, was pledged to harmony and nonviolence. The campaign against Israel is anything but. We have seen examples of that in our cities with the violent protests outside stores just in the last month.

When allegations are made towards Israel, often without any foundation or evidence, they are never made against others. We hear nothing from groups like this about the oppression of Arab peoples in the states surrounding Israel as we speak. These nations have much worse records on human rights and are direct neighbours of Israel. The issue is that they too are pledged to the destruction of that state. It is this double standard that gives the game away.

Australians for Palestine, through the words they have used in this, are not a group who support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

How long until we see the Star of David painted on windows? It may these days be painted in blue with a blue stripe above and below it in an attempt to say it is about Israel, but we know what this means. The agenda of these groups is clear: it is to diminish the support for Israel in Australia.

...In this book, in possibly the most egregious misuse of history, they refer to the Simon Wiesenthal Center as 'a notorious pro-Israeli front'. The centre is dedicated to a man who spent his life Nazi hunting and has the Museum of Tolerance and a website with educational tools such as Tools for Tolerance to encourage harmony in our society. To accuse that particular centre named after that extraordinary individual of being 'a notorious pro-Israeli front' is nothing short of offensive.

I see nowhere from Australians for Palestine condemnation of the rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli civilians; we only see excuses for Hamas. We do not see any call for Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to recognise Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. We do not see or hear of any demands from it that call for the Palestinian Authority to stop its glorification of terrorists, naming soccer tournaments after them, naming streets after them and having their education system encourage vile racism that we would not tolerate in our own communities.

This campaign seeks to hold Israel to a standard to which it will not hold its own proponents, the Palestinian Authority. Until those standards are applied equally, until the physical attacks on Israel and the anti-Semitic attacks upon the Jewish people are prominently and consistently ignored, this campaign will have no legitimacy and will continually be brought to attention in this place.

Australian Bigot: a wake-up call to anti-Israel “social-justice activists”

Last week Brendon Lee O'Connell was convicted on 6 counts of anti-Jewish harassment and vilification in the Western Australian District Court by a 12-person jury, after a 2-week trial in which the accused prominently exhibited his guilt by repeating his crime ad nauseum in the courtroom. Today he was sentenced to a total of 3 years imprisonment.

O'Connell was at a Friends of Palestine protest in May 2009, against the sale of Israeli oranges, when he harassed and taunted a Jewish student, shouting that Judaism is a "religion and race of hate" and the student is a "racist homicidal maniac".

During the trial he compared Judaism to an organised crime syndicate, said he was proud to be associated with holocaust denier Fredrick Toben, and asserted that "Jews control the entire world".

He also referred repeatedly to a massive, well-worn volume entitled “Judaism Discovered” full of multi-coloured stickers apparently marking his favourite “juicy bits”.

This 1102-page antisemite’s textbook, which is banned from sale by Amazon, asserts that Judaism is a “Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit …” His supporters claim that “Judaism is a horribly repugnant cult based on hatred of Christ, occultic doctrines, racial divisiveness, sexual barbarism, and voodoo rituals” and describe “Orthodox Judaism as the ideological survival of the most ossified traditions of Babylonian paganism, concealed beneath a complex system of dissimulation and misdirection”.

It is now clear that O’Connell’s poisonous rants and outlandish libels during the trial, and over many prior years of online antisemitic activism, were simply plagiarised from “Judaism Discovered”. It is therefore tempting to dismiss O’Connell as a narcissistic, muck-raking crackpot.

However O’Connell blends ancient lies with a new type of antisemitism, parading as a “social justice” campaign. So he also exemplifies the worst aspects of this new and recent anti-Israel “BDS” (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement that has attracted support from some fringe elements in Australia. Despite its semblance of “social justice”, it actually aims to destroy the Jewish homeland and vilify Jews.

Throughout his trial O’Connell repeatedly referred to “occupied Palestine”. When the jury retired, he shouted from the dock that it would be "an honour" to be imprisoned "for Palestine and Iraq". After the verdict was pronounced he shouted "Soon Benjamin Netanyahu will be in the dock …Free Palestine ...Free Iraq!"

While it is, of course, perfectly legitimate to criticise Israel’s policies, there is a red line that separates legitimate political expression from prejudice or bigotry. Natan Sharansky’s “3D test” defines that boundary: if it DEMONISES, DE-LEGITIMISES or applies a DOUBLE STANDARD, then it’s bigotry, whether the target is Judaism, Islam, Asians or any other group.

In “BDS, Anti-Semitism's New Face” published in Israel National News, 16 January 2011, Moshe Dann explains that

“Anti-Semites around the world have found a new and more subtle form of attack: …BDS campaigns. Wielding clichés like ‘apartheid,’ ‘war crimes,’ ‘stealing Palestinian land,’ ‘oppressing Palestinians,’ and ‘end the occupation,’ these groups seek to delegitimize and isolate Israel as part of their program to destroy Israel …The goal of BDS campaigns …is not territorial, but existential.”

Bernard-Henri Lévy, a French philosopher, writes in Huffington Post, 25 January 2011 that

“...we are faced here with a skilfully orchestrated but …bellicose, anti-democratic and, in a word, perfectly despicable campaign ... Regardless of what its promoters and its useful idiots say, the only real, accepted, hackneyed goal of this boycott campaign is to de-legitimize Israel...”

Levi also notes that the BDS movement doesn’t boycott Sudan, which is guilty of genocide in Darfur, nor China, guilty of massive violations of human rights in Tibet and elsewhere, nor Iran, nor those despotic Arab regimes whose citizens' have no freedom of expression.

Omar Barghouti, a founder of the “BDS”movement, has made it clear that his goal is “not two States but two Palestines.”  Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada and BDS leader, equates Israel to Nazi Germany, conveniently ignoring the fact that it was the Palestinian Arab leadership in the 1930’s and 1940’s who were allies of the Nazi regime. And Sabeel, an Arab Christian group, provides a "theological" fig leaf by reviving the antisemitic concept that Christians replace the Christ-killing Jews as the Chosen People. (It’s interesting to note that extremist Islamists now apply their version of this Replacement Theology to Jews, Christians and other “infidels”.)

So the BDS movement fails the 3D test on all three counts. It DEMONISES Jews as “the new Nazis”; it DE-LEGITIMISES the Jewish nation; and by incessantly targeting open, democratic Israel for censure while ignoring many blatant human-rights abusers, it applies a DOUBE STANDARD.

As Michael Danby, Member for Melbourne Ports recently said: “What is next for [the BDS campaign]?  Are they now going to paint the Star of David on shops selling Israeli products?”

Seen in this light, the O’Connell phenomenon should be a wake-up call to the small bands of earnest-looking, anti-Israel “social-justice activists” that occasionally pop up in supermarkets and shopping malls. Whether these useful idiots are misguided, ignorant, just plain antisemitic, or some combination of them all, they promote neither peace nor the welfare of their purported “friends” in the Middle East. They are merely fostering and encouraging more crackpot criminal behaviour, like O’Connell’s.

BDS, Anti-Semitism's New Face

From Israel National News, 16 January 2011, by Moshe Dann:

No need for swastikas and terrorism ...Anti-Semites around the world have found a new and more subtle form of attack: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian BDS National Committee, [is] an umbrella organization for dozens of Palestinian organizations supported by the Palestinian Authority ...it is aided by the Muslim Brotherhood, with branches in 70 countries, and hundreds of campus and civic/social organizations and anti-Israel NGOs.

Wielding clichés like "apartheid," "war crimes," "stealing Palestinian land," "oppressing Palestinians," and "end the occupation," these groups seek to delegitimize and isolate Israel as part of their program to destroy Israel.

No need for swastikas and terrorism ...Bedecked with ethics, law and justice, they insist that Israel withdraw to the 1949 Armistice lines, or 1947 UN proposed boundaries, leaving it vulnerable to terrorists. Their weapons are non-violent resistance that appeals to a sense of idealism and fair play, civil and human rights.

Backed by European governments, the UN, and Arab and Muslim organizations and countries, a host of NGOs condemn Israel as a pariah state, unworthy of existence. Their hate-campaign is currently focused on the Conference on Racism, to be held at the UN in New York City this [northern-hemisphere] summer.

If this were just a handful of Islamist fanatics, one might dismiss them; but they have lined up diplomatic and organizational support from many non-Muslims. That's why the campaign to delegitimize Israel is so unique and dangerous.

Anti-Israel campaigns overlap with anti-Jewish sentiments, bringing together diverse groups that are otherwise ideologically, philosophically and theologically incompatible. Hatred of Israel seems to be the single overriding issue that unites fascists and communists, anarchists and fundamentalists, religious leaders and atheists, rich and poor.

Challenging Israel's identity as a nominally Jewish state - a form of de-legitimization - seems to be an acceptable way of denying Israel's right to exist. Objecting to the right of Jews to live in areas acquired in 1967, likewise, ignores Israel's legal and historical claims, the proven consequences of withdrawal, and the dangers posed by creating another Arab Palestinian state.

Claiming the moral high ground

...By arguing against what they claim are Israel's "racist policies," its "illegal occupation of Arab lands," its "colonialism," anti-Israel groups claim moral high ground.

Decrying "the occupation as a moral disaster" for Israel, therefore, identifies Jews as "occupiers," immoral, backed by a state-sponsored immorality, a legal and historical fraud that sharpens the sword of de-legitimization and justifies BDS campaigns.

When the Gaza Strip is considered "a vast prison," for example, then attacking those who made that prison is justified.

If a Jewish, democratic state is inherently discriminatory and "racist," those who oppose it can be honored as "freedom fighters." If Israel "steals Arab lands," those who struggle to regain what is rightfully theirs are reasonable and justified. If Israeli settlements are "illegal," that crime should be punished. This ugly representation of Israel is an intentional, one-dimensional portrait of evil.

The goal of BDS campaigns is not only to remove Jewish/Israeli presence from Judea and Samaria, the Golan and eastern Jerusalem, but total Israeli surrender.  ...The problem, therefore, is not territorial, but existential.

Ironically, BDS campaigns and unilateral Palestinian moves towards UN recognition and statehood sweep away illusions and clarify the real issues: Secure and recognized borders, and ending the conflict.

The convergence of BDS hate-campaigns, de-legitimization efforts, anti-settlement activities, anti-Semitism and a virulently anti-Israel media are not only dangerous to Israel; they are shameful examples of bigotry and intolerance.

Why the Call to "Boycott Israel" Is Crap

From Huffington Post, 25 January 2011, by Bernard-Henri Lévy,French philosopher and writer:

...we are faced here with a skilfully orchestrated but calumnious, bellicose, anti-democratic and, in a word, perfectly despicable campaign. ...because one boycotts totalitarian regimes, not democracies.

• One can boycott Sudan, guilty of the extermination of part of the population of Darfur.
• One can boycott China, guilty of massive violations of human rights in Tibet and elsewhere.
• One can and should boycott the Iran of Sakineh and Jafar Panahi, whose leaders have become deaf to the language of common sense and compromise.
• One can even imagine, as we once did with regard to the fascist generals' Argentina or Brezhnev's USSR, boycotting those Arab regimes whose citizens' freedom of expression is forbidden and punished, if necessary, in blood.

One does not boycott the only society in the Middle East where Arabs read a free press, demonstrate when they wish to do so, send freely elected representatives to parliament, and enjoy their rights as citizens.

Regardless of what one thinks of the policies of its government, one does not boycott the only country in the region and, beyond the region, one of the unfortunately limited number of countries in the world where voters have the power to sanction, modify, and reverse the position of said government.

...in any event, this boycott campaign is in reality indifferent to the stance of the government of Mr. X or Mrs. Y. It is unaware, nor does it care to know, of what Israeli citizens themselves think, for example, of the resumption of settlement construction in the West Bank. It doesn't give a hoot about demands, parameters, actual conditions of peace between the citizens in question and their Palestinian neighbors.

Of the latter, their aspirations, their interests, their possible hopes and the way the Hamas regime has smashed those hopes in Gaza, it doesn't give a tinker's damn and never says anything, either. No.

Regardless of what its promoters and its useful idiots say, the only real, accepted, hackneyed goal of this boycott campaign is to de-legitimize Israel as such.

That is what the comparison with the South Africa of apartheid implicitly expresses. That is what the anti-Zionist rhetoric that serves as the common denominator of all the groups constituting this BDS movement explicitly says and, if words have any meaning, what signifies their intent to undermine the very idea that today, like it or not, binds the Israeli nation.

And that is why this campaign, in fact, contravenes the customs, rules and laws of international and, in this case, French or American national law.

... the declarations of Omar Barghouti, one of the movement's founders, affirming that his goal is not two States but two Palestines.

And those of Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada and also opposed to the two-state solution, who does not hesitate to compare Israel to Nazi Germany and this or that of its philosophers to the columnists of Der Stürmer.

And the declarations of the leaders of Sabeel, this group of Palestinian Christians firmly implanted in North America who, anxious to lend the idea of "responsible investment" a "theological" basis, do not hesitate to subtly but surely reactivate the Christ-killing Jews stereotype. Not to mention some rather shady initiatives whose purpose is to mark Jewish--sorry, Israeli--merchandise with supposedly derogatory stickers intended for the attention of the vigilant French consumer.

...Presenting the promoters of this discourse of hatred as victims speaks volumes of the current state of confusion--intellectual and moral--of a Western world one would have hoped cured of its worst criminal past.