Reading The Australian's spin on the coming Israel Research Forum to be held at Sydney University on October 31, you'd swear dissenting SU professor Jake Lynch was looking a gift horse in the mouth:
"University of Sydney scholars set to exchange ideas with visiting Israeli experts on neuroscience, tissue regeneration and other cutting-edge research areas are being warned the event will offend potential Muslim undergraduates... Associate Professor Jake Lynch, director of the university's Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies, has urged his colleagues to withdraw from the research gathering, and the university administration to cancel it. Dr Lynch has been a strong supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign designed to isolate Israel... 'The university risks sustaining reputational damage if the forum goes ahead', Dr Lynch told The Australian yesterday.'It risks being seen as condoning the complicity by Israeli universities in Israel's breaches of international law and indirectly with the university's social inclusion policy'." (University forum with Israeli scientists 'offends Muslims', Imre Salusinszky, 25/10/11)
Neuroscience, tissue regeneration and other cutting-edge research areas? Wowee! Who could say no? Can Dr Lynch be serious?
Well, yes, because our visiting Israeli experts hail from such august bastions of the apartheid state's military-industrial complex as The Weizmann Institute of Science, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and Tel Aviv University, each of which, in one way or another, aids and abets Israel's 44-year long occupation of the Palestinian Territories and its 63-year abuse of the Palestinian and other Arab peoples.
The fact of the matter is that, by flirting with such institutions, Sydney University contributes to their normalisation and exposes itself to charges of complicity in Israel's cutting-edge crimes.
Just briefly:
The Weizmann Institute for Science is the birthplace of Israel's nuclear weapons.
The Technion collaborates with Israeli military technology manufacturers such as Elbit Systems Ltd, a manufacturer of military, surveillance and security equipment, some of which is incorporated in Israel's illegal West Bank wall. Elbit also manufactures unmanned aerial and ground vehicles which are routinely used in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It also collaborates with the government-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd, one of Israel's largest military technology manfacturers and source, among other things, of protective shields for its Merkava tanks and missiles for its killer drones. (See Structures of Oppression: Why McGill & Concordia Universities must sever their links with the Technion University, tadamon.ca, 26/10/10)
Tel Aviv University collaborates with the Israeli Ministry of Defence in preparing select Israeli high school students for work in Israel's arms industry. (See Tel Aviv hosts youth seminar on Science & Technology in the Service of Security, Alternative Information Center, 24/11/10)
Thank God someone's blowing a whistle.
[Related post: The ABC of Zionist Propaganda, 12/12/10]
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This "cutting-edge research" has been at the expense of Palestinian prisoners held, illegally, in Israeli prisons.[see Geneva Conventions]
For this reason alone a large Australian company cancelled a business relationship with an Israeli pharmaceutical company some years ago. The late Managing Director was an ethical man and a philanthropist. He was also alarmed at the damage this relationship would do to his company reputation.
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