Anatomy of a Beat-Up...

... or how the Murdoch press transforms a pro-Palestine protest into a veritable anti-Semitic pogrom.

Last year, Associate Professor Jake Lynch, of Sydney University's Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies (CPACS), was embroiled in a Federal Court action brought by Israeli lawfare outfit Shurat Ha Din for the 'offence' of declining (Lynch is a supporter of the pro-Palestinian BDS movement) to sponsor an Israel academic. Lynch won the case with costs. Now he's just been accused, by the chairman of the Australian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS), Dean Sherr, of ANTI-SEMITISM for allegedly waving a $5 note at a woman who had, in his words, "kicked him 'in the meat and two veg" for the 'offence' of filming a student protest (or 'fracas' in Murdochspeak) against a lecture by visiting British clanking Colonel - and United Israel Appeal star attraction* - Richard Kemp.

Hissed Sherr: "Waving money in the face of Jewish people screams of the classical anti-Semitic falsehood that Jews are obsessed with money."

Hinted Kemp: "I observed [Lynch] waving the money in the face of a Jewish student, a clearly aggressive and insulting act that seemed to invoke the stereotype of the 'greedy Jew'."

The incident has been the occasion for the Murdoch press to once again hound Lynch in a series of articles by the usual suspects, beginning with a piece in The Daily Telegraph of 14/3/15, Professor waved $5 at Jewish woman, by Taylor Auerbach.

This was followed by Sack call over BDS protest (16/3/15) by Ean Higgins in The Australian, in which Sherr was quoted.

In it, we learn that the university's vice-chancellor has launched "an investigation into [the] fracas," during which Lynch "criticised security guards [who] tried to remove the protesters," and that Kemp has written to the university's vice-chancellor claiming that "Professor Lynch and another pro-BDS academic 'were both apparently leading and encouraging the protesters'." It concludes with Lynch reportedly saying that "he held up the bank notes to warn a woman who he said kicked him in the groin that he would sue her if she didn't desist," denying "the action was anti-Semitic," and claiming that "the security guards had shown no interest in curbing her actions."

Uni faces calls for action on protest (17/3/15) by Christian Kerr in The Australian followed. In this a former Labor education minister (190-93) Peter Baldwin is quoted as saying "I visited a great many campuses and was more than once the target of student protest demonstrations. But I never experienced anything quite as repulsive as what I witnessed last Wednesday." Baldwin "warned of 'deeply sinister developments' that had created an 'increasingly poisonous' atmosphere for Jewish students" and "called on [the vice-chancellor] to 'commit to restoring a genuine climate of free debate at Sydney University in which all can participate without fear of intimidation." He concluded as follows: "You have a group who think they have a right of veto on what viewpoints are sayable. Who do these people think that they are, that they can adjudicate what points of view are allowed to be heard?... It warrants the university administration taking serious disciplinary action against those responsible."

On the opinion pages of the same issue, came Protesters disown their university values, by none other than clanking Colonel Kemp himself, in which he alleged that "a group of about a dozen people... stormed into the lecture and started yelling at me and the audience through a megaphone, accusing me of 'supporting genocide', and trying to shut down the lecture. The protesters occupied the lecture theatre, intimidated members of the audience and were intent on preventing the exchange of views my lecture was intending to facilitate. Two of the academics then joined them, one of whom I saw badgering an elderly woman who objected to him photographing her on his iPhone. When she tried to push the iPhone out of her face he grabbed her arm forcibly, and appeared to hurt her. When she retaliated physically, the academic - an associate professor - waved a $5 note in her face and the face of a Jewish student.... This protest had clear anti-Semitic undertones."

The above was apparently sufficient to set off an entire pack (10) of Zionist correspondents who barked and bayed on the letters page of today's Australian.

They were "appalled" at the "shocking spectacle."

They called on the university to show "leadership" and take "appropriate disciplinary action."

They invoked "1930s Nazi Germany" and "the events in Germany culminating in World War II."

They alleged that "demonstrators were hell-bent on being anti-Semitic" and were "rabid anti-Semites."

They accused Lynch of being "a lifelong Marxist" and the protesters of being "his university stormtroopers."

In short, just the usual for the letters pages of The Australian.

What will tomorrow's edition bring?

But why wait?

If you want the real story, rather than the Murdoch beat-up, head across to the New Matilda website and read Michael Brull's painstaking analysis (complete with videos) of the protest: Blaming the victims: what really happened at the Colonel Kemp Usyd Protest (18/3/15).

[*See my 23/2/15 post Menage A Trois.]