Friday, April 17, 2015

The Trouble With Colonel Kemp

I've just been reading the report Investigation into potential breaches of University Codes of Conduct, posted on Sydney University's website, sydney.edu.au/news. I find it a disturbing document with grave implications for universities once renowned as havens for free speech and dissent.

In it we learn that Sydney University is threatening "disciplinary action" against a group of pro-Palestine student protesters, who disrupted a lecture last month by visiting British apologist for Israeli war crimes Colonel Richard Kemp, and pro-Palestine academic Jake Lynch, who sought to challenge the aggressive actions of security staff towards the students whilst fending off the unwanted attentions of a "semi-retired English literature lecturer and sometime stand-up comedienne Diane Barkas, 73," to quote the Australian's description of this enraged, water-hurling, camera-grabbing harpy. (See Woman denies kicking BDS guru in groin, Ean Higgins, 15/4/15).

The threat comes in response to complaints over the incident(s) submitted to the university's vice-chancellor Michael Spence by 386 individuals - only 34 of whom had actually been present at the lecture - as part of an "investigation" into the matter. (See my 18/3/15 post Anatomy of a Beat-Up.)

While we are not party to the names of the 352 "other staff, students and members of the public" who lodged those complaints, or to their content, it is safe to assume that the vast majority are the result of yet another (*sigh*) Israel lobby campaign of confected outrage targeting supporters of Palestine on campus, and, in particular, Professor Lynch, a prominent advocate of boycotting institutional ties between Sydney University and Israeli universities, a brave and principled stance that saw him hauled up before Sydney's Federal Court by the Mossad-connected, Israeli lawfare outfit Shurat HaDin last year.

It'd be most interesting to know whether some of these 'complaints' contained threats of some kind, along the lines of those described in my 26/8/14 post How Zionists Enforce the Party Line on Israel.

Central to the "investigation" are "potential breaches of University's Codes of Conduct," which "require all staff, students and affiliates to be tolerant, honest, respectful and ethical at all times."

Even to the likes of Kemp, it seems, who must be enjoying the progress of the witch-hunt, sorry investigation, immensely, seeing that "the university will send correspondence to Dr Kemp and other initial complainants present at the lecture providing them with an update."

Far from retiring (after also helping out with NSW's United Israel Appeal) to lick wounds supposedly inflicted by an intolerant, dishonest, disrespectful and unethical "BDS guru" and his student minions, Kemp will be appearing at a Shurat HaDin talkfest in Israel in May, Towards a New Law of War Conference.

Apparently, the glorious Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are finding that the Hague and Geneva Conventions, as presently constituted, are cramping their style and hence in dire need of a makeover.

It seems (I'm quoting the conference blurbs here) that "democratic armies" are pretty pissed that "large portions of the Western public and world media have come to assume that any civilian casualties are unacceptable and unlawful," and that the "Rules of Engagement in conflicts such as Afghanistan, Syria, South Lebanon and Gaza are too restrictive and irrelevant to safeguard military forces pursuing legitimate objectives in a terrorist war." (israellawcenter.org)

My fave sentence from these blurbs is this from Panel 5: "[Targeted killings] is an issue that demonstrates the influence of the Israel Defense Forces' position in shaping international law."

The influence of the Israel Defense Forces' position in shaping international law???!!!

That, my dears, is the nightmare vision to which Kemp would be a party. I wonder what Sydney University's Codes of Conduct, with their call for tolerance, honesty, respect and ethics, have to say about such matters.

2 comments:

Mannie De Saxe said...

When you add together all the universities around the globe doing the anti-semitic witch-hunt thing against supporters of Palestine, and when you contemplate what used to be called academic freedom - ha ha ha!!! - you start adding up countries like France, Spain, UK, USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa - and so many others, you wonder how we all survive the taints of anti-semite, self-hating Jew and other choice phrases.

I have tried to do a blog (red-jos.blogspot)on zionist control of the universe - you know the sort of thing - along the lines I suppose of the so-called Protocols, but I am not good at such things.

I vent my anger but probably miss the vital points.

I come from good old-fashioned zionist stock in South Africa somewhere in the time frame of the 1920s to the 1960s, but they are all long dead and gone, and I keep pondering how they would react to apartheid Israel's fascist replacements of European and other Jew-killing programmes, homeland for the Jews in Israel and the fact that in 2015 half the world still so-called Jews do no live in Israel and nor do they want to!

Oi Vey!!!

- and not forgetting I moved from apartheid South Africa to apartheid Australia having visited apartheid Israel in its early days of existence in 1951, and apartheid continues everywhere apace!

If any people should understand what has happened to the Palestinians under apartheid it should be South Africans - some do get the message but many do not. Many South Africans believe Israel is much worse than South Africa over apartheid - at least apartheid South Africa did not bomb the shit out of its indigenous peoples, whatever other heinous crimes it committed against them!

Sydney University is an absolute scandal, but other Sydney universities have done outrageous things against some of their academics, and they are unforgiveable and unforgettable.

Mannie De Saxe

Anonymous said...

So the notion that "military forces pursuing legitimate objectives in a terrorist war" would be, like Napoleon said of history, the lies agreed among the victors.

Now that Palestine is a member of the ICC the Bandit State wants to change the rules, now that IS chutzpah!!!!