Melissa Parke MP: Nice Girl in a Place Like This

New Matilda journalist Max Chalmers' excellent piece on Labor MP (Freemantle, WA) Melissa Parke, who has announced she will be stepping down at the next election, is called Labor's conscientious objector: inside Melissa Parke's war on indifference (28/2/16). It could just as well have been called What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? 

Chalmer's essay is a fascinating reflection on the interface between a thoroughly decent, principled, and beautiful human being and a thoroughly indecent, unprincipled, ugly-as-sin party machine. Or, to put it another way, the interface between a human being so morally and intellectually courageous that the issue of Palestine is central to her outlook on life and a party machine committed to ensuring that it is consigned to history's dustbin. Which is to say, a rotten-to-the-core Zionist party.

I would urge all of you to read the essay in its entirety. For now I wish only to highlight the following passages and say a few words:

"The issue of BDS in Australia, and of the Israel/Palestine conflict generally, remains politically unrewarding. Support begets accusations of anti-Semitism, and as The Greens have learnt, dogged attacks from the conservative press. If you are unlucky you might even end up in court. Meanwhile, most Australians couldn't tell you the first thing about the aging conflict. The repercussions for pushing it onto the public consciousness are severe, and the political payoffs somewhere between questionable and nonexistent."

Now isn't that the naked truth?! And yet, it seems to me, that even as good a journalist as Chalmers is afraid to spell out the bleeding obvious; whether Lib, Lab or Green, the Zionist lobby has Australian politics by its non-existent balls.

Example? Melissa Parke MP is tabling a petition in support of BDS by a dissident Israeli academic resident in Australia, Marcelo Svirsky. Writes Chalmers: "Despite being delivered to a near-empty chamber, Parkes' remarks were punctuated by outraged interjections."

Near-empty chamber... outraged interjections. Says it all, really.

So why has Parkes embraced the cause of Palestine? Simple. Being the intellectually and morally courageous individual she is, and having seen what she's seen, she simply cannot look away. From this:

"As the Second Intifada raged [2000-2005]... Parke was in Gaza... working as a Legal Officer for a UN refugee agency... At the time, Israel was deploying what Parke describes as 'a sort of shock and awe bombing campaign.' She says thirty-six bombs were dropped on her first night in Gaza city, shaking her building and its surrounds. She lay awake. Then Israel started targeting leaders of Hamas - too bad if you're the one who gets stuck in traffic behind them when the IDF locks on. 'You could be driving behind the car targeted with Hamas in it and you're gone as well,' Parke says. She was scared, and her fears were soon vindicated. The same year as Parke arrived in Gaza, a place she stayed for two and a half years, fellow UN worker Ian Hook was shot in the back by an Israeli sniper from a nearby building. Hook was in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank but was inside a UN compound at the time he was shot. He'd been there to help rebuild homes. Israel contests the exact details of the killing, but those like Parke believe the shooter must have known who they were about to slay. Despite some outrage, and conciliatory calls from Israel's then foreign minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to the English government, a UN resolution condemning the murder was vetoed by the United States.

"The killing of Hook and lack of international response outraged Parke, and she carries the injustice of it with her still. So too the many others she witnessed directly in the shelled and reshelled streets of Gaza. 'I didn't go there with a preconceived view,' Parke insists. 'I obviously had read about the situation. But it's not until you're there on the ground that you come to appreciate the absolute imbalance of power. You're talking about the fourth largest military power in the world with the latest technology and with an army, navy, airforce, versus an occupied people - an impoverished, occupied people.' These experiences soaked deep into Parke. When I tried to move the interview on, at one point, she moves us back to Palestine. This is what she wants to talk about and part of the reason she came to Parliament: to grab the megaphone and to use it."

Inevitably, the subject of Tanya (Once was warrior) Plibersek arises:

"Both Parke and Plibersek secured progressive inner-city seats and have an affinity for development and international affairs. Both are used as counter-examples by party faithful disillusioned with the middling leadership of Bill Shorten. Both have a powerful charisma and independent streak. But only one has played the disciplined insider game: Plibersek now finds herself on the ladder's penultimate rung. Yet... Tanya Plibersek underwent a transformation over the period of her ascent, especially in regards to international affairs. In earlier times, Plibersek decried Ariel Sharon as a war criminal and blasted the US but by the time he died in 2014, she was thanking the former Israeli leader for his 'courageous stand' for peace."

Yet another example, if one were needed, of the extraordinary power of the Israel lobby in this country. The appalling reality of Australian political life, as of American, is that the path to the the political ladder's penultimate rung passes through the Zionist lobby.

Finally, a quibble: "[Parke] is drawn to Labor's history and points to Doc Evatt... as [a source] of inspiration."

Melissa, should ever get around to reading this post, please, please, please take the trouble to click on the Dr Evatt label below and find out a little more about this Zionist icon.

Melissa Parke: Filling Julia Irwin's Shoes

West Australian Labor MP Melissa Parke (Fremantle) courageously tabled Wollongong University political scientist Marcelo Svirsky's pro-Palestine BDS petition in federal parliament last Monday. (See my 1/10/14 post Marcelo Svirsky's Long Walk for Palestine.)

In doing so, she has distinguished herself as the only Australian parliamentarian - Liberal, Labor, Greens or independent - with the guts to speak out plainly in this setting on the subject of Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people. The last federal politician to do so, need I remind you, was the redoubtable Labor MP Julia Irwin, who retired in 2010. (See my 11/8/10 post Julia Irwin Spills the Beans.)

Contrast this abject state of affairs with the recent House of Commons debate, which resulted in British MPs from all parties slamming Israeli criminality and intransigence, and voting 274-12 in support of a Palestinian state. (See my 17/10 post Britain's Responsibility for Palestine.)

 In her speech, Parke noted, in a statement of the bleeding obvious:

"I do wish to dispel some of the misunderstandings around the official BDS campaign, including that its supporters are anti-Semitic and intent on the destruction of Israel... It is not anti-Semitic to protest injustice."

Such expressions of the bleeding obvious, however, are intolerable to the Israel lobby. This explains the following riposte from Labor's Glenn Sterle in the Senate on Thursday:

"It is time that the member for Fremantle stopped spouting propaganda that comes directly from organisations and groups that are devoted to genocidal ideologies."  (BDS comments 'ill-informed', Dennis Shanahan, The Australian, 1/11/14)

Talk about projection!

Sterle, needless to say, was rambammed in 2007.

Marcelo Svirsky's Long Walk for Palestine

MEDIA RELEASE - 29 September 2014

JEWISH-ISRAELI ACADEMIC's MARATHON WALK FOR PALESTINE

"Jewish academic, Marcelo Svirsky will soon complete his marathon 10 day walk from Sydney to Canberra to promote the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel for its continuing subjugation of the Palestinians.

"Marcelo Svirsky, a lecturer in Politics at the University of Wollongong is an Australian-Israeli Palestine activist. He is the author of several academic works on Israel-Palestine, activism and colonialism and is an active member of the National Tertiary Education Union.

"He began his 10-day walk from Sydney Opera House to the Federal Parliament in Canberra to raise awareness about BDS in Australia on September the 23rd. The walk will culminate in the submission to the House of Representatives of a petition calling on Federal Parliament to endorse BDS.

"I've lived in Israel most of my life as a Jew,' Svirsky said, 'and I'm certain that it's a moral obligation to support the Palestinian Call for Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) of Israel until it abides by international law. I'm walking to Canberra to make a simple statement: Israel must end the occupation, give full equality to its Arab citizens, and respect the right of return of Palestinian refugees. This isn't just what's right and decent: it's what international law mandates.

"Svirsky will arrive in Canberra on October the 2nd, having passed through the Illawarra, the Southern Highlands, Goulburn, and Bungendore. He has participated in public meetings at Wollongong and will speak in Goulburn today.

"The shocking butchery in Gaza means that nations that support peace must act to end Israeli violence, Svirsky said. The international BDS campaign is a nonviolent mechanism to put pressure on Israel to halt its oppression of Palestine and my individual walk for BDS corresponds with the growth in prominence of BDS in Australia in recent months.

"Staff and students at Svirsky's university issued the following declaration and commitment: This meeting of students and staff of the University of Wollongong resolves to support the boycott, divestment & sanctions movement. We resolve to support any students or staff who implement BDS. We call on the Wollongong University Students' Association and the unions representing workers on campus, but in particular the UOW Branch of the NTEU to support BDS and implement it on campus...

"University of Sydney academic, Jake Lynch, recently won a case brought against him by an Israeli law centre for spearheading the call for the academic boycott of Israeli institutions. In a major victory for the BDS movement in Australia, Lynch was awarded costs. In Sydney last month, calls to boycott the Israeli Film Festival because of its sponsorship by the Israeli government led to the Supreme Court of NSW banning a protest outside the festival's opening night.

"Svirsky is one of 164 Jews who signed an open letter in August calling on Jewish people to break their silence, to take a public stand... for an end to the underlying conditions of siege and occupation which defy elementary morality, decency and humanity."

PS: Surprise, surprise, Michael Danby MP, the shadow minister for Israel, has emitted the following response to Svirsky's magnificent gesture: "This poor deluded Wollongong academic is not walking to a welcome in Canberra, he is walking to political oblivion." (On the one hand... 1/10/14, jwire.com.au)

Israeli 'Democracy'

The Sydney Morning Herald's international editor, Peter Hartcher, is reliably shallow on the subject of the Middle East:

"One measure of [autocratic Arab rulers'] success was that while the number of democracies in the world trebled in the 30 years to 2005, none of the new democracies was in the Middle East, according to Freedom House." (Oppressed Arabs waiting for spring, 16/9/14)

Of course, you wouldn't expect Hartcher, a twice-rambammed journalist (2009/2011), to question Israel's much-trumpeted 'democracy'.

That's why the following perspective, by Israeli-Australian political scientist Marcelo Svirsky, is so useful. It comes from his fascinating new book, After Israel: Towards Cultural Transformation: 

"Ask any political scientist... to choose just one principle or practice as the litmus test of democracy. The overwhelming majority will say fair elections... This wide consensus is reflected, for instance, in the way in which popular empirical indices measure the presence and depth of democracy. Freedom House places the electoral process as one of its major categories for rating democracies... The Economist Intelligence Unit's 'Democracy Index'... also favours in its calculation of the index the qualities of the electoral system... This is not the place to discuss the extreme bias of these organisations because of the way in which they construct their methods. These are fundamentally questionable mainly because they compare regimes with a particular image of democracy consistent with empire's neoliberal values and interests. In their ideological constitutive assumptions and methods, these empirical systems of measurement fail to rank countries such as Cuba or Venezuela appropriately, while at the same time they are blind to the different variables that should be taken into account when assessing regimes such as Israel's... How Western 'democracy indices' manage to avoid measuring the fact that for nearly half a century Israel has held under military occupation about 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, has kept Gazans under siege since 2007, and discriminates against its 1.6 million Palestinians by ethnocratic means - this is a wonder that defies reason." (pp 181-82)

Israeli Militarism

Noting that "Israel's accusation that Hamas is using civilians as human shields has grown increasingly strident as the war in Gaza worsens," the Guardian's Middle East correspondent, Harriet Sherwood, pointed out recently that:

"The separation between 'civilian' and 'military' in Gaza is much more blurred than with a conventional army - both physically and in the Gazan psyche. Hamas and other militants are embedded in the population. Their fighters are not quartered in military barracks, but sleep at night in their family homes. While it is not difficult to find antipathy to Hamas on the streets of Gaza in quiet times, most people defend their 'right to resist' - and under such sustained military attack, support for Hamas rises." (In Gaza, Hamas fighters are among civilians. There is nowhere else for them to go, 25/7/14)

After citing cases of the Israeli army's deliberate use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, Sherwood concluded her piece thus: "Meanwhile, in response to Israel's assertions that Hamas situates its military centres in civilian areas, some have pointed out that the IDF's headquarters, the Kiriya, is in central Tel Aviv, surrounded by a hospital, blocks of flats, shopping centres and offices."

While her report is a useful corrective to Israeli propaganda of the 'human shield' variety, that final paragraph on the Kiriya and its siting hardly touches the surface when it comes to the reality of just how blurred the separation between 'civilian' and 'military' in Israeli society really is:

"Militarism in Israel is pervasively visible, so it 'does not and cannot pass unnoticed by children in Israel. The military is present everywhere. Anyone whoever visited Israel could not help notice the great number of soldiers on the streets and in other public places' (Givol et al. 2004: 14). At any one moment, roughly half a million individuals are in active service (mandatory service, professionals and reserves combined), so civil life is not just constantly disrupted by the olive-green colour of soldiers carrying rifles and pistols - rather, it is woven through with these 'disruptions'. In fact, rather than being perceived as disruptions, they are the very material that makes up Israeli spatial reality. As ordinary pedestrians on Israeli streets and as consumers in shopping malls, at cinemas and in coffee shops, on public transport and in university classrooms and lecture halls - soldiers are everywhere; there are no purely civil spaces in Israel. 'Weapons are also to be found everywhere. Old tanks, machineguns and even fighter jets are placed in public places, quite accessible, sometimes especially accessible, to children' (ibid.: 15). For many years, an Israeli fighter plane has been placed in the main outdoor display area at the National Museum of Science in Haifa, where I worked; without a doubt, the plane is the most attractive exhibit for the thousands of children who visit the museum every year. Israeli militarism is not only visible, it is also pervasively audible, since cultural landscapes have visible and audible aspects. The strident rightfulness of key mainstream radio and television personalities that shapes the boundaries of public deliberation; the ever stormy political discussions at school and in universities, at home with family or friends; the distress caused by the sounds of the Remembrance Day siren and the collective sense of grief and sadness enhanced a thousand-fold by the unceasing torment of war songs that for 24 hours tell and re-tell of human loss and sacrifice; the sirens in the big cities that drill the civilian population every few months - together, all these assemble a time and a space of unavoidable sounds that nail us deeper inside a culture with very few moments of civilian life." (After Israel: Towards Cultural Transformation, Marcelo Svirsky, 2014, p 167)

James Carleton's Israel Meets the Real Thing

The fact that a typical ABC interview on the subject of the Middle East conflict invariably reveals as much about the interviewer's entrenched Zionist prejudices and ignorance as it does about the matter under discussion never ceases to amaze me.

A particularly glaring example was Wednesday's interview with Israeli academic, activist and author Marcelo Svirsky by Radio National's current Breakfast presenter James Carleton (Racism becomes the new norm in Israel: Political scientist, 23/7).

For Carleton, Israel's is always the default position. Typically, he begins the interview, with the premise that Hamas, a mere symptom of Israeli occupation, is the problem:

JC: Unfortunately, the firing of rockets into Israel and the strong response of the Israeli military into Gaza is nothing new. Hamas has been at war with Israel since it was first elected 8 years ago. Yet, in spite of that history of violence that stretches way back before Hamas, our next guest says something new is happening in Israel. Dr Marcelo Svirsky is a political scientist. He's an Israeli Jew who now lives in Australia, and teaches at the University of Wollongong in NSW. He's just returned from Jerusalem and he says that the hatred and racism he's witnessed towards Arabs has become the norm in Israeli society, something he's never seen before.

[But it gets worse. Next comes Carleton's 'understanding' of the Middle East conflict from 1948 to the present.]

JC: Before I get you to substantiate that claim, and because it is a big claim, why would it be so given in the past Arab armies have nearly destroyed Israel in 1948, and there've been wars of survival up to 1973, there've been intifadas, the current situation, relatively speaking in terms of Israel's security, is rather mild, why should there be hatred now but not then?

[It has to asked: Is it a qualification for work at the ABC that the employee have experience in peddling Zionist propaganda? Svirsky, of course, is not impressed]:

MS: Well, to begin with, I don't think the narrative of 1948 is right as you expose it. Israel was not under threat of destruction in 1948, but [again] this is something we perhaps need to discuss in another program. I think that the present situation [in Israel] is special and different in the sense that we're witnessing a further crystallization of violence and racism in Israeli society not yet seen. I'm not talking about the regular, more familiar structure of racism and settlerism we [already] know about, but something new, and I'm talking about 3 particular forms of behaviour or social patterns. The first is the total recruitment of the media, not just biased reports and commentaries on TV and radio, but more important, actually calling on the government to escalate the conflict. This is [inaudible] so far. I mean, the marginal spaces that the Israeli media had in the past for some alternative voices are being shrunk, not to say, totally cleansed.

JC: But there's Haaretz. That's a very pro-Palestinian newspaper. It's a free and diverse media.

MS: Well, I don't think Haaretz is pro-Palestine, although it has a few, brave journalists such as Gideon Levy and Amira Hass. But I would like to tell you that (only) last week in Ashkelon Gideon Levy was physically attacked, and what is more, yesterday Matti Golan, a well known publicist working for the daily financial newspaper Globes called on the government to put Gideon Levy and Amira Hass in administrative detention for what he claims to be the use of freedom of expression that [inaudible]. So I think that these kinds of calls are pretty much new in the Israeli media.

JC: OK, if that's the media, what are the other two?

MS: The second phenomenon is the organised counter-demonstrations of right-wing groups showing up at anti-war protests. I'm talking about thugs showing up at leftist demonstrations wearing neo-Nazi t-shirts, those used by European neo-Nazis, saying GOOD NIGHT LEFT SIDE, with an image of a man attacking a left-wing activist... They outnumber the leftist protestors...

JC: What do the t-shirts say?

MS: They say GOOD NIGHT LEFT SIDE.

JC: GOOD NIGHT LEFT SIDE? It's a contradiction in terms. A neo-Nazi is an Israeli?

MS: Well, sadly, it isn't if you introspect into the social patterns and behaviours of Israeli society. But what is happening is that they chase the leftist protestors chanting DEATH TO THE ARABS, DEATH TO THE LEFTISTS, and they beat them up while the police just look on. All they do is arrest Palestinian citizens at the end of the demonstration.

JC: What happened when the ambulance took some of the victims of these beatings away?

MS: This happened in Haifa. Two Palestinian citizens were beaten and taken by ambulance to hospital. Some of these thugs stopped the ambulance, opened the door and asked, 'Jews or Arabs?' with the intention of taking these people out of the ambulance, if they were Arab, just to finish the job. The third phenomenon is the enjoyment of the spectacle of war. Israelis are gathering on a hilltop close to Gaza to cheer and whoop as Israeli bombs rain down on Palestinians. They bring their tables, chairs and picnic baskets as if they were watching a football match, only they get excited if a player is the death of human beings. I think this is pretty appalling.

JC: You're talking about Sderot.

MS: Yes, near Sderot.

JC: Well, that town in the past two weeks, Hamas has launched 1,500 rockets in 14 days. They would say you're playing the victim.

MS: We can also quote in that respect President Obama and other western leaders claiming no country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its border... but James, which nation would agree to be oppressed for nearly half a century of colonisation? Which nation would remain silent in the face of an ongoing ethnic cleansing? For instance, would Australian citizens peacefully agree to be stripped of their natural rights and their lives be dictated by an external power?

JC: So when the Israeli government says why do people single out Israel, you're saying why single out Palestine as the only nation to endure occupation?

MS: Exactly. And we need to contextualise the violence of Hamas. What is happening here is that the West blames the victims for fighting back. This is an absurdity.

JC: Israel says that resistance is a code word for terrorism.

MS: Resistance is the right of an occupied and oppressed people. It's a natural right.

JC: But not to individually target civilians.

MS: Well, this is something we need to ask the Israeli government about. After 600 Palestinian deaths, including more than 100 children, about 3,000 injured, with nowhere to go. I mean, the claim that Israel's violence is an act of self-defence is an oxymoron. No occupying power has a legitimate right of self-defence but [rather] an international obligation to withdraw.

JC: You are not a Zionist, are you?

MS: No, I'm not.

JC: Does that put you on the extreme of Israeli society?

MS: I think that puts me on making sense of reality.

JC: But it's a view not shared by many of your former countrymen?

MS: To say the least.

JC: Well, the argument then is, from an Israeli perspective, why should Australia get to have Australia, the Chinese China? We all have our own countries except why are Jews singled out to be denied their homeland in their historic birthplace.

MS: I think there are 3 answers to that. To begin with, the parallel between Australians, French or Japanese and Jews is not exact because we're mixing up here nation, religion, ethnic belonging, and other factors. The second answer is that if a country of Jews or Australians is [all] about privilege for a particular group, that's unacceptable.

JC: You mean anyone can come to Australia provided they apply to migrate, and once they're here, they're first class citizens?

MS: Well, it should be. Israel was established as a society built on...

JC: Well, if it's not true in Australia or Israel, why single out Israel?

MS: Well, it is the society I come from...

JC: Sure.

MS: ... and I have a particular interest in Israel because I have family and friends there and most of my past is there.

JC: But the other point is when you come to Australia you can take an Australian nationality fully but when you migrate or are the independent population of a Jewish state, if you are not a Jew either ethnically or in terms of religion that's more problematic.

[More problematic? Is this ignorance or sheer cussedness? Let me spell it out for Carleton: if you are a diaspora Palestinian you cannot return to your Palestinian homeland (stolen and renamed 'Israel') because you do not have a Jewish mother.]

MS: Well, here comes my 3rd answer, which is that the Jews or the Hebrew [-speaking] people are not the only, if we accept that claim, indigenous people of the land of Palestine. We cannot dismiss the fact that the Palestinian people are the more indigenous people of the land.

JC: So, you're calling for a one-state solution democracy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, but the Israeli Jewish fear is that that will necessarily mean an Arab majority and the best case scenario is a democracy where Jews are second class citizens. The worst case scenario is an annihilation or second holocaust.

[Can you believe this guy! A 'Jewish' majority is no problem for him, but an Arab majority, that's going too far.]

MS: This is all speculation, but we have now, as fact, that the so-called only democracy in the Middle East is a fascist regime with 1st, 2nd & 3rd class citizens acting as an occupying power for 50 years, and established on a basis of ethnic cleansing - 700,000 indigenous Palestinian people. So if you take the historical facts on the one hand, and a kind of suspect politics of pre-emption on the other, I'm not sure which one we should choose.

[Marcelo Svirsky's important new book on how Jewish-Israelis can and need to "divest themselves of Zionist identities by engaging with dissident rationalities, practices and institutions," is just out. It's called After Israel: Towards Cultural Transformation. Here's the opening sentence from the book's Statement: "Israel was a bad idea from its inception." I'm looking forward to reading it. Re the emerging Israeli fascism cited by Svirsky, I urge you all - as I have earlier - to read Max Blumenthal's recent expose, Goliath: Fear & Loathing in Greater Israel.] 

Jake Lynch Update 5

An unusual article this, for The Australian:

"A Jewish association has branded the racial discrimination case against University of Sydney's Jake Lynch counter-productive, saying it has only raised the profile of his support for the Boycott, Divestment [&] Sanctions campaign against Israel. Since the Israeli legal activist group Shurat HaDin launched the lawsuit in the Federal Court, Professor Lynch's stand has become a cause celebre in sections of the academic community, claiming the right to freedom of speech and academic expression is under attack... Two new groups have been established to support him and the global BDS movement, including one among university staff. One of the organisers of the Sydney Staff for BDS group, lecturer Nick Riemer, said he and other staff decided to create it 'because of what's happened to Jake'. The groups have helped raise about $20,000 towards Professor Lynch's legal defence, he has been invited to address BDS public meetings around the country, and one recent BDS event in Sydney in his support drew about 200 people. One of the pro-Lynch speakers at the Sydney fundraiser, Jewish Israeli academic Marcelo Svirsky who is a lecturer at the University of Wollongong, says he will walk from Sydney to Canberra later this year to raise awareness of the BDS campaign. Dr Svirsky said he would stop in towns along the way to deliver public addresses and then lodge a submission in parliament calling on the government to back BDS. Executive Council of Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim said Shurat HaDin's legal action against Professor Lynch was 'the wrong way to oppose BDS. Regardless of the outcome, the Shurat HaDin court case would give a very marginal BDS campaign in Australia undeserved exposure and a shot in the arm,' Mr Wertheim said. 'Our organisation's strategy has been to expose the aims and methods of the BDS campaign in the marketplace of ideas'..."

Regarding that last sentence, the aims of the BDS movement, for those still wondering, are quite simple: to pressure Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; grant full equality to the Palestinian minority in Israel itself; and allow Palestinian refugees, expelled from their homeland in 1948 and again in 1967, to return to their homes and lands in Palestine/Israel. BDS is therefore about implementing basic human rights. How one can oppose these is frankly beyond me.

As for "exposing" BDS in the "marketplace of ideas," this has so far manifested itself in mobilising Australian politicians, both state and federal, to smear supporters of BDS as anti-Semites and Nazis, ongoing attacks of like nature in the Murdoch press, the establishment of links with the police (see my 28/10/11 post Israel 101 for Cops), and most significantly, the actual or threatened blocking of funding to academics such as Jake Lynch who support BDS (see my 29/1/13 post The Punishing of Jake Lynch). So much for the "marketplace of ideas."

To continue with the above report:

"Dr Svirsky, a political scientist who grew up in Argentina but moved to Israel after being conscripted during the Falklands War, said 'there is increasing support for Lynch because of this particular court case. For me the BDS is about not just ending the Israeli occupation, but also the rules of apartheid in Israel', he said." (Discrimination case 'raising profile of BDS', Ean Higgins, The Australian, 26/4/14)

All credit to Dr Svirsky.