Criminalising BDS

The Zionist-orchestrated assault on our right to protest, aimed at the growing BDS campaign against Israel, is gathering pace.

In NSW, it began with Liberal Premier Barry O'Farrell threatening Marrickville Council over its pro-BDS stance (See my 16/4/11 post When the Order Comes) and progressed further with Labor MLC Walt Secord calling on the O'Farrell government to "provide assurances for the protection of businesses with Israeli links" (See my 27/6/11 post An Israeli-Occupied Mind).

Now the Victorian Liberal government of Ted Baillieu is getting in on the act:

"The Baillieu government's pursuit of protesters who targeted a chocolate shop with alleged [!] links to the Israeli military is unprecedented but could have the desired effect of clamping down on future anti-Israel boycotts, a competition law expert says. Consumer Affairs minister Michael O'Brien has written to the head of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), Rod Sims, and asked him to investigate whether a group that protested outside Max Brenner's chocolate shop in QV last month has broken federal law by engaging in secondary boycotts. 'To target businesses because they're owned by Israelis or because they do business with Israel is entirely unacceptable and in our view sets a very, very ugly precedent', Mr O'Brien said. The ACCC will investigate whether the protesters contravened section 45D of the Competition & Consumer Act, which prohibits a group from gathering with the intention of stopping a third person or company from doing business. Until now, it has only been used to target trade union activity, but Melbourne University competition law professor Dr Caron Beaton-Wells said protesters might have a case to answer if protesters 'had the purpose or their actions had the effect of causing substantial loss and damage to the shop's owner's business'." (ACCC probes anti-Israel boycotts, Adam Carey, The Age, 9/8/11)

"Mr O'Brien singled out the Maritime Union of Australia, Geelong Trades Hall Council, the Green Left Weekly magazine, Australians for Palestine and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign... Mr O'Brien told The Australian it was unacceptable to single out any businesses but that it was especially concerning given the 20th-century history behind attacks on Jewish businesses... Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd recently met with Victorian federal Labor MP Michael Danby at the same Max Brenner store as the BDS protest. 'I don't think in 21st-century Australia there is a place for the attempted boycott of a Jewish business', Mr Rudd said at the time. 'I thought we had learned that from history'." (Israeli boycotts: ACC called in, John Ferguson, The Australian, 8/8/11)

You will note here, if you haven't elsewhere, the outrageous innuendo of Zionist lickspittles such as O'Brien and Rudd, whereby Israeli companies and their outlets in Australian cities suddenly become Jewish shops in 30s Germany, and those peacefully advocating their boycott in response to Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people become the equivalent of the anti-Semitic Nazi stormtroopers who enforced their closure.

As with the Canadian push to criminalise criticism of Israel (See my 24/7/11 post Criminalising Criticism of Israel), we are witnessing here a deliberate and brazen campaign by Zionist lobbyists and their useful fools in state and federal governments to erode our basic human rights to freedom of assembly and speech in the service of an apartheid state which has denied and trashed Palestinian human rights for over six decades.

They shall not pass!