The idea that a boycott of the Sydney Festival is going to have any influence whatsoever on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fanciful. But the discredit it does to its proponents is substantial.
They have chosen to jump on a bandwagon and endorse a fiction that the immensely complicated Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a simple solution, and that one side alone is to blame for its continuation. And the damage it threatens to do to Australia is real.
The endorsement from Hamas tells you all you need to know. In a statement issued on Thursday, the terrorist group, whose charter commits it to the destruction of Israel, said it stood alongside those seeking to boycott the Sydney Festival. “We commend and appreciate this decision,” Hamas stated, adding “we declare our solidarity with the participants who have withdrawn from the festival”.
Somehow the organisers of the Sydney Festival boycott, whose ire is directed at the $20,000 in sponsorship provided by the Israeli embassy to help stage the performance of Decadance, have ended up alongside the thugs that rule Gaza with an iron fist.
This is the same Hamas that, when it took over from another Palestinian faction in 2007, executed its opponents by throwing them off high-rise buildings.
This is the same Hamas that has criminalised same-sex activity, that denies the LGBTI community basic rights and that executed someone for the “crime” of being gay in 2016.
Read the article by Dave Sharma in The Australian.