In her article in The Guardian (23/1) Randa Abdel-Fatteh continues to utter the trope that Palestinian voices are being silenced. The way she would have it is that Zionist voices should be silenced, and Palestinian activists be given a free run to say whatever they like with no accountability for their vicious, often racist depictions of Israel.
When I invited Abdel-Fatteh to speak with me on my radio show ‘The Israel Connexion’ which airs on J-AIR Community Radio I received the reply, “Call me when the state you defend is willing to be held accountable for its crimes against humanity. Until then don’t contact me again. “
Many pro-Palestinian activists sing from the same intolerant hymn book. They complain about not being given a fair go with our media, but when they are invited to speak where their views might be challenged in any way they run for cover or stonewall. It’s always easier to never have to fully explain your position.
Greens leader Adam Bandt bemoans the power gap between Israel and the Palestinians and believes that the imbalance is unfair. He would have Israel endanger its safety and security to even out the odds in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Does Bandt want to see the casualty numbers of both sides to be more ‘proportional’ preferring Israelis to be unable to run to their shelters and so be exterminated by the thousands of rockets lobbed into Israel indiscriminately from Gaza?
The anti-normalisation camp that is intertwined with the BDS movement is not interested in co-operating with Israelis to find an equitable solution to the conflict. Their approach is to force Israel to capitulate to their demands unconditionally – there is no mention anywhere about dialogue or compromise.
Listening to the video recording of the event Why we’re boycotting the Sydney Festival organised by the group Palestine Justice Movement Sydney the demands of the BDS movement were articulated by Israel boycott organiser Fahad Ali. One impossible demand is to allow Palestinian refugees and their descendants to ‘return’ to their homes and properties. This demand would be tantamount to Israeli Jews committing national suicide, with the Jewish state ceasing to exist.
Pro-Palestinian activists preach with a demeaning sense of entitlement as though they have a patent on the truth. They treat anybody who opposes their anti-Zionist mantra as being plain wrong, often resorting to contentious buzzwords and propaganda-speak, exploiting human rights and international law catch phrases. Their appeals to organisations like the ICC or Human Rights Watch, done ostensibly to give them credibility, should be treated with great scepticism, as these organisations are renowned for their anti-Israel bias.
The BDS campaigners have touted this nonsensical concept of ‘cultural safety’ for artists who were participating at the Sydney Festival. If events are to only be considered ‘safe’ for pro-Palestinians and their mates in the Arab community when Jews, who may have Zionist sympathies in their heads, are side-lined we have what is truly an unsafe, threatening milieu for Jews in our society, one that oozes a creeping, malignant antisemitism.
Bragging that the BDS campaign against the Sydney Festival has achieved a great deal, because of all the attention it got, is no true measure of success. The divisiveness that the anti-Israel boycott has generated is totally unproductive, with the prospects of any amelioration to the plight of the Palestinians not one inch closer.
The backlash to the virulent tactics of the BDS campaign is based on a contempt for bullying, for threats to artists that they might be cancelled if they didn’t toe the BDS line, for a complete lack of self-reflection as to the corrupt, misogynistic, undemocratic Palestinianism that is blindly ignored, for the fact that the terrorist organisation Hamas supports their initiative, for the wanton destructiveness being wrought upon the Sydney Festival, for the wish to see Israel eliminated as a Jewish state.
BDS Movement co-founder Omar Barghouti opposes the two-state solution. Instead he supports a one state solution encompassing all of what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories. In Bhargouti’s fantasy Palestinian refugees and their descendants would be allowed to return to this prospective state in hordes. This ‘state’ would inevitably become yet another corrupt, dysfunctional Islamic state in the Middle East operating under sharia law, where non-Muslims and women are treated as second class citizens.
BDS campaigners have claimed that “Organisers have repeatedly stated the cultural boycott aims at institutions not individuals, targeting complicity, not identity.” This is quite frankly a lie.
The PACBI Guidelines for the International Academic Boycott of Israel state:
While an individual’s academic freedom should be fully and consistently respected in the context of academic boycotts, an individual academic, Israeli or otherwise, cannot be exempt from being subject to “common sense” boycotts (beyond the scope of the PACBI institutional boycott criteria) that conscientious citizens around the world may call for in response to what they widely perceive as egregious individual complicity in, responsibility for, or advocacy of violations of international law (such as direct or indirect involvement in the commission of war crimes or other grave human rights violations; incitement to violence; racial slurs; etc.). At this level, Israeli academics should not be automatically exempted from due criticism or any lawful form of protest, including boycott; they should be treated like all other offenders in the same category, not better or worse.
In other words, individuals can be targeted, it is only a matter of concocting some criteria and any Israeli can be harassed and boycotted. In 2013 Jake Lynch from Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies refused to collaborate with the Israeli academic Professor Dan Avnon. We witnessed a huge ruckus at Sydney University in 2015 when Colonel Richard Kemp, not Jewish or even Israeli, was invited to speak on campus. We saw how Adam Kalderon was the target of a boycott at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival just because his film was Israeli and he had benefitted from funding from the Israeli Film Fund as do many films made in Israel by both Jews and Arab citizens, some even very critical of the Israeli government.
The fact that Labor’s Walt Secord and others are calling for legislation to cut off funding to arts organisations that participate in a boycott of Israel irks the BDSers. They misrepresent this mooted legislation saying, “Freedom of expression it seems is only afforded to those in power and with power.”
They are way off the mark here as the basis for not funding organisations who boycott Israel is that governmental institutions should not be financially assisting artists with taxpayers’ money enabling them to carry out heinous political activities that are attacking a country that considered to be a close friend and partner of Australia.
There is ample opportunity for the pro-Palestinian advocates to lambast Israel. There is no shortage of opportunities given in the media and the article by Randa Abdel-Fatteh to which I have responded is a case in point. Compared to other international conflagrations and disputes the Israel-Palestinian conflict gets more than its fair share of exposure.
The pro-BDS bullies may be satisfied that their pro-Palestinian mates have stirred up a furore over the Sydney Festival, but we have now seen the storm clouds and what they might portend. Nothing good will come out of this malevolent display of Israelophobic bigotry that has flooded our media. Those, who believe we should not be intimidated by those pushing their hateful agenda, need to stand up now and be counted.
By David Schulberg (presenter of ‘The Israel Connexion’ and host of this website)