from Australians for BDS
On Tuesday Oct 29th, 2 Israeli based organisations and three individuals made an application to the Australian Federal Court against Professor Jake Lynch. The case is Shurat HaDin – The Israel Law Center & Ors v Jake Lynch, NSD2235/2013.

The applicants are: Shurat HaDin, Green Freedom Limited (Israel Company Number 514 331 479), Andrew Hamilton, David Hans Lange and Jonathan Rose. ??The following media alert was released as a result of this action and prior to a press conference on Wed Oct 30th led by Professor Stuart Rees and Associate Professor Peter Slezak (Professor Jake Lynch is currently overseas on sabbatical leave).

Australian academic faces lawfare attack; the right to criticize the policies of another country is at stake

Today an Israeli based law centre, Shurat HaDin, filed a case in the Federal Court of Australia, against Professor Jake Lynch from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. They claim that he has supported policies which are racist and discriminatory by his specific endorsement of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and individuals within them, because of these institutions’ support of the illegal occupation of Palestine and their close connections with the Israeli armament industry.

This lawfare attack against academic freedom and freedom of speech has been condemned by over 2000 Australian and international human rights advocates from some 60 countries, who have all signed a pledge supporting BDS and offering to be co-defendants in any legal action taken against Lynch.

Shurat HaDin has taken many similar actions internationally against groups who supported the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement. Professor Stuart Rees comments,?“It seems that this firm, Shurat HaDin works in the civil courts as a proxy for the Israeli government and security forces, seeking to shut down any criticism of the state and its ongoing human rights abuses and violations of international law.”

In August, Shurat HaDin lodged a complaint in the Human Rights Commission against Jake Lynch’s refusal to sponsor an Israeli academic from the Hebrew University because of that institution’s links to the Israeli military and the ongoing Occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza.
This overseas firm now wants to silence this highly regarded academic, by taking their complaint to the Federal Court. This challenges the right to take non violent action in support international human rights law and the rights of the dispossessed Palestinians. Australians for BDS condemns racism in all forms, and specifically anti-Semitism.

“Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing machinery continue unabated but the moral force that used to drive that process is fast eroding and, as out of touch as the Abbott government and anti-BDS activists in Australia may be, there is an undeniable shift in the balance of moral power. .. International civil society is holding Israel to account in a way no government has ever been able to do”……Randa Abdul Fattah, Palestinian lawyer and writer resident in Sydney
Professor Jake Lynch released the following statement which was read at the press conference on Wed Oct 30th in Sydney.

“I am confident we will successfully fight off this despicable attack on freedom of expression, which is backed ultimately by the Israeli security state. The Shurat HaDin law centre has links to the Israeli National Security Council, and the Mossad, and has admitted in the past being directed by them as to which targets to pursue. That makes this attempt to subvert political debate in Australia all the more sinister.

In respect of the claims by Shurat HaDin, the boycott policy I wrote for CPACS, after a public meeting held at the University of Sydney, was carefully conceived to avoid discrimination, being confined to a request to the Vice Chancellor to revoke institutional links with two Israeli universities. And when I turned down the request by Professor Dan Avnon, to use my name on his application under one of those same schemes, I was (a) not in a position to prevent his coming to Sydney, since he had only to collect two names as host academics out of 3,000 at the University and (b) using my discretion – in effect, being asked for a favour. The law cannot require me to use my discretion in a particular way or it ceases to be discretion!”

?A number of opinion pieces have been published recently outlining the issues raised by this action and we have posted links to them below. ??Your support and pledge to be a co-defendant in this case represents a strong stand against this unfounded and spurious lawfare attack by Shurat HaDin. It is unlikely that this organisation will desire to co-join any other defendants, but your ongoing support is crucial as Australians for BDS fights this foreign organisations’ attempts to gag free speech and academic freedom in Australia.

Please encourage others to sign onto the pledge and leave their comments on the site. And if you are an academic, please encourage your colleagues to sign on with their title eg. Prof, Dr., as we will be contacting all academics shortly to sign a statement of support for Professor Jake Lynch.
Thank you for your support. We will keep you posted as this case develops.

To support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is not antisemitic

To speak in favour of the BDS movement is not antisemitic – and yet The Australian newspaper has been quick to draw a parallel between the two

Antony Loewenstein
theguardian.com, Thursday 7 November 2013 04.24 GMT

The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, a thriving Palestinian-led initiative that attacks institutional links to Israelx92s illegal settlements, has been gaining in popularity. In Australia, the movement has been slowly growing as Israel continues to defy international law x96 and it now faces one of its greatest opportunities in the court of public opinion.

Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center is an Israel-based organisation that claims to be a civil group x93fighting for rights of hundreds of terror victimsx94. It is currently taking Jake Lynch, head of Sydney Universityx92s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS), to the Australian federal court. They assert that Lynch has allegedly breached the 1975 racial discrimination act by refusing to sponsor a fellowship application by Israeli academic Dan Avnon. Lynch and CPACS support BDS, and since Avnon works at Hebrew University x96 a key intellectual hub which is targeted by boycotters for allegedly being complicit in the establishment of illegal settlements x96 Lynch declined to be named as a reference.

The story has been largely ignored. Fairfax Media has not touched it, and ABC TVx92s 7.30 only briefly addressed it last week. Instead, it is Rupert Murdochx92s The Australian which has been driving the debate on the issue, publishing countless stories that deliberately conflates antisemitism and support for the BDS movement.

Just last week, after the horrific bashing of Jewish men in Sydney, the paper featured a Holocaust survivor on its front page condemning the attack. Within the article was the rhetorical device of inserting comment about BDS x96 as if physically assaulting Jewish people was on the same spectrum as a peaceful, non-violent attempt to force Israel to abide by international law. Bizarrely, an op-ed published by Newscorp’s The Telegraph also said that the best response to the assaults was to support Max Brenner x96 the chocolate shop whose parent company, the Strauss Group, has been a target of BDS protestors for supporting the Israeli Defence Force.

Countless letters have since been published in The Australian reinforcing a correlation between antisemitism and the boycott x96 following this logic, Lynch and his backers are a threat to public order. This also ignores the nearly 2,000 signatories of a public petition backing Lynch (which a number of academics, including the co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, Peter Slezak, signed).

Last week, The Australian ran an editorial which implied that Lynch blocked Avnonx92s academic credentials simply because he was an Israeli. Another front page story in the paper last week claimed that Hebrew University is a bastion of Jewish and Arab co-operation, yet ignored the litany of examples of the institution repressing Palestinian rights.

Lynch tells me that Shurat HaDin have deliberately skewed his BDS stance. He denies, despite the groupx92s Australian lawyer Andrew Hamilton said on ABC TV last week, having x93admittedx94 that he boycotted Avnon because he was Israeli. He told me:

I have made it abundantly clear from the start that the policy is aimed at institutional links. If the Hebrew University is anything like the University of Sydney, then it probably employs academics from various backgrounds in terms of religious affiliation and country of origin. It would not make any difference to my or the CPACS’ policy if the applicant was originally from Belgium, Botswana or Bolivia x96 I believe the University of Sydney should revoke its part in the Sir Zelman Cowen and Technion fellowship schemes, and I reserve my right not to collaborate with them. Andrew Hamilton has clearly not paid serious attention to our policy, or to what I have actually done in pursuit of it.

Itx92s worth noting that Avnon, endlessly praised in the Australian media as a humanist who believes in co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians, sits on Israeli group Metzilahx92s General Assembly. This is a group that put out a report explicitly rejecting the Palestinian right of return to lands stolen by Israel, and claims that a Jewish state discriminating against equal rights for Palestinians is not problematic. It is worth noting that the Palestinian right of return is a requirement in international law.

Largely missing from the ferocious media coverage has been any information about the real agenda of Shurat HaDin. The organisation, according to Wikileaks documents, has strong links to Israeli intelligence and Mossad, just one of the many groups that now prosecutes Israelx92s argument for the Jewish state. The law firm tried to sue Twitter for daring to host Hizbollah tweets, former US President Jimmy Carter for criticising Israel and Stephen Hawking for damning the Israeli occupation. Even the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, a leading Zionist lobby, refuses to endorse Shurat HaDinx92s case against Lynch, pointing out that attempts to suppress the campaign through litigation are inappropriate.

Also absent from the debate is the reason BDS exists. It is growing due to a complete lack of faith in US-led peace talks. American journalist Max Blumenthal recently published a book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, which shows in forensic detail the reality of the Israeli mainstreamx92s embrace blatant racism against Arabs and Africans. This isnx92t what the Israel Shurat HaDin and its fellow travellers want the world to see. Indeed, Australian Israel lobby AIJAC responded to the latest BDS case against Lynch by completely ignoring illegal settlements altogether. This week Dean Sherr, a young lobbyist, wrote an entire column in The Australian about BDS without mentioning their existence.

The fear of BDS is reflected in the massive amount of money and resources Israel is spending to stop it. Instead of moving towards a democratic state for all its citizens, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to demolish Palestinian homes and build illegal colonies on Palestinian land.

Shurat HaDinx92s Australian lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, told Haaretz last week that BDS x93does nothing to help Palestinians and indeed harms them. It is merely an excuse for the vilest public antisemitic campaign the western world has seen since the Holocaust.x94 With such a statement, which essentially compares Jake Lynch to a Nazi, itx92s no wonder Zionist advocates are losing the public relations battle globally.

For some of us on the left, using the racial discrimination act as a tool to silence views we find distasteful is deeply worrying x96 I write this as somebody who opposed the legal case against News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt in 2011. A real democracy is a place where any individual has the right to vehemently oppose colluding with an overseas university institution that disputes equal rights for Jews and Arabs.

I look forward to Australiax92s leading public backers of free speech, such as Bolt, Miranda Devine and the Institute of Public Affairs, loudly backing Lynch. Somehow I think Ix92ll be waiting a while for these brave advocates to find their voice.

See also Boycott movement under attack in Australia: Jake Lynch in Bricup Newsleter 70