Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Labor And The Coalition Are Failing Palestine, It’s Time For Civil Society To Take Overbers.


newmatilda.com

Lobbying politicians in Australia has not brought them into line with international opinion. A new campaign aims to turn that around, writes Jake Lynch.

image from article, with caption: APAN members
Excerpt:
Australia’s peak Palestine support group, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, has voted at its Annual General Meeting to “endorse a policy of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) of Israeli and international institutions complicit in violations of human rights and international law in Israel-Palestine”. 
APAN has resisted support for BDS in the past, preferring to concentrate on lobbying politicians, both individually and through parties, and doubtless aware of the demonisation and dirty tricks of the Israel lobby and its rightwing allies that are directed at anyone who actually does anything to uphold Palestinian rights and freedoms, as opposed to merely talking about them. ...  
[T]here are myriad BDS targets in Australia because the country is teeming with “institutions complicit in violations of human rights and international law in Israel-Palestine”, to quote the new APAN policy. One of them is the University of Sydney, where phoney Fellowship schemes link with the Technion University of Haifa, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, both of which are up to their neck in the occupation.
Hence the call by the Sydney Staff for BDS group, which joined APAN this year, to revoke such schemes as a misuse of the University’s good name, and that of scholarly research in general, as part of so-called ‘public diplomacy’ whose aim is reduce pressure from the international community for a change in policy.
Jake Lynch is a member of Sydney Staff for BDS, which affiliates with APAN.

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