Daphne Anson: Sydney’s Israel-Boycotting Council Gets Rubbished

Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East. (From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Friday, 21 January 2011

Sydney’s Israel-Boycotting Council Gets Rubbished

As I mentioned last month, the Council of Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner suburbs, voted to support a motion introduced by Green Party Councillor Cathy Peters (pictured) – who’s reputedly of Jewish origin, incidentally – committing Marrickville to support the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against valiant, democratic Israel. Ensuring this disgraceful outcome were the votes of five Green, four Labor, and three Independent councillors.

Fiona Byrne (also pictured, below right), the present mayor of Marrickville, and aspiring state legislator (she’s the Green Party candidate for Marrickville) boasts that among those who have sent statements in support of the Council’s move is Michael Pearson, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of New South Wales. Uh huh. Big deal.

But she’s also admitted that the move has attracted opposition – from such people as state Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt, who believes Marrickville Council should confine itself to local issues, as well as from Federal MP Anthony Albanese, co-founder and foundation secretary of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine Group.

This is what Mr Albanese thinks of the Council’s venture into the world of BDS:

‘As part of Leonard Cohen’s successful world comeback tour in 2009 he included a concert at Ramat Gan stadium near Tel Aviv in his itinerary.

For that he was condemned by some activists for promoting a cultural exchange in Israel. Never mind the fact that proceeds from this concert were directed to the “Fund for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace”.

Groups which directly benefitted included the “Parents Circle”, made up of both Palestinian and Israeli parents who have lost children in the Middle East conflict with the aim of promoting peace and reconciliation.

Cohen described the concert as “representing a triumph over the inclination of the heart to despair, revenge and hatred”.

The decision of the Greens Party controlled Marrickville Council to “boycott all goods made in Israel and any sporting, academic, government or cultural exchanges”, is unfortunate and misguided at best.

The Council goes even further and suggests that any organisation or company with links to Israel should be boycotted also. It is not clear how much ratepayer funds will be expended on this research.

It is doubtful how fair dinkum the Greens Party Councillors are, given that the resolution carried a month ago included a third point, that they would write to local Parliamentary representatives “seeking their support at the State and Federal level” and the Greens Party Mayor has not actually got around to sending the correspondence.

It’s not as if there are no policy challenges or local issues facing the Greens Party Mayor of Marrickville. The Council is in the process of laying off staff, the Mayor voted to close down Marrickville West Public School’s child care centre which provides vital support to disadvantaged families and the Greens have opposed a series of modest affordable housing proposals.

This ill thought out attempt to challenge the State of Israel through a single Local Council in the inner west of Sydney is clumsy and counterproductive.

I believe that engagement between peoples promotes understanding and tolerance and is worthwhile whether it be between national leaders or student exchanges....

Any lasting resolution to the Middle East conflict cannot be at the expense of either Palestinians or Israelis. Surely contact and engagement between Palestinians and Israelis is a precondition for a peaceful settlement.

If simplistic slogans were enough to resolve this issue it would have become an historical footnote of the last century.

Australians are making a contribution to global tolerance by the way that we have developed as a multicultural society. The inner west of Sydney is a microcosm of what is desirable in the international community – a place where neighbours live in harmony regardless of religion or race.

As it stands all those who attended the recent concerts of Leonard Cohen are in violation of the decree from the Marrickville Mayor made on their behalf – lucky Cohen didn’t try to perform at the Enmore Theatre!’ (http://www.anthonyalbanese.com.au/file.php?file=/news/KOFNEFDWAPJALYSMRPZYJKXY/index.html)

By contrast, Fiona Byrne blusters thus:

“This decision to institute the BDS in Marrickville is well within Council’s jurisdiction. Every day as an organisation we make decisions about who we will or will not do business with as we spend ratepayers’ money to provide community services,” she blusters.

“The BDS is not an anti-Israel resolution. It is about identifying institutions that directly support the occupation of Palestine, and choosing not to do business with them.

BDS is not a fringe movement. Its impact is growing as the Israeli government continues to contravene international law. Growing numbers of prominent Australian unions back the BDS ... as do most Palestinian Civil Societies, and a growing number of Jews and churches around the world....

At a hands-on level, Marrickville Council’s support of the BDS means taking a close look at and making ethical and informed choices about which businesses and institutions we engage with. The boycott of products and services has an immediate local impact, given that Council is a regular purchaser of goods and services on behalf of the community....

Many Australians remember how international boycotts and sanctions of South African goods in the 1980s helped to bring an end to apartheid. It is no accident that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is today one of the most outspoken critics of Israeli policies in Palestine and one of the principal advocates of the BDS movement....

Marrickville Council supporting the BDS is a practical measure for our local area to communicate this to any institution which supports the occupation of Palestine.”

Unfortunately, Ms Byrne seemed shy of appearing on Radio 2GB to discuss the Council’s decision. So the broadcast proceeded without her.

Have a listen – it’s a corker! The programme's host, a station employee who’s spent time in the region, a Jewish communal leader in Sydney and others all pour scorn on what one interviewee calls “The Mouse That Roared in Marrickville”.

http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=7831

(Hat tip: reader Shirlee)

There’s also a petition against the Council’s move:
http://www.australianislamistmonitor.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3990:petition-against-marrickville-council-boycott-of-israel&catid=110

8 comments:

Shirl in Oz22 January 2011 at 09:53
Thanks Daph !!!
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Shirl in Oz22 January 2011 at 10:26
Daphne, sorry I must point out an error here. Only 1 Independant voted for the Motion, the other two Viv Macri & Morris Hanna were opposed

Here's the letter I recieved from Vic Macri

"As a councillor I was elcted to deal with local issues and am very disturbed when the green councillors feel they need to waste rate payers money on issues that should be at a federal level . It is a good example of what would happen if the greens ever came to power federally. in marrickville in 2004 marrickville won the bluett award for best council in nsw from then till now marrickville residents have experienced falling service standards and face a unsustainble future with rising costs of 8% per year with a rise in income of 2.8% per year havent these people got more immediate local issues to deal with.
I hope this email shows you the battle i have representing the silent majority of the people of marrickville , if i can help you in any other way please let me know happy to talk to you my number is xxxxxxxxxx"
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Rita23 January 2011 at 17:00
Call me a cynic, but it seems to me that militant anti-Semitism is a prerequisite to climb up the ladder in the Greens Party hierarchy: a shining example of this was Lee Rhiannon, who stood shoulder to shoulder with the Sheik of the Lakemba mosque, on the steps of Sydney townhall, screeching anti-Semitic slogans during that sham that was the so-called "peace flotilla for Gaza". She sits now in the Senate where "The Greens" will hold the balance of power come July.

I remind you that that Sheik (Hilali) quasily sanctioned the series of pack-rapes of Australian girls by muslim gangs in suggesting the girls had asked for it by "dressing the way they did, they were like meat to a cat".

What will those green and labor councillors of Marrickville think of next to collect "Brownie" points? ... Yellow Star of David stickers to be worn by all Jewish people, full chador for females??
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Daphne Anson23 January 2011 at 19:10
Thanks for the clarification, Shirlee.
Hope you're having a good trip, Rita.
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Rita24 January 2011 at 13:56
Thank you Daphne:)Paris is still wonderfull in this season of nearly-no-tourists. (I usually spend the Australian summer months here to escape the heat and humidity of Sydney).

Although the majority of the (left) media in this country which gave us the Dryfuss affair is pretty anti-Semitic, and muslims from the Maghreb and sub-saharan Africa are hugely visible (see that u-tube you posted recently), some brave French voices who want to claim back their Republic from the fangs of the galopping Islamisation that is destroying Europe are increasing.

Lets hope that this camel has not bolted.
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Daphne Anson24 January 2011 at 19:58
How lovely to be able to escape Sydney's humidity, Rita! It's a beautiful city - more instantly appealing than Melbourne - but that humidity always does me in (ensures that every day is a bad hair day!)
I haven't been to Paris since 2004.
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sharky4 February 2011 at 03:08
Beware of the enemy within.
Jews that attempt to make themselves known by anti-Israeli rants/actions. These 'I'm jewish but ..' types, such as Antony Loewenstein, try & gain the admiration of anti-semite groups wrapped in left-wing banners, regardless of the potential danger to the local Jewish community.
These 'left-wing' groups (more like wannabe fascists) compile doctored information & with the backing of their token Jew, their hatred appears legitimate to the wider community.
Then the freaks dine out on their lies & come out to play- Brendon O'Connell etc ...
These destructive 'Jews' live in a fantasy of guest speaking & book launches in which they abuse their culture for self-glory amongst people who want to hate us ...
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Daphne Anson4 February 2011 at 04:16
I know and deplore the type, Sharky!
Thanks for your comment.
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'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

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If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
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Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.
[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.
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The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968)

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

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[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

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Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

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