Ben & Gideon Mark Their Diaries: Australian Israel-haters to fly in the big guns

Gideon Levy in full flood

Hot on the heels of the BDS Conference that has just taken place at the University of Sydney, with the usual suspects in place, comes notification by Israel-bashers and -haters Down Under of another chin-wagging onslaught against the Jewish State.

Under the auspices of AFOPA (the Australian Friends of Palestine Association), it's due to take place in Adelaide in late November:

'This year, 2017, marks important anniversaries pertaining to the issue of Palestine. It is the 100 year anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, 100 years of Australian involvement in Palestine, and 50 years of Israeli Occupation. The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement set the scene by carving up the region into the modern Middle East, and the 1956 Suez Crisis highlighted the geo-political importance of the region. Collectively these significant events have influenced the destiny of the Palestinians and the inhabitants of the region, shaped international and Australian involvement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

This three-day symposium seeks to examine Palestine and the West: History, Contemporary Realities and Challenges Ahead.

The focus of this academic symposium will be Palestine in the context of the West, and not the West in the context of Palestine. The central theme will be Palestine, its past, present, and its future.

Historical interventions and their impact on Palestinians will set the scene of the theme of this symposium. Experts in the field will examine the impact of these interventions on contemporary realities within the Palestinian territories and among Palestinians wherever they are found. The symposium will examine Palestine in context of the MENA region from both micro and macro levels. It will cover international and regional developments and their impact on Palestinians within the Palestinian territories, within Israel, those exiled or living in neighbouring countries, or the Diaspora. The impact of 50 years of Israeli occupation, or almost 70 years of Palestinian displacement since 1948 will also be addressed.

 The challenges ahead for Palestinians and the prospects of a just and peaceful resolution will be discussed, as will possible solutions to resolving this core international conflict. 

The Symposium will be inviting a number of Australian and international guests, each scholars or experts in their fields, including:

  Mr Gideon Levy, acclaimed journalist with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who will deliver the keynote annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture;

    Dr Mohammed Shtayyeh, member of the PLO Negotiation Team

    Dr Peter Slezak, University of New South Wales, Independent Australian Jewish Voices

    Dr Ahmad Shboul AM, University of Sydney

    Mr Ben White, writer, journalist, researcher and activist

    Ms Samah Sabawi, acclaimed Palestinian-Canadian-Australian writer, commentator, playwright and PhD candidate.

    Further speakers to be listed as they are confirmed.'  [Emphasis added]

As reported by Rachel Baxendale in The Australian on 19 July, 

A smiling Lynch looks on ...

'The University of Sydney has distanced itself from a controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions conference being hosted by its Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, after members of the Jewish community labelled the gathering an “anti-Israel hate-fest”.

The department is holding the conference on July 28-29 in conjunction with lobby group Sydney University Staff for BDS and a range of pro-Palestinian organisations. Conference events include a speech on Palestinian rights under Donald Trump by US Campaign for Palestinian Rights executive director Yousef ­Munayyer, a paper by pro-BDS academic Jake Lynch on the pro-Israel influence in Australia, and a panel discussing anti-Semitism with pro-BDS Jewish speakers Peter ­Slezak, Marcello Svirsky and Vivienne Porzsolt....

...and students take their seats while Hage awaits his cue

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff said the obsessive focus on BDS by the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies ignored the reality that it does nothing to advance a resolution to the conflict.

 “Then there is the irony that the organisers have scheduled a discussion on working with the Jewish community for a Saturday, automatically excluding ­observant Jews and demonstrating how tokenistic any attempts to understand the Jewish community actually are,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the University of Sydney said the institution was strongly committed to academic freedom and to being a forum for debate on a wide range of issues. “The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions policy is not a university-endorsed policy.”'

 If you're a glutton for punishment (Professor Ghassan Hage for one is a very boring speaker), you can read and see more about the conference here

Aussie Senator Defames Israel & Adelaide Museum Allows Nakba Plaque

"The great crime of the 20th century is now the great crime of the 21st century."

That's how, according to an excellent must-read  report from J-Wire, the Israel-hating BDS-loving part-Jewish Greens Australian Senator Lee Rhiannon, the daughter of hard left parents, described the Nakba at this year's "Nakba Day" rally in Sydney.

As J-Wire noted, and as seen in the Sydney Daily Telegraph, she also authorised rally leaflets and a poster using parliamentary funds, material that denies Israel's right to exist by dating the "Occupation" to 1948.   (Read and see more at J-Wire here)

Some faces in the crowd:

Yes, it seems that all of Israel-hating human life was there.

The ludicrous "Jews Against The Occupation" also turned up, but since they'd fit inside an old-fashioned telephone booth and still have space over I haven't bothered to include them.  

I trust that Senator Rhiannon, a staunch feminist who nevertheless denounces "Islamophobia"

deplores the overt antisemitism seen among Nakba Day demonstrators such as this bozo at the rally:

I think we should be told.

Meanwhile:

 The Anti-Israel-obsessed Left is lobbying hard.

 "Nakba Day" has also seen a squalid development in Adelaide.

The Migration Museum  in that city is a South Australia state government institution that according to its website "works towards the preservation, understanding and enjoyment of South Australia’s diverse cultures. It is a place to discover the many identities of the people of South Australia through the stories of individuals and communities".

However, on Sunday 15 May political divisiveness and demonisation of Israel intruded upon the multicultural ethos, since the Museum permitted a "Nakba Day" event under the auspices of AFOPA (Australian Friends of Palestine Association) to take place for the purpose of unveiling a plaque headed "Palestine" commemorating the "Nakba, or Catastrophe" (text shown close-up below).

As I noted recently, AFOPA's patron is Adelaide barrister Mr Paul Heywood Smith, whom I mentioned here recently with regard to his writings concerning Israel.

AFOPA's thrust can be seen in such image as these:

In his speech at the unveiling Adelaide resident Dr Ibrahim Elassaad reminisced about his Palestinian Arab family's experiences (and I'm sure no one begrudges him his memories nor his feelings), but the political nature of the event at a publicly funded Museum was a propaganda exercise which enabled one-sided denunciation of Israel to go unchallenged:

"We suffered greatly as a result of our displacement. We became a stateless people.

We lived as refugees, struggling for recognition, struggling for survival and waiting for the day when we can go back home. We still wait for the day when we can go back home.

Today marks the 68th anniversary of the Al Nakba - the Catastrophe of Palestine. Today I am sad to say that the Palestinian displacement and suffering has not stopped.... The Israeli Separation Wall, which is illegal under International law and which has destroyed any possibility of a contiguous Palestinian land, continues.

And today we witness the siege of more than two million Palestinians in Gaza. Gaza stands as the world’s largest and most densely populated open air prison, with the Palestinians denied autonomy over access to their land, and denied autonomy over their sea and air space.

The list goes on.

And the intention of the Israeli Occupying powers is clear: it is to make Palestinian life so miserable so as to force the remaining Palestinians to leave....

Today we are calling for all people who believe in human rights and all governments who proclaim democracy, equal opportunity and justice to stand by the Palestinians. To help them regain their freedom; their rights and their autonomy.

We are grateful and indebted to the Australian people for their support, and we are indebted to the Migration Museum of South Australia for acknowledging us and for commemorating the suffering of the Palestinian people; and for acknowledging the contribution of the South Australian Palestinian community with this plaque...."

[Emphasis added]

In Australia, Anti-Israel Activists Maintain That Loving Feeling

SBS ex-newsreader Mary Kostakidis retweets ...

It seems that anti-Israel activists in Australia might have decided that fiction (I mean the stuff that owns up to being fiction) is the propagandistic way to go.

My previous post tells of the adoption of a Palestinian activist's play by the powers that decide the curriculum in the Aussie state of Victoria, aimed at teenagers.

Quite a coup, leading to enormous satisfaction on the anti-Israel mob's part.

Where has the Aussie Jewish "leadership" been meanwhile?

Have they protested?

Have they been fobbed off with the fact that also on the VCE playlist for 2016 is a play that uses an Aboriginal leader's 1938 protest to the German Embassy over Nazi persecution of Jews as a peg on which to hang its themes?  If so, they are woefully mistaken, for the latter play is in no sense a trade-off.

Soon to be launched, in Adelaide, is a novel by pro-BDS stalwart Professor Emeritus Stuart Rees of Jake Lynch's Peace Centre.

Like the Palestinian activist's play, Rees's novel would appear to have a love story as hook on which to hang a political message.

The book is to be launched in May by Adelaide barrister Paul Heywood-Smith QC, a founding member of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA).

An early AFOPA initiative in Adelaide (2010)

 

 

In 2013 AFOPA paid for billboards in Adelaide showing the misleading maps

Mr Heywood-Smith's views on Israel and on its supporters within the Australian Jewish community can be glimpsed here (something about "divided loyalties").

And then there's his own book, The Case for Palestine: The perspective of an Australian observer, launched last year.

Here's what Michael Easson, a patron of the Australia Israel Labor Dialogue, had to say about it.  Inter alia:

"Heywood-Smith is an unsteady captain of his ship and sometimes runs aground. His caveat emptor, that ambition might outstretch ability as an historian, is amply evidenced. Two egregious clangers are the naming of the social democrat Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky as a ‘Jewish Bolshevik’ (he was neither) and the claim that Sir Raphael Cilento, having merely ‘questioned’ ‘Zionist imperialism’, was drummed out of Australian diplomatic life. (Cilento was a Holocaust denier, big supporter and donor to the far-right League of Rights, in short, an anti-semitic ratbag).

 Superficial, sophomoric judgements abound in this philippic....

Heywood-Smith raises the discredited claim that most Jews are actually not descendants from the land of Israel but Khazar converts, a possibility that discredits Zionism. He even manages to claim that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al Husseini, the notorious Hitler supporter, hardly amounted to much: ‘There is no evidence, however, that Amin’s views translated into material support for Nazi Germany from the Palestinian people.’ All he ever did was raise a volunteer Muslim SS contingent in the Balkans. Almost harmless, really.

In a potted history of WWI, Heywood-Smith argues ‘Britain became desperate to bring the US into the conflict. This enabled Zionists to play a winning card’, implying that they bargained with Britain to support a Zionist state. All this shows is that Heywood-Smith cannot help finding a point and embellishing it. He claims all the problems with the Middle East stem from western imperialism and the creation of Israel. This is simple-mindedness writ large. He snidely questions whether Australian Labor MP Michael Danby, who is Jewish, is guilty of dual loyalties....

Bizarrely, Heywood-Smith claims that then Israeli PM Ehud Barak refused to meet with Yasser Arafat in 2000 at the Camp David Summit convened by Bill Clinton. (They met many times. This is where Barak offered the Palestinian Authority nearly 97 per cent of the West Bank, plus land swaps). Instead of transparency, as the Palestinians wanted, the Israelis traded in secrecy, Heywood-Smith claims.

Mother love is in the air

 He expresses sympathy for the BDS campaign and complains that the Palestinian Authority is complicit with doing deals with Israel and ‘so clearly does not represent the Palestinian people.’ Australian-born Martin Indyk, a consistent critic of Israeli PM Netanyahu and adviser to Presidents Clinton and Obama, is dismissed as a Zionist. 

So, what are Heywood-Smith’s solutions? ‘The Jewish communities that thrived for centuries in Morocco, Tunisia, Baghdad, Damascus, Istanbul and Seville, to mention but a few sites, should be encouraged to restore themselves.’ Jews go home, in other words...."

Dissecting A Lizard Of Oz

"Something very strange has happened to the Western Left in recent times, exemplified by its attitude to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I say that as someone who was affiliated with the Left of the Australian Labor Party throughout by 22-year parliamentary career. On the one hand, this is the great age of political correctness, where the slightest implication of racism, sexism or homophobia is instantly condemned and the perpetrators required to do penance. Yet here we have clear advocacy of genocide, right there in plain sight in Hamas’ foundational document adopted in 1988. Whole forests have been levelled to produce anti-Israel resolutions. How many of these have called on Hamas to repudiate this foul, evil document? Some academic enthusiasts even argue that Hamas should be considered part of the ‘progressive Left’.

Israel, on the other hand, is the country that can do no right, blamed for a large share of the ills that beset the region if not the world. Even its friendliness to the gay community (in a recent poll Tel Aviv was rated the world’s top gay tourist destination) is derided at academic conferences as pinkwashing designed to mask its repression of the Palestinians. Meanwhile in Teheran gays are publicly lynched from cranes. No resolutions or conferences about that, needless to say. The Left has a singular obsession with the real or imagined misdeeds of Israel, giving little or no attention to far greater humanitarian calamities such as the conflict in Syria and Iraq.

The thing I find particularly disturbing is not legitimate criticism of Israel but the tacit or explicit support given to a movement that embodies everything the Left should stand against, one face of a hideous barbarism afflicting multiple locations throughout the Islamic world. It is impossible to reasonably pass judgement on the Israelis without taking account of the nature of their adversaries. This the ‘pro-Palestinian’ Left seems incapable of doing, and in effect ends up lending support to a futile and destructive rejectionism that will ensure the continuing immiseration of the Palestinians."

Those are the words of a  former Australian Labor Party minister Peter Baldwin, who sat in the federal House of Representatives from 1983-98.  It is part of a much longer rejoinder to an inveterate Sydney Israel bashing "as-a-Jew" academic Peter Slezak, and makes such good points in defence of Israel that it deserves to be read in full here.

Last month, Melissa Parke, Labor member for Fremantle, WA, in the federal House of Represntatives, became the darling of the Israel-hating Left in Australia when she broke ranks with her party to defend the despicable BDS movement, insisting that it is not antisemitic.

In doing so, Ms Parke, who has form when it comes to demonising Israel,  cited some very dodgy "authorities".

As Peter Wertheim, executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, (ECAJ) and that organisation'spublic affairs director, Alex Ryvchin, noted soon afterwards:

'.... In her attempt to distinguish between hatred for the Jews as a people and hatred for Jews as a people with a national home, the Labor Member for Fremantle relied on the views of former UN-official Richard Falk.

Falk is known as a "9/11 conspiracy theorist", and was denounced, including by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, for vile comments blaming the Boston terrorist attack on "the American global domination project" and "Tel Aviv."

So extreme are Falk's views that the Palestinian Authority requested that he step down from his position as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories because they considered him to be a partisan of Hamas and opposed his deeply offensive references to the Holocaust.

To build the case for BDS, Parke also quotes Peter Slezak, of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network. Just hours after a bus-load of Jewish primary school children were threatened in Sydney with having their "throats cut" and were subjected to shouts of "Heil Hitler" and "all Jews must die", Slezak declared that "Jews are fair game because of their influence and militant support for crimes of [the] Jewish state." Slezak insists that he meant Jews were "only" fair game for criticism, but this is belied by the timing and context of his comment."

They went on:

'The dishonesty and extremism of what Parke calls the "official BDS campaign" is evident.

The founder of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti, claims  Palestinians have a "right to resistance by any means, including armed resistance," and denies that the Jews are a people or have a connection to the land of Israel.

Other leading figures in the movement have openly asserted the campaign's purpose of destroying Israel....

Parke's speech in support of BDS is symptomatic of the same psychosis for which Richard Falk has been roundly condemned. It places all the ills of the Middle East, if not the world, at the feet of Israel.

Parke even goes so far as to link the scourge of militant Islam with the actions of Israel and implies that BDS is part of the solution. What connection Israel has to the marauding jihadists consuming much of Africa and the Middle East, Parke does not tell us. Israel's only involvement in the Syrian tragedy that  spawned IS and which has claimed, in just a few years, far more lives than the Arab-Israeli conflict has in over six decades, is to smuggle wounded Syrian civilians across the border and heal them free of charge in Israeli hospitals.

Every party in the Federal Parliament and in the State or Territory parliaments has rejected the anti-Israel BDS campaign, and leaders of the Coalition, Labor and the Greens have denounced BDS publicly more than once.  

More importantly, Australians have shown no tolerance at all for the fringe groups that picket chocolate shops, university centres that try to exclude Israeli academics, or local councils that seek to spend ratepayers' money on anti-Israel crusades.

Parke's public endorsement of a campaign that is at best dishonest and at worst racist, will disgust all people of goodwill who support a Palestinian State alongside Israel, something that BDS staunchly opposes. ...'

More recently, former Australian Foreign Minister and former president of Labor Friends of Israel Bob Carr's much-flaunted decision to become patron of Labor Friends of Palestine has, deservedly, attracted widespread derision from Jewish and other pro-Israel sources.

Speaking to the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (a most active ratbag crowd of BDSers; latest video below) in Adelaide, Carr said, in part:

"Pennant Hills Golf Club in Sydney is an unusual place for an epiphany on the changes in Israel. Still, it was there I met a Christian volunteer who went to the occupied territories to escort Palestinian children to school, to protect them from verbal and physical ­violence by Israeli settlers.

Violence against Arab kids? Christian volunteers to protect them? From Jewish settlers?

None of this was around in 1977 when I rented a room in Sydney Trades Hall and called on Bob Hawke, ACTU president, to help me launch Labor Friends of Israel.

In 1977 the Israeli occupation was 10 years old. There were 25,000 settlers. It was easy to believe the Israelis were holding the West Bank only as a bargaining chip. Arabs were terrorists.

Now the occupation has lasted 47 years. There are 500,000 settlers. Up to 60 per cent of the Israeli cabinet is on record as opposing a two-state solution. Palestinians have been part of a peace process for 25 years....

In 1977 the Palestine Liberation Organisation was blowing up planes. Now for 25 years Palestinians have been committed to a neg­otiated solution, most recently to a demilitarised state with the presence of a US-led NATO force on the West Bank and East ­Jerusalem.

In 1977 when we launched Labor Friends of Israel we knew, to our disgrace, none of their narrative....

From the writers of The West Wing came this. Discussing Gaza and the West Bank, a White House adviser says to another, “Revolutionaries will outlast and out-die occupiers every time.” No other colonial rule has survived, let alone with rich settlers on fortified hilltops with Los Angeles lawns, the wretched huddled in the gullies, their 12-year-old kids subject to military arrest and ­detention.

We have politely pitched the case for Palestinian statehood as creating security for Israel. But in view of the settlements and settler violence, I now pitch the case in terms of the rights of the Palestinian people, recognised in international law and every draft peace statement supported by the world for a quarter of a century.

Palestinians must commit to non-violent resistance, not a third intifada. They must build international support. They must engage with the righteous Jews who condemn the takeover of Zionism by the fanatics.

Forty years ago I signed up to be president of Labor Friends of Israel; I still count myself a friend of the liberals in that country but it serves the cause of a just peace better by me this week becoming patron of Labor Friends of Palestine."

As Liberal federal MP Josh Frydenberg, parliamentary secretary to prime minister Tony Abbott, and the only Jewish MP on that side of the House, commented:

“This grandstanding by Bob Carr is all about him. It’s nothing more than an obsession on Bob Carr’s part.

He is a real opportunist. He’s been silent as we’ve seen ISIL or ISIS go ahead and engage in beheadings in Iraq and Syria and butchery and genocide but he’s just obsessed with the Israel-Palestinian issue and I just think it’s because he’s got relevance deprivation syndrome.”....'

The current Australian Jewish News, which hit the newsstands today, is replete with letters and articles about Bob Carr's treacherous attitude towards Israel.

One of the best and most trenchant of the indictments of Carr comes from the paper's publisher, Robert Magid, who is not afraid to suggest that awareness of the Muslim vote in Sydney and Melbourne has prompted Carr's volte-face; his article, headed "Carr's veered off the road of reality", appeared yesterday in The Australian behind a paywall (title, should you wish to google it: Bob Carr is no friend of Israel or Palestinians)

"Israel", writes Mr Magid inter alia,

lives in a rough neighbourhood. Syria recently killed more than 200,000 of its citizens and more than half of its population have fled their country. Lebanon has tens of thousands of missiles pointed at Israel. Gaza recently fired batteries of Fajr-5 missiles not at military targets but Israeli civilians. An army of fanatics is intent on killing anyone who is not Sunni, beheading or mass murdering prisoners, enslaving women and children. Iran is marching inexorably to acquire nuclear weapons, intent on wiping Israel off the map.

Into these shark-infested ­waters swims our heroic former foreign minister with all the answers. His view? Everything is Israel’s fault. The Palestinians are helpless victims. The expansion of settlements is irreversible and renders peace impossible. With the ­absorption of the West Bank, Israel will become an apartheid state. Israel is becoming more religious, hence more fanatical and more right wing, and while Israel expands, Palestinians have been thwarted in the peace process for 25 years. The imagery is all there. Mahmoud Abbas sits, pen in hand, a jilted bride.

What is the reality? Start with the peace process. Every Palestinian is suckled on the belief that Palestine includes all of Israel. Look at any map in the Palestinian territories or the Arab world. To Palestinians, “the Occupation” is not of Jenin or Ramallah but Tel Aviv and Haifa. Anyone who betrays that birthright should be killed as a traitor. The only peace agreement Abbas would sign is for Benjamin Netanyahu to hand over all of ­Israel.

So who is responsible for the lack of progress towards peace?

Israel agreed to the Oslo Accords that brought to the West Bank Yasser Arafat and his PLO, who, rather than seeking peace, unleashed an intifada that killed more than 1000 Israelis.....

 Bob Carr sees settlements as the essential obstacle to peace from which Israel will never withdraw, the only possible outcome a Greater Israel with a disenfranchised Palestinian minority.

Yet there were no settlements between 1948 and the war of 1967 and Palestinians refused to negotiate peace, and all Israeli proposals since then have been rejected. Former Peace Now activist Ari Shavit acknowledges that even if all the settlements were dismantled, Palestinians would never sign a peace agreement.

Carr implies Israel is becoming more right wing. But democratic politics is a pendulum. When Israelis feel secure, they vote on domestic issues, usually for leftist parties. When they feel threatened, they vote for the party they believe provides them with security.

Carr shows his ignorance by confusing religious parties in the Knesset with support for extremists — the main religious parties are focused on support for their education and welfare priorities and join in coalitions with whichever party meets their needs.

Carr also fails to mention that the Netanyahu government is committed to a two-state solution....

Carr talks about future apartheid if Israel remains in control of the West Bank but Israel is the only country in the neighbourhood where apartheid is not practised. Israeli Arabs vote, are represented in parliament, sit on the judiciary, are active in academe as students and lecturers, are doctors and staff in all hospitals, and represent Israel in international forums.

Palestinians born in Syria, Lebanon and other Arab states have no right to citizenship and are restricted in their place of residence.

As for the West Bank, Palestinians voted for their own government, which is responsible for all domestic policies....

The West Bank cannot be a stand-alone economy. Many Palestinians see their future not in exacerbating relations with Israel, a technological wonder but in constructive economic and social ties. Palestinians are forming companies linked with Israeli hi-tech companies to provide services.

Hamas has shown considerable technical skill building rockets, missiles and tunnels but these skills should be harnessed to improve its people’s lives. Instead of encouraging constructive dialogue, Carr plays to the victim mentality. Therein lies the difference between those who welcome an integration of Palestinian and Israeli economies to the benefit all rather than the destructive negativity of Carr. Sadly, he is no friend of Israel or of the Palestinians.'

 Meanwhile, as J-Wire's Henry Benjamin reports here, the ECAJ's president, Robert Goot, has told delegates its AGM:

"The erosion in support for Israel within the Australian Labor Party, especially in New South Wales and Queensland, has lead to a weakening of the cross-party consensus on Israel that has been a feature of Australian politics since at least the mid-1950’s. The ECAJ is working closely with the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies in particular and the Jewish community’s many friends within the ALP, to address this issue especially in the context of the national conference of the ALP to be held in 2015, where we anticipate a move led by Bob Carr to change the policy. His latest remarks reported in “The Australian” yesterday, will undoubtedly attract support and demonstrate yet again the impact on some of our friends of the settlement policy, the attitude of some of the settlers and their political supporters, which whatever their motivation, is seen to undermine support for the 2 state solution and further isolates Israel.”  [My emphasis]

Adelaide BDSers Scrubbing The Uncomfortable Truth (videos)

Here are two recent uploads by the StreetsOfAdelaide channel.

In the City of Churches, BDSers get busy with the scrubbing brush when, in two separate incidents earlier this year, they find subversive messages from a pesky supporter of the Zionist Entity who got there ahead of them chalked on their patches in the Rundle Mall.

In the first video, which, like the second, features well-chosen supplementary footage from elsewhere, BDSers in their familiar green t-shirts discover that their patch bears the chalked label "Danger Propaganda Zone" followed by the very appropriate "Boycott Real Racism":

And in the other a member of AFOPA (Australian Friends of Palestine Association) scrubs out a (conscience-pricking?) message found chalked on the pavement of the Mall:

More Anti-Israel Propaganda On Campus: The case of the University of Adelaide

Note the participation of an ABC (Australia's answer to the BBC) personality

The Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA), we learn from its website,

"is a South Australian not-for-profit organisation, which has as its main aim the promotion of peace and justice in Palestine based on International Law and the relevant UN resolutions.

AFOPA also aims to provide Australians with information about Palestine, its people, its land, its history and culture.

AFOPA raises money for a variety of humanitarian projects in Palestine, including sending medical teams and allied health professionals to work in Palestinian refugee camps, donating medical equipment for clinics and hospitals and providing playground equipment and toys for children.

AFOPA organizes local, national and international speakers to inform Australians about the current issues concerning Palestine. Our flagship annual public event is the Edward Said Memorial Lecture, which is held every year in conjunction with the University of Adelaide, featuring an international speaker of note [Emphasis added].

AFOPA regularly distributes information about human rights abuses in Palestine and provides speakers on Palestinian issues to interested politicians, community groups and others.

AFOPA has been an incorporated Association since 2004 and has many members from all walks of life. We are concerned about human rights for Palestinians and work together to obtain a just peace in the Middle-East."

All rather innocuous, some might think.  If so, think again.

Julie Nathan, research officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, has detected a darker side to AFOPA than might be suggested by such material.  She writes:

"Many supporters of the Palestinian cause claim their support is based on a social justice and antiracism platform. Anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian individuals and organizations often make the claim that they are simply anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish.

However, many of these people and organizations cross the line from legitimate criticism of the State of Israel into outright anti-Semitism....

Videos are another means of propagating anti-Jewish sentiment, conspiracy theories, or similar sinister insinuations about Jews. Such videos, posted on the facebook [sic] site of the Australians Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA), based in Adelaide, include videos entitled “Zionists are a Satan worshiping Cult!,” “Dangers Of A ‘Jewish’ State,” and “The Hitler Speech They Don’t Want You To Hear.”

The first two titles sound anti-Israel, yet the synopsis of the first states: “To help you understand the difference between the “true Israel” and the Synagogue of Satan.” This is the familiar terminology of far-right religious anti- Semitism.

The second video repeats this theme, as it states: “Jewish elitism has permeated every aspect of our nation’s infrastructure....

If this trend continues then a Judaic tyranny never before experienced in American life will dismantle all that Christianity has bequeathed to our once free and prosperous nation.”

The third video claims to be the English translation of a speech by Hitler which blames Roosevelt for WWII and portrays Hitler and the Nazis as innocent and peaceful, which is a standard neo-Nazi theme.

When, for example, AFOPA allows anti-Semitic videos which demonize Jews and sell Hitler as a hero to be posted and kept on their facebook [sic] page, this belies the claim that they are only anti-Israel. It shows, at best, an unacceptable tolerance for those who are deeply and overtly hostile to Jews.

When pro-Palestinian websites, like Australians For Palestine (AFP) and AFOPA, republish articles from overseas which use anti-Semitic language, this only reinforces the negative portrayal of Jews. An example is an article which uses the term “Talmudic rituals.”

This term, a coded expression for attacking Judaism, is used on many Islamic websites such as IslamOnline, and by Arab journalists such as Khalid Amayreh. [Emphasis added]

As one study of anti-Semitism has noted, “The term ‘Talmudic rituals’ used by Amayreh (2009c) and Islam- Online (2009a) in reference to Jews near Al-Aqsa is a coded allusion to some sort of ‘sinister’ Jewish rituals, given that historically the Christian authorities condemned and burned the Talmud as an allegedly sinister Jewish text in an effort to convert the Jews to Christianity” (ADL 2003).In comparison, a less active website, Palestine Solidarity Campaign Melbourne, has the same story but from the Maan News website, where the article contains nothing inflammatory or anti-Semitic. This shows that there are various ways to choose to tell a story and that anti-Israel organizations like AFP and AFOPA have chosen to use and republish articles with anti-Jewish language and content rather than articles that are not anti-Semitic...."

AFOPA, whose members appear to overlap to some extent with the BDS movement in South Australia that regularly stages protests in Adelaide against Seacret cosmetics, mounted, a few months ago, an exhibition entitled "Keys of Hope," symbolised by a photo of a hand holding a key indicating the so-called Right of Return, at the Migration Museum in Adelaide:

"Keys of Hope is a metaphorical symbol of longing for peace, justice and reconciliation to end the conflict in Palestine....

This exhibition, presented by AFOPA, traces the history, the culture, the people, and the beliefs of Palestinians, from earliest times to the present day.  It outlines the displacements of 1948 and the later wars, conflicts and the continuing occupation, finishing with a note on Palestinians in South Australia."

 "The ESML," we read again  here,  "is AFOPA's showpiece event."

This "showpiece event" (held in memory of the Columbia University professor described in a Guardian article quoted on the University of Adelaide's website regarding the lecture as "a Christian humanist with a healthy respect for Islam") has been taking place since 2005,  hosted by the University of Adelaide, with Professor Bassam Dally the secretary of the Lecture's Steering Committee.
 
 We read here:

"The Edward Said Memorial Lecture, ESML, is a University of Adelaide annual public lecture to honour the memory of a path-breaking scholar, courageous advocate, passionate critic and an unfailing humanist, the late Edward Said. The lecture was proposed by the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA) who are proud sponsors of this lecture....

The lecture is organized by a steering committee made of academics from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, public figures and representatives of AFOPA. The lecture is held every year close to the beginning of October and is delivered by high profile intellectuals who transcend the gap of academia and public discourse."

The first of these annual lectures was given by Robert Fisk of Britain's Independent newspaper (see more here).

Fisk was followed by:

Chomsky in full flood

In 2006, Professor Tanya Reinhart (see more here)

In 2007, by Dr Ghada Karmi (see more here)

In 2008 by Dr Sara Roy (see more here)

In 2009 by Said's nephew Professor Saree Makdisi (see more here) who is quoted as thus:

"A one-state solution, in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians would share and live as equals in a single, democratic and secular state is the way to go, I believe. This solution was also championed by Edward Said....

The two-state solution would preclude the possibility of finding justice for those Palestinians and their descendants who were ethnically cleansed from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948.

"By contrast, a one-state solution would allow those Palestinians who were expelled in 1948 to exercise their moral and legal right to return. It would also grant full and equal citizenship to Palestinians living inside what is today Israel; and it would end the misery of life under military occupation."

 In 2010 by Tariq Ali (see more here)

In 2011, "to a capacity crowd at Adelaide Town Hall [seating capacity 1100]," by Professor Noam Chomsky (see more here, where there's a video of Chomsky's talk.

 In 2012 by Professor Ilan Pappe (see more here); note that the University of Adelaide's website quotes John Pilger's description of Pappe as "'Israel bravest, most principles and most incisive historian".

It will be seen that this roll call of speakers includes notorious, incorrigible Israel-bashers.

This year, the lecture will be held not, as is more usual, in September or October, but (can this be mere coincidence?) on 2 November, the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration that is being assailed so vehemently at present by Stephen Sizer and friends in the evident hope of persuading the British government to issue an apology on its centenary in 2017.

The speaker on that occasion will be Dr Mustafa Barghouti (see announcements here and here).

Like sponsoring organisation AFOPA, he might be described as "a wolf in sheep's clothing".  As one Middle East-watcher put it privately to me, Barghouti

" gets Brownie points from some people because he opposed corruption in the PA and talks laudably about creating Palestinian civil society etc. To the extent that he seems to advocate a peaceful two-state solution, he is very attractive to many western commentators. But I have heard him speak and watched him in interviews: he blames everything on Israel and THE OCCUPATION, at a drop of a hat invokes insidious apartheid and Nazi analogies such as the Warsaw Ghetto, etc. etc."

This cautionary attitude towards Barghouti, who was involved in the "Global March to Jerusalem" stunt, is borne out by this article here, which begins:

'Mustafa Barghouti is well known in Palestinian circles as a physician, parliamentarian, and reformer who has campaigned for a robust civil society and the elimination of corruption in the Palestinian Authority. He gained wider attention when he ran in the campaign to succeed Yasser Arafat as PA President and is still spoken of as a likely candidate for that office. Lately, he has been in the news again, making the media rounds as a commentator on the Gaza conflict--most recently, today in two interviews on CNN.

 Unfortunately, what he said--above and beyond the usual platitudes about regret for loss of all human life and the ultimate need for a political settlement--was as callous and disingenuous as it was preposterous:

 • Israeli politicians have staged this "bloodbath" in order to bolster their chances in the February elections

 • as the world's fourth-largest arms exporter, Israel is using Gaza as a "field for experimenting [sic] their military equipment"

 • the ground incursion was “first step of full re-occupation”

 • Israel's government "seems not to consider Palestinians equal human beings," for "Israel is conducting this terrible war not on[sic] Hamas, but on Palestinian children"

 • therefore, "it's like Warsaw Ghetto" [sic]As if this were not enough, he attributed this bloodlust to Judaism itself, accusing Israel of hypocrisy for attacking on the Sabbath:

"The Jewish religion says you cannot fix your car on Saturday--but you can kill people."

His anger rises, the façade falls: Yes, those nasty Jews. Not Israel or Zionism (often a euphemism anyway), but "the Jewish religion." The Jews. '

Do read it all.