30^th October 2013
“The campaign to boycott academic and other contacts with Israel is repugnant to all who sincerely seek a just and lasting res­ol­u­tion of the conflict between Israel and the Palestini­ans,” said Peter Wertheim, the Executive Director of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry (ECAJ). “The path to a just peace is through mutual engage­ment, not vili­fic­a­tion. Contacts between Israeli and Palestini­an academics should be encour­aged and facil­it­ated by their Aus­trali­an and other col­leagues, not stig­mat­ised.”
The ECAJ has long been a vocal critic of the anti-Israel boycott campaign. “The boycott campaign is a cal­cu­lated attempt to demonise, isolate and ulti­mately dismantle Israel through the dis­tor­tion of inter­na­tion­al law and human rights. The hate-filled protests outside Max Brenner chocolate shops and the ill-con­sidered scheme of Mar­rick­ville Council to boycott Israeli products at a cost of millions of dollars to its rate-payers, which was sub­sequently abandoned, have rightly been condemned and derided by most Aus­trali­ans. All major parties including the Greens, except for a handful of their MP’s, disavow the anti-Israel boycott campaign”, Wertheim said.
“The ECAJ believes that the most appro­pri­ate and effective way to combat the boycott campaign is to expose its deceptive and sometimes racist rhetoric, methods and aims to public scrutiny. In our view, attempts to suppress the campaign through lit­ig­a­tion are inap­pro­pri­ate and likely to be counter-pro­duct­ive. It is for this reason that the ECAJ has had no involve­ment in the action brought by Shurat HaDin and will continue to fight the boycott campaign through public discourse. If any indi­vidu­als believe they have been adversely affected by racially dis­crim­in­at­ory policies and practices of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies they are entitled to have their day in court, but we are opposed to lit­ig­a­tion if it is pursued merely as a political tactic.”
Asked whether he believes that all cri­ti­cisms of Israel are antisemitic, Wertheim answered “No. Israel is a vibrant pluralist democracy and its citizens – Jews, Bedouin, Druze and other Israeli Arabs – are often its most incisive critics. But it is also false to suggest that no cri­ti­cisms of Israel are antisemitic. There is clearly an overlap, as has been acknow­ledged by the European Agency for Fun­da­ment­al Rights, the United Kingdom All-Party Par­lia­ment­ary Inquiry into Antisemitism, the Organ­iz­a­tion for Security and Cooper­a­tion in Europe and the members of par­lia­ment from many countries, including Australia, who have signed the London Declar­a­tion on Combating Antisemitism and the Ottawa Protocol on Combating Antisemitism.”
Contact:
Peter Wertheim AM | Executive Director
phone: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 5888
e: pwertheim@ecaj.org.au | www.ecaj.org.au