30th 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