4th October 2015
The Australian Jewish community is shocked and appalled by the fatal shooting on October 2 outside Parramatta police station of Curtis Cheng, a 58-year-old, long-standing and well-respected police employee. The fact that the victim was killed in a politically-motivated attack, and that his murderer was a 15-year old boy, Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar, makes the crime all the more deplorable.
We agree entirely with the observation of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that the killing was an act of terrorism and “cold-blooded murder”.
We pray for Mr Cheng’s soul and share in the sorrow, grief and revulsion caused by the heinous crime which claimed his life. May his family be granted strength and comfort at this time of great pain.
We pay tribute to the NSW police officers at the station who appear to have had no choice but to kill Jabar in order to prevent him from shooting other innocent people.
A crime of this nature inevitably raises questions about how anybody living in freedom and relative comfort in Australia could descend into such base behaviour. However, this terrible tragedy should not be an occasion for recriminations. On the contrary, it should serve to unite Australians to affirm all the more strongly the values that our society has always held dear, and to do so in our politics, our educational institutions, our media and every facet of our public life.

Contact:
Peter Wertheim AM Executive Director
ph: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904
e: pwertheim@ecaj.org.au | www.ecaj.org.au

30th March 2015
Nick Riemer’s apologia for the conduct of his colleague, Jake Lynch, during the disruption by protesters of a lecture by Colonel Richard Kemp at the University of Sydney on March 11 (Why Jake Lynch was waving money around at an anti-Israel protest, March 25) only digs Lynch into a deeper hole.
Riemer begins by accusing Lynch’s critics of attempting to silence him by a variety of devious means, including the legal action brought against Lynch in 2013 under the Racial Discrimination Act. The case was ultimately withdrawn. At the time, Lynch himself characterised the case as “an attempt to stifle debate”. Now Lynch and Riemer defend the actions of the protesters on March 11 – actions that were intended not merely to stifle debate, but to shut it down altogether.
Colonel Kemp had been invited to speak on Ethical Dilemmas of Military Tactics in Relation to Recent Conflicts in the Middle East: Dealing with non-state armed groups. The topic has obvious relevance to Australian military operations overseas and is the kind of topic that is often written about and debated in centres of higher learning in Australia and many other parts of the world.
A few minutes before the lecture started, a small group of protesters were photographed by JWire outside the lecture theatre handing out leaflets. Three of them held a large sign bearing the words Cut ties with Israeli Apartheid and Sydney Uni Staff for BDS. One of the people holding the sign was Lynch.
If the anti-lecture activity had been limited to a demonstration outside the lecture theatre, no reasonable complaint against it could have been made. Sadly, however, that was not the case.
As is now well-known, about 20 minutes into the lecture, a group of a dozen or so protesters stormed into the lecture theatre, chanting slogans, one of them through a megaphone, shouting down Colonel Kemp and preventing him from being heard. At least one of the pre-lecture protesters, a student, participated in these actions.
One protester then delivered a long diatribe in defence of the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, whose preacher, Ismail al-Wahwah, delivered sermons in July 2014 and March 2015 ranting against Jews, describing them at one point as “the most evil creature of Allah.” The protester then began to chant slogans against Israel while others spread throughout the room and continued the chanting.
It is astounding that Riemer seeks to excuse the conduct of these protesters as legitimate disruptive protest. He seems to be saying that the protesters had the right to act as the self-appointed censors of the University. They were not only trying to deny Colonel Kemp his freedom to speak – to deliver the lecture he had been invited to give – but also the freedom of members of the audience to hear what he had to say and to question him and engage him in debate.
The conduct of Lynch and Riemer during the melee that followed the protesters’ invasion of the lecture theatre is now under investigation by the University, and rightly so. This is not the time and place to add to the series of claims and counter-claims that have been made in various published articles by their detractors and defenders. Their actions were witnessed by many people and were recorded on several videos and in photographs. The investigators have much material to sort through. I do not propose to pre-empt their task.
But I cannot let pass without comment Riemer’s ludicrous attempt to justify Lynch’s conduct in waving a banknote or banknotes in the face of an elderly woman, and perhaps others. Riemer insists that Lynch acted in self-defence against a “series of physical attacks” against him by the woman. The “physical attacks” consisted of the woman throwing water at him and kicking in his direction, but not connecting. We have yet to hear the woman’s side of the story.
The plea of self-defence against such an unlikely assailant strains credulity, but even if it is accepted at face value, it does Lynch little credit. Regardless of the view one might take of the conduct of the elderly woman, it is appalling that an academic of Lynch’s seniority should have stooped to such an unedifying gesture. It brings the whole academic community at the University into disrepute.
It therefore comes as little surprise that one of Lynch’s supporters initially denied that the banknote incident had occurred. The day after the lecture, Lynch’s fellow member of the governing council of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) at the University, Paul Duffill, posted the following comment on Facebook:

I was at this event, sitting about 2 metres away from where this photo was taken. The claim “Professor Jake Lynch holding money to the face of a Jewish student” is completely false. In this photo Professor Jake Lynch is holding his mobile phone [as a camera to record the actions of security staff and one other individual]…

Duffill berated those who had accused Lynch of waving banknotes in the faces of others and demanded an apology. But in a later post on the same Facebook page Duffill sheepishly admitted:

I have since spoken to Prof. Lynch and Prof. Lynch has confirmed that at some stage during the event he did remove banknotes he was carrying from his own pocket…

Duffill nevertheless went on to defend Lynch’s actions on Facebook and again at greater length on Online opinion. Riemer’s defence of Lynch’s actions is in much the same vein as Duffil’s.
Apparently, however, not all of Lynch’s supporters have their stories aligned. Fahad Ali, President of Students for Justice in Palestine, continues to dispute that Lynch waved money in anyone’s face at the lecture. Perhaps Ali feels that he has no choice but to remain in denial. In a Facebook post the day after the lecture, Ali commented:

If Jake had waved money on the face of a Jewish student, I would be the first person to call for him to be sacked.

Also objectionable is Riemer’s attempt to silence criticism of Lynch’s deplorable actions by claiming that the charge of antisemitism is a “smear” and “politically motivated.” The accusation that Jews falsely “cry antisemitism” is a common strategy deployed by anti-Israel activists when they seek to deny and shut down any serious scrutiny of their actions when those actions cross the line into racism.
The charge of antisemitism is not levelled lightly. It was not directed at those who stormed the lecture theatre and denied Colonel Kemp the right to speak in support of the Jewish State. It was not even levelled at the students whose visceral chanting and abuse characterised the Jewish national home as irredeemably evil while they sought to defend an Islamist group which views Jews as subhuman.
The charge of antisemitism made publicly by Colonel Kemp stemmed principally from the money-brandishing incident. In light of the suspension and barring of Professor Barry Spurr in 2014 and the University’s stated opposition to racial vilification, this is a matter which Lynch and his followers would do well to take very seriously.
As an alumnus of the University of Sydney, and someone who retains considerable affection for the place, it pains me that CPACS, which might be expected to uphold principles of peaceful academic discussion and debate, has come to be perceived as a Centre that shamelessly abuses its setting within a major University to promote political crusades for various causes, thus compromising the University’s credibility as a centre for serious and unbiased academic scholarship.
The University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences conducted a review of CPACS in late 2014 but the results have not been published.
CPACS has long been an embarrassment to the University, as it would be to any institution of higher learning that values academic excellence. After what happened during the disruption of Colonel Kemp’s lecture, shame has been added to embarrassment.
Contact:
Peter Wertheim AM Executive Director
ph: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904
e: pwertheim@ecaj.org.au | www.ecaj.org.au

The following article appeared in “The Australian” newspaper (17th March 2015)
Tactical responses to insurgencies by the conventional armed forces of democratic states, and the ethical challenges of fighting an enemy that uses civilians as human shields and as targets, are topics of obvious relevance to Australian foreign ­policy and contemporary inter­national affairs.
I was invited to address these issues at the University of Sydney from the standpoint of my experiences as a commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, Iraq and elsewhere, and as the former head of international terrorism intelligence in the British Cabinet Office for the Joint Intelligence Committee and the national crisis management group, COBRA. As well as being a practitioner, I have studied and written extensively about these matters.
I spoke for about 20 minutes to an audience of about 100 students, academics and guests. A group of about a dozen people then stormed into the lecture theatre and started yelling at me and the audience through a megaphone, accusing me of “supporting genocide”, and trying to shut down the lecture.
The protesters occupied the lecture theatre, intimidated members of the audience and were intent on preventing the exchange of views my lecture was intended to facilitate. Two of the academics then joined them, one of whom I saw badgering an elderly woman who objected to him photographing her on his iPhone. When she tried to push the iPhone out of her face he grabbed her arm forcibly, and appeared to hurt her. When she retaliated physically, the academic (an associate professor) waved a $5 note in her face and the face of a Jewish student.
I heard one of the protesters yell support for the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a vile group that is banned in many countries, whose theo-fascist values seem to me entirely at odds with the progressive values these students claim to support.
I have addressed the UN commission of inquiry on the conduct of the parties to the Israel-Hamas war. I have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation and recognised the extraordinary measures to which Israel has gone to avoid civilian casualties when faced with an enemy that militarises civilian infrastructure and shields its fighters with the bodies of the civilians it claims to defend. US General Martin Dempsey, the highest ranking officer in the US Army, sent a fact-finding team to Israel and concluded the US ­forces had lessons to learn from the measures taken by Israel to spare the lives of Palestinian civilians as far as possible, often at the expense of its own soldiers.
By daring to defend the actions of the Jewish state and condemning Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both designated terrorist organisations, I was considered fair game for the protesters. This is indicative of a pervasive culture among certain sections of university students and staff in Britain, and clearly in Australia, where to speak objectively about Israel is to court harassment, thuggery and violence. The behaviour of the protesters and the academics was an affront to the core ideals of the university – the freedom to speak, the freedom to assemble and the freedom to engage with ideas and opinions.
This protest had clear anti-­Semitic undertones. The audience was predominantly Jewish and the protesters knew that. Often anti-Semitic abuse and ­hatred is dressed up as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist action. This resonated that way, with vicious shouting and intimidation against a group of Jews and brandishing money around invoking the stereotype of the “greedy Jew”.
As for Associate Professor Jake Lynch, shown to be so adept at conflict with an elderly woman, his value to the university and its students would be enhanced by listening to those who have seen real conflict and have risked their lives to secure peace.
Richard Kemp was commander of British Forces in Afghanistan and headed the international terrorism intelligence team at the British Cabinet Office.

12th March 2015

From: Peter Baldwin
Sent: Friday, 13 March 2015 4:03 PM
To: ‘vice.chancellor@sydney.edu.au’
Subject: violent disruption of Kemp talk

Dear Dr Spence,
On Wednesday 11 March I attended a meeting at Sydney University that was addressed by Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan. Colonel Kemp was scheduled to speak about the ethical dilemmas that face military forces confronted by non-state adversaries, especially those that deliberately conduct their operations in close proximity to civilian populations with the goal of gaining propaganda advantage from the inevitable casualties. He was in Israel during the Gaza conflict of July-August last year. He stated at the time that he was impressed by the IDF’s measures to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties and that he had difficulty envisaging what more they could do to this end given the reality of military operations.
By way of background, I am a former politician: the Labor MP for the seat of Sydney for fifteen years, and a member of the federal ministry for six years. For three of those years (1990-93) I was the Minister for Higher Education. During that period I visited a great many campuses and was, more than once, the target of student protest demonstrations.
But I never experienced anything quite as repulsive as what I witnessed last Wednesday, partly captured in this YouTube video.
I learned about the meeting from an email flyer forwarded by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, though I understand the meeting was sponsored by the Australian Union of Jewish Students. The gathering was attended by a varied audience of students and others, including one other former parliamentary colleague.
When I arrived at the meeting there was a group at the door handing out leaflets supporting the BDS campaign against Israel. After Colonel Kemp had spoken for about twenty minutes there was a kerfuffle and around 15-20 people forced their way in led by a young woman who repeatedly screeched “Richard Kemp supports genocide” into a megaphone that was set to maximum volume. The group chanted continuously and defied the (very restrained) efforts of the security guards to evict them. They clearly intended to disrupt the meeting to the point where it could not continue. It was only after a concerted effort by the security people, with the protestors resisting violently, that the talk could be resumed. This was a truly frightening episode. At one point the lights went out, leading people to wonder what might come next.
In amongst the robotic chanting a few things stood out. The screeching young woman can be clearly heard expressing sympathy for the extremist organisation Hitz ut-Tahrir, whose Australian spokesman gained notoriety last year for refusing (on ABC Lateline) to condemn the tactics of Islamic State (beheadings, crucifixions, incinerations, selling women into slavery). When one of the protestors was accused of fascistic behaviour, he responded “we are not fascists, we’re Marxist-Leninists” – another totalitarian ideology responsible for tens of millions of deaths.
The disruptors tried to suppress the views of Colonel Kemp, who gave a lucid and well-reasoned account of the moral issues in this kind of conflict in the limited time he had available, yet insist on the right of Hitz ut-Tahrir to spout their genocidal ideology, a sample of which was reported in today’s Australian newspaper:
THE top Australian cleric of extremist Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir has ramped up his hate speech in a rant referring to Jews as “the most evil creature of Allah” who have “corrupted the world” and will “pay for blood with blood”.
In the latest tirade to surface, cleric Ismail al-Wahwah — representing an organisation whose stated aim is to take over the world — said recognising Jews constituted the “epitome of evil” because that would “strengthen the cancerous entity”.
This, apparently, is acceptable speech to these champions of the ‘left’ – a striking confirmation of the old trope about extremes of Left and Right meeting at some point. The group primarily responsible for this outrage, a Trotskyist group calling itself the ‘Socialist Alternative’, has a record of this kind of thing at your university (this incident for example).
It seems you have active at your university a bunch of totalitarians who think they have a right of veto on the expression of views they disapprove of, and who will try to enforce this veto by violent disruption. The effect this will have on the free exchange of ideas is obvious. Potential speakers will think twice about the prospect of being subjected to this kind of thing. The expression of certain viewpoints will quietly disappear from campuses and students will increasingly inhabit an intellectual monoculture in which only approved opinions are sayable.
According to one Jewish student who I communicated with today the climate at Sydney University is becoming increasingly poisonous and fearful for identifiably Jewish students, especially those who have the temerity to defend Israel.
Do you agree with me, Dr Spence, that these are deeply sinister developments? Do you accept that an institution where such behaviour is tolerated has ceased, in one crucial respect, to deserve to be called a University?
More to the point, will you:
· Unequivocally condemn this behaviour and make clear it will not be tolerated in future
· Take steps to ensure the perpetrators are dealt with under university disciplinary procedures
· Commit to restoring a genuine climate of free debate at Sydney University in which all can participate without fear of intimidation?
I look forward to your response.
Best wishes,
Peter Baldwin