ECAJ wel­comes NSW Greens deci­sion to aban­don offi­cial sup­port for BDS – calls for ‘more mature and mea­sured atti­tude’
The deci­sion by the NSW Greens to drop their ear­li­er res­o­lu­tions call­ing for a boy­cott of Israel is wel­come but does not go far enough. Their new res­o­lu­tion still refers to boy­cotting Israel as ‘a legit­i­mate tac­tic’ when events over the last 12 months have demon­strat­ed that the BDS cam­paign is ulti­mate­ly an attempt to orches­trate across-the-board hatred of all things Israeli. It is any­thing but legit­i­mate.
The NSW Greens’ new res­o­lu­tion is full of biased state­ments that lack nuance or an under­stand­ing that Israel and Israelis face very real threats to their exis­tence and are enti­tled to defend them­selves. The NSW Greens’ sanc­ti­mo­nious call on ‘the Israeli state’ (sic) to respect inter­na­tion­al law and human rights norms would be more fair­ly direct­ed at those who con­tin­ue to pledge them­selves to Israel’s destruc­tion and there­by per­pet­u­ate the basic cause of the con­flict.
The blink­ered one-sid­ed­ness of the NSW Greens on the whole issue reflects their cur­rent ama­teur­ish­ness and igno­rance on for­eign pol­i­cy.
There is also a com­plete fail­ure to recog­nise that some state­ments attack­ing Israel do indeed cross the line into anti­semitism, and to reject and con­demn such state­ments.
There is telling­ly a lack of recog­ni­tion that any just and sus­tain­able peace must be based on the prin­ci­ple of two States for two peo­ples.
We can only encour­age the NSW Greens to take fur­ther steps going for­ward to adopt a more mature and mea­sured atti­tude towards this issue. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it.

Greens NSW Sen­a­tor Lee Rhi­an­non today issued a state­ment call­ing on the Israeli gov­ern­ment “to imme­di­ate­ly release Michael Cole­man”, an Aus­tralian mem­ber of the Free­dom Waves to Gaza Flotil­la, who has been arrest­ed by the Israeli Defence Force.
“I have also asked the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Trade to work hard to ensure Mr Cole­man is safe and is released with­out delay,” Sen­a­tor Rhi­an­non said. “It is the Israeli Defence Forces that have act­ed ille­gal­ly as the boat Mr Cole­man and oth­er Free­dom Waves par­tic­i­pants were on was in inter­na­tion­al waters when inter­cept­ed.
Sen­a­tor Rhi­an­non added: “The Unit­ed Nations Human Rights Coun­cil Inquiry Report of Sep­tem­ber 2010 found that the Israeli block­ade of Gaza is ille­gal. It is time to end it once and for all”.
The Pres­i­dent of the ECAJ, Dr Dan­ny Lamm, issued Rhi­an­non with a sting­ing rebuke. “As usu­al when it comes to Israel, Sen­a­tor Rhi­an­non has blun­dered bad­ly. She is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. There is not a sker­rick of evi­dence that Michael Cole­man is in any dan­ger, as she has implied.” Dr Lamm said.
“Sen­a­tor Rhiannon’s char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the block­ade of Gaza and the board­ing of ves­sels that are used to break the block­ade as “ille­gal” is men­da­cious non­sense, as will be imme­di­ate­ly under­stood by any­one who has read the Palmer Report. Unlike Sen­a­tor Rhi­an­non, Sir Geof­frey Palmer of New Zealand, is an expert in inter­na­tion­al mar­itime law.” Dr Lamm said. “Palmer and oth­er legal experts, Alvaro Uribe (Colom­bia), Joseph Ciechanover Itzhar (Israel) and Süley­man Özdem San­berk (Turkey), inves­ti­gat­ed this issue ear­li­er in the year. They con­clud­ed that Israel’s naval block­ade of Gaza is legal, describ­ing it as a legit­i­mate secu­ri­ty mea­sure in response to the real threat posed by ter­ror­ists in Gaza.”

“The experts also con­clud­ed that ships that are being used for the pur­pose of break­ing the block­ade may law­ful­ly be board­ed and com­man­deered by Israeli forces, even in inter­na­tion­al waters.” Dr Lamm added.
“It is ludi­crous to sug­gest that this lat­est attempt to break the block­ade is nec­es­sary to bring med­ical sup­plies to Gaza”, Dr Lamm stat­ed. “More than 30,000 tons of sup­plies are trans­port­ed into Gaza from Israel every week, includ­ing at least 5 truck­loads of med­ical sup­plies. The peo­ple who want to break the block­ade are not inter­est­ed in pro­vid­ing human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance to the Pales­tini­ans. If that was their fun­da­men­tal aim, they could send their sup­plies in by land via Israel. Their main pur­pose is to harm Israel and her peo­ple”, Dr Lamm con­clud­ed.
Rhiannon’s state­ment can be accessed at:
http://lee-rhiannon.greensmps.org.au/content/media-release/call-govt-action-on-australian- detained-israel