hypocrisy of humanism? …There is no immediate solution whatsoever. Any lasting peace will take a significant amount of time to be established. That is an unfortunate reality. The difficulties in Israeli-Arab relations stem from problems lying at the core of the issue, with surface changes only bringing about superficial variations. The question of primary concern to Israel is obvious: what is the course of action that will protect Jewish, and for that matter, Arab lives most effectively. Yes, the land is holy, and yes, there are many who love it, but to Israel, the real reason the land should not be returned is the life threatening issue of security provisions, sacrificed for what appears as diplomatic success…
Somewhat ironically, the main issue today is with those adhering to an extreme left ideology, who keep calling for violence and do not respect the democratic process. Whether its the twisted view of a Frantz Fanon regarding the violence of resistance and the loophole of moral realtivity; there is a certain desperation is analyzing the political terrain and realizing that a Rightist coalition will carry the elections, something along the line of demographics are destiny. Is this good for Israel? That is contentious, but is the choice reflected through the ballot box, and they always have the choice of quitting the country. However, a call to arms to meet political criteria is a step into the same context that resulted in Rabin being assassinated and the overall polarized and fragmented situation today. Ultimately, you have to ask if the far Jewish left is not pining for peace, but instead the end of Israel in some nihilistic fantasy based on the alleged cleansing powers of destruction in an ecstasy of self-hatred…
(see link at end)…Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz.
The head of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) at the University of Sydney, Associate Professor Jake Lynch, has received a number of high-profile condemnations over his recent decision to refuse to work with Hebrew University of Jerusalem academic Dan Avnon.
This decision, made in accordance with the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel – of which Lynch is a strong supporter – was in spite of Avnon’s work, which involves creating a civics program for Jewish and Arab students in Israel in order to work towards reconciliation between the two groups.
—Jewish youths who were liberated from Auschwitz show their tattoos on board the refugee immigration ship Mataroa at Haifa port, on July 15, 1945….
On the face of it, Avnon’s work is exactly what Lynch purports to encourage, with the Centre’s mission being to “focus on the resolution of conflict with a view to attaining just societies” and to “facilitate dialogue between individuals, groups or communities who are concerned with conditions of positive peace”.
For Lynch, however, the institutional ties to an Israeli university were so unthinkable that he could not make an exception for an academic who is working to accomplish the centre’s supposed aims.
Lynch and his supporters (including Anthony Loewenstein…) have been adamant that there is nothing anti-Semitic about refusing to deal with anyone connected to the Jewish state.
With this in mind, looking at some of the people that Lynch actually advocates dealing with raises disturbing questions.
…Lynch has written a book with Norwegian Professor Johan Galtung who was recentl
cused of having connections to numerous white supremacist groups and renowned neo-Nazis.In 2004, Galtung ran a workshop with CPACS in which he tasked them with re-enacting the Passion of the Christ, only this time finding a way to negotiate Jesus’ release – which is not only manifestly theologically offensive to Christians, but revisits the age-old anti-Semitic trope of Jewish deicide. At the same event, he ran another workshop on how to negotiate with Al Qaeda.
—the image of a large painting that is dedicated to a great man of Nuremberg. This city was the cradle of the Nazi Racial Laws against the Jews, and the place where the world had judged the Nazi crimes.
He, the great master of Nuremberg, one of my artistic Rabbis, is distanced from these events by four centuries. But his melancholic angel that lingers between the middle ages and the age of enlightenment seems to warns us that history may revert its course. He is the famous Albrecht Durer, whose house in Nuremberg, today a museum, hosts several of my works.
What an irony, and at the same time what an emblem of the extremes of human behavior –and yet also of coming to terms, of accepting change, even, if you wish, of redemption.—click image for source….Samuel Bak
In March 2010, Lynch hosted Sameh Habeeb, who runs a website called The Palestine Telegraph and has worked for an organisation called The Palestinian Return Centre, which is proudly pro-Hamas and in favour of violence as a means of ‘resistance’.
Habeeb had – and continues to – repeatedly publish anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denial material from the likes of neo-Nazi icon David Duke and Australia’s own Holocaust denier Frederick Toben.
Just a few months before his CPACS appearance, Habeeb had seen fit to mark Holocaust remembrance day by publishing a piece by notorious anti-Semite Gil Atzmon, saying that “Israelis are the Nazis of our time”, that the “Israeli institutional involvement in organ harvesting” is a “well-documented and an accepted fact”, and that the day had come about because world leaders had “bowed to Jewish pressure and made the Holocaust into an international memorial day”.
Lynch was aware of this material, however he was adamant that Habeeb had repudiated it and determined to host him regardless.
Five months later, however, a flattering profile of Toben appeared on Habeeb’s website and, in October 2011, Habeeb wrote a glowing review of what he said was Atzmon’s “courageous book that vividly clears the dust on many issues concerning Israel. It really guides non-Jews to an understanding of the politics behind the Jewish identity.”
These ‘politics’, of course, include alleged organ-stealing and fabrication of the Holocaust for political ends….
…I hopefully do not have to recite Hamas’ litany of genocidal statements and glorification of bloodshed.
Suffice to say that its official TV channel recently broadcast a sermon saying that, “The Jew is a satan in human form. Allah inflicted the Jews upon humanity in its entirety, and especially upon the nation of Islam”.
In October 2009, Lynch took issue with the Australian Government’s decision to designate al-Shabab – an official Al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia that has been tied to attempted terror attacks in Australia – as a terrorist organisation. As he opined, “the statement contained no acknowledgement of the specific circumstances in which it has grown in Somalia and – allegedly in this case – sought to export its activities to other countries such as Australia”.
His solution was to call for “greater openness” and “a more even-handed approach”, in order to address the “legitimate grievances” that al-Shabab might feel over the “invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian forces, with weaponry, training and reconnaissance support provided by the United States”.
He was, of course, referring to the Western-backed African Union peacekeeping force that has gone into Somalia to save its people from al-Shabab. The militants have taken control of a huge chunk of the country where, in true Al Qaeda fashion, they have been busy stoning adulterers to death, coordinating terror attacks in places as far-afield as Australia, Uganda, and Denmark, and chasing-out aid workers in the height of the East Africa famine as they would sooner see their people starve than eat food from the ‘infidels’.
….He did not mention that Israel may have some legitimate grievances too, or that – perhaps – the Palestinians should be subjected to some criticism as well.
In essence, people that Lynch promotes dialogue with include an assorted group of violent Islamist extremists, Holocaust-deniers, and neo-Nazis. People that Lynch forbids dialogue with include Israelis.
Although, as he argues, he is not a racist, because he has hosted Jews at his centre – like American linguist Noam Chomsky, and Israeli ex-pat and historian Ilan Pappe.
That would be the Noam Chomsky who once said that “I see no anti-Semitic implications in the denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust”; and the same Ilan Pappe who supports the anti-Semitic allegation from medieval Europe that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood in ritual bread.
For someone who is not a racist, Lynch certainly seems to spend a lot of time and energy promoting racists and helping them propagate their viewpoints, and his ‘I’m not anti-Semitic, some of my friends are Jews’ excuse hardly exonerates him.
His other standard response is along the lines of ‘any critic of Israel is always called an anti-Semite’ – which is a very convenient excuse for not addressing the issue.
It is unlikely that Lynch will be be having an epiphany on this point any time soon, but his employers at the university and the sponsors of his centre (which include the Federal Government) should be taking a very hard look at what they are promoting.
Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz is a policy analyst and social media coordinator at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. Read More:http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4442282.html
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