Melbourne University Student Union calls for boycott against Israeli academics
The Melbourne University Student Union has passed a motion blacklisting Israeli academics and businesses.
University of Melbourne
At the end of April, they put a similar motion to the Student Union bit was rescinded when a non-Jewish post-graduate law student said it was antisemitic and would have a negative effect on the university’s Jewish students.
Today the motion was passed with 13 for, 3 against and one abstention.
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Zionist Federation of Australia, Jewish Community Council of Victoria and Zionism Victoria have jointly condemned the Melbourne University Student Union motion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It is disingenuous to suggest that this motion is simply about criticism of the Israeli government or support for the Palestinians. It effectively advocates the eradication of Israel as a state and thus denies the basic right of national self-determination of the Jewish people. The motion is imbued with racism and its language drips with venomous hatred.
When student representatives falsely deny the Jewish connection to Israel, they deny to Jewish students the right to their own identity. When they promote hatred of Israel so unrelentingly, they are telling Jewish students and faculty that they don’t belong on campus unless they willingly forego their own identity. Only one country is singled out. Only one ethnicity is vilified. This has real-world implications. Jewish students are facing increasing intimidation, including death threats, and a planned stabbing.
We strongly endorse the statement of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students highlighting the falsehoods and distortions on which the motion is premised. Jewish students have every reason to be outraged and fed up with the University of Melbourne Student Union for its obsessive singling out of Israel and the Jewish people for vilification and abuse. They are entitled to look to the university administration to enforce the university’s professed standards against discriminatory and vilificatory conduct against any group.
The motion is openly intended to cast the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the starkest of black and white terms, where anything but hatred for Israel isn’t tolerated.
It is shocking to see such a worldview so openly displayed at one of the world’s best universities, a place where the drive to understand complexity is supposed to be celebrated. Yet what we see here is willful ignorance and risible over-simplification of one of the world’s most tragic and complex human conflicts. The motion says nothing about the successive failures of a violent and corrupt Palestinian leadership in rejecting internationally-brokered offers made by Israel to establish a viable Palestinian state and makes blatant falsifications about the history of the conflict and the motivations of the parties to it.
Motions like this do nothing for Palestinians, but they make life on campus more dangerous for Jews.
We reject the lies in this motion. We reject the denial of Jewish connection to Israel, and we stand by Jewish students who face constant antisemitism and unrelenting hatred on campus because of who they are, and their family, ethnic, cultural and religious connections to Israel.”
The motion:
That UMSU takes the following stances and actions: General Stances:
– UMSU stands against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and condemns the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
– UMSU supports the self-determination of the Palestinian people and their right to engage in self-defence against their occupiers
– UMSU deems the use of Zionism to justify the illegal occupation of Palestine as racist and colonial
– UMSU recognizes that Israel is an apartheid state in accordance with prominent human rights organizations like Amnesty International, B’Tselem, and Humans Rights Watch.
– UMSU condemns the Australian government’s support for Israel and its ongoing crimes including occupation, settlement, expansion, and ethnic cleansing.
– UMSU condemns any and all forms of antisemitism
– UMSU recognizes that Israel’s actions are not representative of the Jewish community. Similarly, Israel’s crimes are its responsibility alone and not that of Jewish people worldwide.
Academic Boycott:
– UMSU supports the academic boycott movement of Israeli institutions in accordance with the PACBI guidelines [Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
PACBI Guidelines for the International Academic Boycott of Israel | BDS Movement
– UMSU calls on the university to participate in an academic boycott and cut ties with Israeli institutions, researchers, and academics to be in harmony with the Palestinian call for boycott, as a contribution towards upholding international law and furthering the struggle for freedom, justice and equality
Divestment Actions and support:
– UMSU calls on the university to divest from corporations complicit in and profit from the Israel apartheid and that operate on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
– Direct the CEO to update the UMSU ethical register and boycott companies that support and profit from the Israeli apartheid in line with the global BDS guidelines.
– To direct the President and POC Officers to write and publish a joint statement announcing UMSU’s decision to adopt BDS and its support for Palestinian rights to be published on all UMSU socials.
– To direct the General Secretary to update the UMSU stance booklet to reflect this policy and subsequent vote on it.
– To direct the President and POC officers to send a joint letter of support to the Australian centre for international justice affirming UMSU’s support for Palestine on behalf of UMSU.
We encourage officers and council to sign the following petition and show solidarity with Palestinianshttps://acij.org.au/australian-human-rights-community-solidarity-statement-with-palestinian-
human-rights-organisations-defenders/
Mover: Dana Alshaer Seconder: Ahmed Ali
That’s a lovely piece of writing, Morris Givner. To add to it, Einstein spoke of the following qualities important to Judaism:
i. pursuit of knowledge for its own sake; ii. an almost fanatical love of justice; and iii. the desire for personal independence.
These might be useful for members of the UMSU who so righteously cast their vote in the pursuit of hatred, vilification, bigotry and ignorance.
The origins of antiSemitism were first the teachings from Christianity and since the 7th century from Islamic ideology. The moral teachings of Judaism exemplified in the Ten Commandments are rejected by those who want to pursue immoral practices and who do not want to take any responsibility for their own behaviour. Jews celebrate life and insist on respect for themselves,women,animals and non-exploitation of others. Jews respect nature and are against depraved and irresponsible behaviour of all kinds. Jewish teachings demand honesty and total avoidance of all unnatural and unhealthy practices.antiSemites in all their guises reject Jewish teachings and ethical behaviour.