Israel sanctions campaigner violated Australian race laws, says lawsuit Sydney academic who supports boycott movement accused of bias against Israeli researcher
Michael Safi
theguardian.com, Monday 10 February 2014
A controversial lawsuit to outlaw the sanctions campaign against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is set to resume in the Federal Court in Sydney on Wednesday.
The suit says Jake Lynch of Sydney University, a prominent supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, violated Australia’s race discrimination laws by refusing to support a research application by an Israeli academic.
The case was filed last year by Israeli legal centre Shurat HaDin on behalf of Hebrew University academic Dan Avnon after Lynch declined to sign a form in support of his application to conduct research in Australia.
Explaining his refusal, Lynch, who is director of Sydney University’s centre for peace and conflict studies, cited his support for BDS and the fact that Hebrew University has a campus in the West Bank, and ties to the Israel Defence Force.
The BDS campaign calls for a boycott of Israeli and international groups “that profit from the violation of Palestinian rights”, including academic, cultural and sporting organisations.
The lawsuit alleges that Lynch’s refusal to support Avnon violates Australia’s racial discrimination act by discriminating and imposing “adverse preference based on Israeli national origin and Jewish racial and ethnic origin”, says Andrew Hamilton, the Israel-based solicitor leading the case.
A key BDS advocate and supporter of Lynch, academic Stuart Rees, described the lawsuit against Lynch as “absurd” and accused Shurat HaDin of acting as a legal attack dog for the Israeli government.
“This Israeli law centre has been trying this tactic all over the world, using the law to stifle the people who support the BDS movement,” said Rees, who is a former director of the Sydney Peace Foundation.
The case is the first BDS-related lawsuit heard in Australia, and is seen as a key test of the campaign’s legality in this country.
Earlier in February an outcry by BDS advocates led actress Scarlett Johansson to sever ties with the charity Oxfam because of her commercial endorsements of the Israeli company SodaStream, which is based in an industrial park in the occupied West Bank.
Australian-Jewish lobby group the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has described the BDS campaign as “repugnant”, but refused to to back Shurat HaDin’s case.
“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,” the council’s executive director, Peter Wertheim, said in a statement.
“In our view, attempts to suppress the campaign through litigation are inappropriate and likely to be counter-productive,” he said.
Lynch is returning to Sydney after research leave in Britain, and could not be reached for comment.