The rot continues in Murdoch’s Australian.
After Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon defended her right to be pro-Palestinian and not anti-Semitic (a leap of logic only made by desperate Zionists and hack media), a flurry of letters ensued.
While those behind the boycott of Israeli products will claim that this is not anti-Semitic, the fact that it targets the only Jewish state, a democracy, while ignoring serial human rights-abusing nations, tells us that this is indeed anti-Semitic in intent and in effect.
This demonstrates how far “respectable anti-Semitism” has come. Clearly it has become acceptable to boycott and discriminate against Jews, as long as there is a thin veneer of anti-Zionism which purportedly covers the hateful act.
Bill Anderson, Surrey Hills, Vic
Lee Rhiannon (Letters, 2/9) has every right to criticise Israel’s policies, but the BDS boycott campaign that she champions, with its triumphalist slogans like “Palestine will be free from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea” is a thinly veiled attempt to destroy Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.
More than 190 nations provide self-determination for their peoples. Rhiannon champions the cause of people who have never had sovereignty of one square centimetre of land (and I wouldn’t deny her right to do so) but why deny the national aspirations of the Jewish people?
Steve Lieblich, Jewish Community Council, North Perth, WA
And a voice of reason today (which will clearly be seen as anti-Semitic because it’s written by a Palestinian and we all know Palestinians hate Jews, right?) followed by a typical Zionist voice that wants the world to focus on every human rights abuse except Israel and Palestine. The occupation is invisible to these people and yet they have the temerity to call themselves “friends” of Israel:
AT the risk of sounding like a cracked record, let us be clear, again, about what the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) call from Palestinian civil society is actually about.
It is about recognising the inalienable rights of the Palestinian refugees; about ending the illegal military occupation; and about ending the systematic discrimination of Palestinian citizens in Israel.
It also specifically renounces all forms of racism including anti-Semitism. How can it be that any criticism of Israel is automatically anti-Semitic? How can a legitimate BDS target, such as Max Brenner (the Israeli business with strong links to the Israeli Defence Force), be automatically anti-Jewish?
And since when did a BDS protest have anything to do with 9/11 as suggested by John Ferguson (“Unions’ anti-Israel campaign puts ACTU, Labor on the spot”, 3-4/9)?
Why is there a near singular narrative that continues to misrepresent the voice of Palestine in this debate?
Moammar Mashni, Australians for Palestine, Hawthorn, Vic
What are Greens senator Lee Rhiannon’s credentials for her claim that she regularly speaks out against human rights abuses (Letters, 2/9)?
Did she boycott any communist countries when they were committing some of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century? When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring, did Rhiannon boycott the Soviets? No, she joined the Socialist Party of Australia, a pro-Soviet grouping that split from the Communist Party of Australia after the CPA abhorred the Soviet actions.
Did she boycott the Soviet Union when it was administering psychiatric abuse such as electro-shocks to its dissidents? No, she led a delegation to Moscow. She even made an appearance in Soviet Woman.
Not even in the dying days of the Soviet dictatorship did she protest about human rights abuses.
Rhiannon leads a movement that singles out Israel for boycott. Yet Rhiannon never boycotted or distanced herself from the communist regime she supported for decades.
Douglas Kirsner, Caulfield North, Vic