What happens when innocent Israelis and especially Palestinians people who live and work in Israel are boycotted? The ordinary courtesies of life are no longer extended to them. They are not acknowledged in the street; their goods are not bought, their services are not employed. The boycott is an act of violence, though of a paradoxical kind – one of recoil and expulsion rather than assault. It announces a certain moral distaste; it is always self-congratulatory
All boycotts are problematic; academic boycotts especially so. They violate two important principles – the principle known as “the universality of science and learning” and freedom of expression.The history of anti-Semitism is in part the history of boycotts of Jews. Each boycott derives from a principle of exclusion: Jews and/or the Jewish State are to be excluded from public life, from the community of nations, because they are dangerous and malign. We see an essential continuity here, but even if we are wrong about this, the boycott has indeed been an essential tool of anti-Semites for at least a thousand years. And who but the crassest of individuals, those least sensitive to the burden of anti-Semitism’s history on Jews, would wish to impose precisely that sanction on the Jewish State today?
Potential boycott of Israel more evidence of extreme Greens’ policy in Australia
The Greens' Marrickville candidate, Fiona Byrne, has been caught up in a major gaffe over a planned boycott of Israel. (AAP: Sergio Dionisio, file photo)
Posted by Katherine Spackman, PR Officer on March 22nd, 2011
The possibility of a prominent Greens candidate in the March 26th NSW election pursuing a formal state-wide boycott of Israel is further evidence of the Greens’ policy extremes, Jim Wallace Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby said today.
Ms Fiona Byrne, the Greens candidate in the inner-western Sydney seat of Marrickville, has already implemented a boycott at the local government level as Mayor of Marrickville, and is on the public record as planning to pursue the issue in the state parliament, if elected.
“Whilst we would not want to see dismissed the faults of either side in the long-running Middle Eastern conflict, a simplistic political boycott of Israel demonstrates extremism and lack of balance,” Mr Wallace said.
The pursuit of the nation of Israel by the Greens in the state of New South Wales reinforces the recent comment of Prime Minister Julia Gillard that the Greens operate at the extremes of the political spectrum.
“The people of NSW are expecting the next parliament to focus on solving problems that affect their everyday lives,” he said.
“They do not want to see the Parliament’s time wasted in pursuit of the Greens’ radical one-sided ideological agenda in the international,” he said.
Media Contact: Katherine Spackman on 0408 875 979.
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