News release: AFOPA points out facts to Federal Opposition on Palestine

Australian Friends of Palestine Association, 23 July 2021

Australian Friends of Palestine Association Chair Edie Bransbury has written to Federal Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, pointing out a number of facts that are contrary to his reported remarks to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

 The ECAJ reported that, in a video-link with their leaders, Mr Albanese had denounced the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which campaigns for international boycotts and sanctions against Israeli products. His denouncement is in line with the government of Israel’s view that BDS is anti-Semitic.

 In her letter, Ms Bransbury pointed out that in 2020 the European Court of Human Rights, sitting in Strasbourg, had found that BDS was not racist, discriminatory or anti-Semitic.

 On the subject of anti-Semitism, Ms Bransbury addressed the zionist movement’s adoption of a definition prepared for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. She wrote that AFOPA agreed with the opinion of a group of British academics, who rejected the definition as conflating “anti-Jewish prejudice with political debate over Israel and Palestine, which could have potentially deleterious effects on free speech”.

 The IHRA definition is contested vigorously in many parts of the world, and AFOPA contends that its real purpose is to silence criticism of Israel, particularly in regard to the human rights abuses, property theft and ethnic cleansing policies activated against Palestinians every day of every week of every year.

 “We regard freedom of speech as a basic right,” Ms Bransbury wrote. “We criticise the policies and actions of the Israeli government not through anti-Semitism, but through demands for justice and equality for Palestinians.”

 Thirdly, Ms Bransbury challenged Mr Albanese’s reported rejection of the term “apartheid” in relation to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, arguing that apartheid is a concept recognised outside any geographic boundary. She wrote that AFOPA members, Israeli organisations and diplomats, Human Rights Watch and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu had all recorded instances of apartheid in the occupied West Bank, and branded them as such.

 “Palestinians banned from streets where the Israeli Defence Force has installed Jewish settlers in houses from which Palestinians have been evicted, from schools reserved for Jewish children, from medical centres reserved for Jewish settlers and from public transport reserved for Jewish settlers,” she wrote. “The UN has passed resolutions deeming this forceful installation without compensation of Jewish settlers in Palestinian houses, and the policy of stealing Palestinian land to build new Jewish settlements, as illegal.”

 Ms Bransbury also noted that Gaza, the other nominally Palestinian territory, was blockaded by Israel and that all human, supply and trade movements in and out of the territory were controlled by Israel.

 “All Israeli policies relating to Palestinians, including the so-called Nation Law, discriminate on the basis of race, thus satisfying the definition of apartheid,” she wrote.

 She expressed AFOPA’s view that the Australian government unthinkingly followed Israeli and American dictates on BDS, anti-Semitism and apartheid, and that the organisation hoped the ALP had a "deeper understanding of the realities facing Palestinians because of discriminatory Israeli policies and actions, and that you might align your party’s policy on the subject with the vast majority of UN members who oppose the apartheid and ethnic cleansing policies of the Israeli government”.