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Sydney University academics pursued for speaking out against Gaza atrocities (michaelwest.com.au)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A few Zionist colleagues of mine at the University of Sydney are currently trying to take me and fellow staff member John Keane to the Human Rights Commission for racial vilification, because we have dared to oppose this genocide. It’s classic ‘lawfare’, and it’s based on the baseless and absurd argument that when we say ‘Zionists’, we actually – so they tell us – mean ‘Jews’. We are, they claim, toxic antisemites.

If that’s what they thought, they could have come to my office at the university to talk about it. I would have bought them coffee, and made it clear just how far from the truth this is. Instead, they went direct to the Human Rights Commission, making a complaint that miraculously turned up on the front page of The Australian before it had even been acknowledged by the AHRC itself.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The fact is that the Israeli government chose to respond to actions of a few dozen people

You know the hamas charter explicitly outlines their desire to wipe israel off the map, from the river to the sea? remember? and they were elected by the Palestinian people who btw still poll numbers for Hamas that the greens dream of getting

You quote “a few dozen people”, it’s clear where your thought process lies and i’m not sure we’re living in the same reality, especially after witnessing the actions of “a few dozen” taliban for the last 20 years

i’m not discussing this further, i don’t have enough interest in this

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Certainly there is a justification for a strong response against Hamas. What you need to grapple with is that the response has been against the entire Palestinian population and has caused an enormous death toll of civilian non-combatants.

If I may take your example of the Taliban, a clearly reprehensible organisation. It would not be appropriate for opponents of the Taliban to indiscriminately attack the civilian population of Afghanistan in much the same way that it is not appropriate for the IDF to target the civilian population of Palestine using the crimes of Hamas as justification. Indeed during the Afghanistan war the US and allies took precautions to target fighters and minimise civilian deaths and were rightly criticised when they failed.

Over 10 years of the War in Afghanistan the civilian death toll in Afghanistan was most years less than 4000, in Palestine the civilian death toll is 40 times that in 1 year.

There is no double standard here, no one is saying Israel shouldn't have responded in a proportionate way to the initial Hamas attacks but what Israel is doing is targeting the civilian population in response to the (admittedly reprehensible) actions of, yes, a few dozen people.

I am genuinely interested in hearing your response here, please don't take this as a personal attack but I hope you understand my perspective here.