AJDS eyewitness account: Human rights on the West Bank

Professor Linda Briskman is the Chair of Human Rights Education at Curtin University in Western Australia. She is currently on academic study leave in the UK. These are her own views.
In a refugee camp in the West Bank, I observe a group of children play-acting to the mirth of onlookers. Three small boys masquerading as Israeli soldiers feign the merciless beating of other Palestinian child actors. In the childhood make-believe worlds with which I am familiar, guns are disallowed and children are protected from the violence permeating television and movie screens. But the lived reality in Palestine is not a world of Barbie dolls and the Wiggles. Here childhoods are lost as a third generation experiences the diminishment of fulfilling lives in the camps.

The BDS Debate and the Apartheid Analogy

The AJDS resolution on selective boycotts of West Bank products resulted in great hostility from the ‘powers’ in the Jewish community, even the AJDS took care to distinguish what it resolved from more radical ‘boycott’ Israel positions.
More recently, the resolution of the NSW Greens Party to support full BDS sanctions has also been condemned, by not only strong Zionists, but other Greens, because for its hard line that bespeaks a disconnection with realistic conflict resolution.

Anti-Semitism is a scourge, but what is happening on campus?

The Anti-Defamation Commission in Victoria, recently issued a report claiming anti-Semitism and fear on campuses in Victoria Australia. However, the report can be criticized on methodological grounds for how the survey of students was conducted, and the disputed terminology and other material on which the report is based.

Parliamentary and Press Delegation to Israel–but where are the Palestinians?

The following message has been send to Kevin Rudd, parliamentarians, and journalists in the proposed delegation.
Hon Kevin Rudd
Australian Foreign Minister
Canberra
Dear Minister Rudd
The Australian Jewish Democratic Society believes that in its present form the visit to Israel by a parliamentary and press
delegation hosted by the Australian Israel Leadership Forum is of limited value.

Israel's refugee parsimony

Sol Salbe.
Some time ago I circulated one of those good statements put out by the Australian Jewish community’s official leadership on the local refugees/asylum seekers issue. An Israeli friend suggested, not entirely in jest, that perhaps their efforts would be better directed at the Israeli Interior Minister and others inside Israel where the situation is much worse.
Reading Sigal Rozen’s article, maybe we should indeed lobby them to lobby the Israeli leadership.

Transfer option gains Traction

Twenty or thirty years ago, talk about the transfer of Israeli Palestinians out of their homeland to somewhere else was beyond the pale, something only found amongst the right.
But today, even amongst the most elite of American immigrants to Israel, such talk has currency as does the abandonment of democracy and pluralism.