Julian Burnside is a darling of the Australian green-left. Wealthy lawyer, twice-failed Greens candidate, refugee activist, climate botherer — and frequently accused of anti-Semitism.
Truly, he is the very model of a modern lefty-liberal.
Anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, nowhere more sharply and ominously than on the “liberal” left.
The sad reality is, with an uptick in anti-Semitism being experienced by Jewish people across the globe, one of the settings in which they experience the greatest hostility is on campuses.
News of Israeli-Palestinian violence invariably results in actions on campus that make Jewish students and staff feel unsafe. As federal Education Minister Alan Tudge wrote in these pages last week, during the most recent clash between Israel and Hamas many Jewish students stayed home because of the intimidation.
There have been numerous accounts of this behaviour on campuses around Australia. Even before the violence in May, I heard from members of the Australian Jewish community and my own friendship groups distressing stories of lecturers singling out Jewish students to defend Israel’s military policy or students being denied membership in progressive student clubs because they were “Zionists”, which too often is used as code for Jewish. The ante was upped in May when leaders of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students received death threats.
The Australian
As we see, leftist anti-Semitism is most often disguised as “pro-Palestinian”. Especially in Burnside’s case.
Federal Liberal senator Sarah Henderson [has…] called for Mr Burnside to be stripped of his QC status and his Order of Australia after the prominent human rights lawyer – who also has ties to the Greens – sent a tweet equating Israel’s treatment of Palestine to Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jews. Mr Burnside has since deleted the tweet and apologised.
The problem is that it’s not the first time Burnside has stepped over the anti-Semitic line and back-tracked with a mealy-mouthed “apology”. One would think, if he truly meant it, that he would stop doing it.
But he just can’t seem to help himself.
Not that Burnside’s mates can see the problem.
Prominent Melbourne lawyer Mark Leibler has slammed the Western Australian Bar Association over its defence of Julian Burnside and has called on the association’s president to apologise[…]
“I am genuinely baffled that, as President of the WA Bar Association, you would see it as appropriate to rebuke an Australian Senator for suggesting that a high-profile member of the profession, who makes an undeniably antisemitic comment via social media, should face professional consequences,” Mr Leibler wrote.
“Let’s be clear, no one is seeking to limit Julian Burnside’s freedom of speech.
“By deleting the tweet, it would seem that even Burnside himself recognised, after the fact, that his comments had crossed the line into antisemitism. A fact that seems to be readily recognised by virtually all public commentators from the far left to the right. The sole exception seems to be the WA Bar Association”[…]
“As someone who experienced antisemitism some 50 years ago as a young lawyer in this country, it is inconceivable to me that in the year 2021, the president of a State bar association would suggest that a respected member of the Bar spreading antisemitic hate is ‘a matter of public interest’,” Mr Leibler wrote.
The Australian
Burnside, as leftists generally do, tries to wriggle out by claiming that he is “criticising Israel, not Jews”.
But where the Jewish people collectively are held responsible for Israeli actions or where anyone who identifies as a Zionist is excluded from participation in clubs – simply for supporting the right of the Jewish people to self-determination – a dangerous line has been crossed.
Indeed, where criticism of Israel turns into challenging its right to exist, the motivation is unfailingly anti-Semitic[…]The [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] lists “drawing comparison(s) of contemporary Israeli policies to that of the Nazis” as one of its 11 examples of Jewish hate[…]
Any suggestion that Israel treats Palestinians like Hitler treated the Jews is deeply offensive and blatantly incorrect. Nobody could reasonably argue that the Israeli government or military has made any attempt, in any form, to replicate what the Nazis did to the Jewish people. While the Holocaust was an exercise in extermination, the Palestinian population continues to grow. In Israel, Palestinian citizens are diplomats, judges, government ministers, members of parliament, journalists, doctors and teachers.
The Australian
One might ask Burnside just how his beloved Palestine treats Jews.
Meanwhile Australia’s campuses are resisting adopting the IHRA’s new guidelines on anti-Semitism.
I wonder why?
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