BDS: Melbourne Community’s Response

August 4, 2011 by Community Editor
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The Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) and Zionist Council of Victoria (ZCV) have expressed their concern at the continued attempts by BDS demonstrators in Melbourne CBD to target Jewish owned businesses.

 

The most recent event took place last Friday, 29th July, and followed on a demonstration four weeks earlier that saw 19 protesters arrested.

JCCV President John Searle said: “it was distressing to see yet another antisemitic BDS demonstration taking place on the streets of Melbourne last Friday evening. What we witnessed at both Melbourne Central and QV Centre was another example of intimidating, harassing and disruptive behaviour that caused distress to Melbourne’s shopping public, traders and shop employees.”

Searle note that, “you could see the look of discomfort on shoppers’ faces as they were confronted with the large crowd of rowdy protesters carrying placards and chanting anti- Semitic slogans.”

Amongst the demonstrators were some who had previously been arrested and who were apparently in breach of bail conditions that restricted their access to the site and their participation in anti-social behaviour of this type. Searle called upon the police “to take appropriate action and arrest the offenders so they can be brought before the Courts. The people of Victoria do not expect the Law to be flouted in this way.”

ZCV President Sam Tatarka added that “it was disturbing that management of the shopping centres – despite having affixed posters warning against trespassing – did not seek to have the police restrain the demonstrators from coming on to their property and acting in this totally unacceptable manner”.

Comments

7 Responses to “BDS: Melbourne Community’s Response”
  1. ben says:

    Great Hasbara Paul Winter. The demonstrations have been spirited but always peaceful. Enforcing the laws is a lame excuse, only 19 were arrested out of about a hundred. If the police were not acting politically, they should arrest all the protestors instead of “kettling” those who were speaking. Not to mention that the BDS movement in UK isbeing led by Jewish persons and it has the support of Jews even within Israel, include boycott within, Illan Pappe, Uri Davies and others.

  2. hasbaracentral says:

    Paul Winter is either lying through his teeth or unaware of facts. There was no intimidation, the protestors included people in their seventies and Jewish individuals. After all the slander and smear here, can any one tell what form of protest against aIsrael’s ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, they would find acceptable ?

  3. Paul Winter says:

    The problem is that the police are more concerned to keep the peace than to enforce the laws. Riotous behaviour and intimidation are unlawful and run against the notion of a democratic society. Clearly the self-righteous antisemites accept the notion attributed to Voltaire that one can oppose an idea but that one should defend to the death one’s opponent to express that. They then carry that ultra liberal concept to the point where they are not only entitled to its benefits, but, because they are, oh so very correct – politically so, they have a right to spurn man made laws and respond to a higher morality, say from Marx or Mohammed. The professional Jews of our community and world wide need to press authorities to enforce laws instead of hoping that quiet dignity will prevail on those who exploit their weakness and impotence, befitting the sha shtilism of the ghetto yid seeking proteksia from powerful friends.

    Now, NIel and hasbaracentral, try thinking like Jews. Attacking items from the Jewish state is antisemitic, since there is no protest against items from the areas Arabs are demanding made by non-Jews. The lawless boycotters attack Jewish interests. Jews who are proud to be ashamed to be Jews who support antisemitic attacks on the only democracy in the ME are well ant truly ouotside the tent of Judaism; they worship international socialism and believe in a utopia while discounting the reality of jihadism. Being such idealists they resolutely ignore the obvious: the conflict between the Jewish state of Israel and its mohammedan enemies is not over land, nationalism or politics, but religion. Intellectualisers hypocritically ignore the real human rights abuses in mohammedan lands and magnify even the slightest flaws in Israel to advance the cause of a truly horrible concocted people the so-called Palestinians. Until we realise that the mohammedan umma has returned to its traditional conservatism and jihad to assert its supposed superiority, which means putting down Jews and democrats, we cannot come to grips with the need to fight that Marxist revolutionary 21st century form of 7th century jihad.

  4. jen says:

    I was under the impression that some of the franchisee are australian owned and run?

    Ted lapkin’s comments on abc the drum are hilarious if not part of this slander as indicated by the comments above.

    Nasty tactics are used here for political gain here i think by the lobby group and mr danby’s usual cliched statements and behaviour on these issues. ho hum.

  5. Otto Waldmann says:

    – Neil please send your darling habbibis my excessive gratitude for allowing so voluntarily and graciously Medinat Israel to be created. Where we would be WITHOUT the Arabs !!!
    – I feel the aroma of spring in the editorial air as it occured to me that Neil and the – most definitely female,considering style, tone,choice of words – one deluding herself as some kind of “hasbara” should strike a romance of, at least,ideas. So suited to each other and yet so repulsive to the rest of the “party”….

  6. hasbaracentral says:

    Standard Zionist slander at work here. The protestors included Jewish persons and BDS has the support and active participation of Jews both within and outside Israel. Jewish businesses were not targetted, as the police confessed at the trail, but Israeli businesses were.

  7. Neil says:

    “it was distressing to see yet another anti-Semitic BDS demonstration taking place on the streets of Melbourne last Friday evening”.

    Not every criticism of Israeli policy, like criticising illegal building on Arab owned land, is anti-Semitic.

    Have The Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) and Zionist Council of Victoria (ZCV) considered what Israel would look like today if the Arabs resident in their villages had not left the new land of Israel in 1948/49?

    The populations that would be in Israel today would be approximately 6.2 million Arabs (made up of the Arabs resident today and the Arabs registered with the UN) and 6.4 million Jews. (including the 20,000 in the Golan, 195,000 in East Jerusalem and 500,000 in the West Bank)

    That’s right. Israel would be a Bi-National state today.

    I wonder how the resident Arabs left the land of Israel? Over 800,000 people from 530 villages and other towns.

    Did Ben Gurion know that the resident Arabs would not voluntarily leave and that the Jewish immigrants would not be enough to create an 80% Jewish state. (he wasn’t a stupid man)

    What would he have been prepared to do to create an 80% Jewish state.

    Best Wishes

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