Gerald M. Steinberg writes today in The Australian, “Israel-bashing seminar does ANU no credit“, about this week’s anti-Israel conference at Australian National University. This conference has the purpose of furthering the campaign of demonizing Israel.
Based on the roster of speakers, the conference, titled “Human Rights in Palestine”, is unlikely to cover the human rights abuses perpetuated by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas on their own people (click here for more).
As Steinberg writes, “only a few of the advertised speakers have relevant research credentials or peer-reviewed academic publications in the field of human rights.” Instead, their speakers are made up of conspiracy theorists, people who have previously praised Saddam Hussein’s commitment to human rights, etc. Steinberg superbly covers the troubling credentials of the conference’s speakers in his piece. Also problematic is that the conference organizers have mislead the public about being sponsored by the British Academy.
As Steinberg writes, “when shocking atrocities are being committed in Syria against Palestinians, among many others, an academic conference ostensibly dedicated to the entirely legitimate subject of Palestinian human rights should not be focused exclusively on the West Bank.”
Elder of Zion writes in a blog post this summer that over 1,500 Palestinians have been killed and 44,000 Palestinian homes destroyed or damaged since the Syrian civil war began. He concludes that the discrepancy between reporting about Palestinians in the West Bank and those in Syria “is more than a double standard. It is proof that the only reason people pretend to care about Palestinian Arabs is because they really want to demonize Israel rather than to lift a finger to actually help any Palestinian Arabs.”
Th conference in Australia, which will focus on Israel, ignores the role of Egypt, which borders the Gaza Strip, the dictatorships in Gaza and the West Bank, and the Palestinians suffering in Syria. It is once again a transparent ploy to attack Israel. Hopefully, others will see this as well.
Contributed by Gilad Skolnick