Jason Clare MP

Dear Minister Clare,

The Jewish Council urges you to reject the coordinated and malicious campaigns by Israel lobby groups to interfere with the academic freedom of Palestinian and First Nations scholars.

We write to you in response to the campaigns being run by various Israel lobby groups to silence the voices of Palestinians and others who speak out against Israel’s atrocities. As a group of Jewish academics, lawyers, writers and teachers, who represent a significant and growing number of Jewish people in Australia, we urge you not to cave to these campaigns which are anti-democratic, racist in nature, and based on the deliberate spreading of misinformation.

We are particularly concerned by comments made by you that you would investigate award-winning Palestinian academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Australian Research Centre (ARC) Grant. This would represent severe political interference into ARC — something you have previously cautioned against. 

We also raise concerns regarding the coordinated attempts to bully and exert pressure against other academics who write on issues of racism and in regard to Palestine, including First Nations Professor Chelsea Watego and the First Nations-led Carumba Institute at the Queensland University of Technology. We note that at a recent Senate Inquiry hearing Professor Watego was falsely represented as antisemitic in ways that are extremely damaging to her work opposing racism against First Nations peoples. 

Any political or institutional action taken against academics, at the behest of Israel lobby groups and Murdoch press smear campaigns, would represent a severe intrusion into all of our rights to free speech and academic freedom. The campaigns run by the Israel lobby against those who speak out against Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians are designed to intimidate individuals into silence. In particular, they are designed to erase Palestinian voices from public discourse.

Reputable human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have found that Israel has committed acts of genocide against Palestinians. Groups which have spent the last 16 months lobbying for the continuation of Israel’s genocidal war should not be taken seriously by anyone as experts on racism or antisemitism. Now, more than ever, we need to listen to the voices of Palestinian and Aboriginal academics who have been engaged in scholarship which exposes the structures which have enabled Israel’s actions to continue.

It is incumbent on all politicians, Universities and others receiving pressure from Israel lobby groups to not only resist these attacks on the intellectual freedom and academic integrity of individuals, but further, to condemn the racist, reactionary and divisive campaign which produces them. Anything less will be a capitulation to the most corrosively anti-intellectual forces in Australian society, which will harm not only Palestinian and First Nations academics, but the entire University sector.

We would urge you, along with university leaders and the ARC to reject the anti-democratic, racist and insidious attacks against these academics and all other academics who speak out against Israel’s atrocities. Universities are a key line of defense against rising racism and fascism around the world and we must be steadfast in guarding their academic freedom and independence. 

Sincerely,

Dr Max Kaiser on behalf of the Jewish Council of Australia