The Israeli civil rights group Shurat HaDin has filed a class action lawsuit under Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 against University of Sydney Associate Professor Jake Lynch, over his participation in an academic boycott of Israeli universities.

Last May, the Student Representative Council of the University of Sydney passed a motion endorsing the academic Israel boycott initiated by Lynch, who is the director of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, according to the anti-Israel website BDS Movement, which tracks and promotes the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

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“Israel is a state that systematically defies international law. It has occupied Palestinian territories in defiance of the UN Security Council for over 40 years, expanding settlements which are regarded as illegal by the international community,” the University of Sydney student council resolution read.

Lynch refused to work with Israeli professor Dan Avnon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and also called for a boycott of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Shurat HaDin Solicitor Andrew Hamilton said the BDS movement “is racist by its own definition because it seeks to discriminate and impose adverse preference based on Israeli national origin and Jewish racial and ethnic origin of people and organizations.”

“By singling out Israel and no other country, the BDS extremists expose the anti-Semitism that motivates them,” Shurat HaDin Director Natsana Darshan-Leitner said in a statement.

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