The academics at the center of the Sydney University anti-Israel boycott squabble will be asked to cover their own legal costs, as campus controversy over the anti-Israeli movement is exploding, The Australian reported.

The Israeli organization Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center has lodged a complaint against Center for Peace and Conflict Studies director Jake Lynch and member Stuart Rees. Shurat HaDin argues that the support of Associate Professor Lynch and Emeritus Professor Rees have been lending the BDS movement violates the Australian Racial Discrimination Act.

The complaint is now before the Australian Human Rights Commission, but Akiva Hamilton, an Australian lawyer with Shurat HaDin, says it is unlikely to be resolved at that jurisdiction.

“Based on Associate Professor Lynch’s response to the Australian Human Rights Commission, Shurat HaDin expects that the AHRC will be unable to conciliate the racial discrimination claim,” Hamilton said.

If the complaint is not resolved in the AHRC, Shurat HaDin will apply to the Federal Court, according to Hamilton.

But while all that hoopla is being played out in ever more serious courts, Sydney University made sure everybody understands they have no intention of indemnifying professors Lynch and Rees for their anti-Israel extracurricular activities.

“The university does not provide legal support for staff in relation to complaints or proceedings against them in respect of their activities in a personal capacity,” a spokeswoman for the school said.

Kind of makes sense – they can’t quite pay for every professor’s personal hobby. Some of those can get quite hairy.

A case in point is Professor Rees, who in his free time is also director of the Sydney Peace Foundation. Rees was asked about reports that his Jewish students were offended and intimidated by the anti-Jewish undertones of his BDS campaign.

The professor said it was “absolute nonsense,” adding a complaint of his own: “You should see the hate mail I get as a result of taking a stand. They call me antisemitic.”

The very thought of it!

Rees said the Greens were “genuflecting to political survival instincts by pretending the party did not support the BDS campaign.”

“Well, they’re making political calculations because they know the mainstream media and they know that most of the people in Canberra are cowards, irrespective of party,” he concluded.

Alon Tal, a 22-year-old commerce/law student, told The Australian: “As a Jew, my Zionism is inextricably linked with my Jewish identity so the fact that these people are calling for a boycott on Israel which is, essentially, calling for the destruction of Israel, it’s really an affront to me.”

If the AHRC terminates the complaint, Shurat HaDin will have 60 days to lodge Federal Court action.

Israeli supermodel Bar Rafaeli is not all bad. She dodged the IDF and romanced tie with a non-Jew, but she draws the line at Roger Waters’ using her photo for his Boycott Israel campaign.

Bar Rafaeli put Waters on the spot Wednesday after he once again appealed to artists to boycott Israel, even though he once used a picture of Rafaeli to promote one of his concerts.

Waters’ latest letter to entertainers, part of which can be read here, asked them “to declare a cultural boycott on Israel…and support all our brothers and sisters in Palestine and Israel who are struggling to end all forms of Israeli oppression.”

Among other things, Waters has accused Israel of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing,” but click here to see a bit of his own ethnic cleansing.

Bar Rafaeli tweeted, “Crazy thing … Went to the Roger Waters show in Paris, and saw a pic of myself on the wall!!! #respect!!! I’m honored” but after reading his letter, she let off steam.

“Roger Waters, you better take my picture off of the video art at your shows. If you’re boycotting – go all the way,” Rafaeli tweeted in Hebrew on Wednesday.

She called him “ comfortably dumb” on his boycott Israel campaign.

Rafaeli’s challenge, that if he really wants to boycott Israel he can boycott her pictures also, echoes the pathetic lack of commitment of previous Israeli boycotters, who forget that their computers, mobile phones, generic medicines and a ton of other products are Israeli-made or designed.

Bar Rafaeli is probably the last person one would expect to challenge the Boycott Israel movement and is another example of Israel’s always having a secret defense weapon.

She  has not been a favorite of the national religious crowd. She dodged the IDF draft requirement for women, reportedly by marrying, which granted her an exemption, and then divorcing him.

After a threat to boycott her “Fox” fashion chain, Rafaeli agreed to visit injured IDF soldiers on visits to Israel and encourage enlistment in the army.

“I don’t regret not enlisting, because it paid off big time,” she later wrote. “That’s just the way it is; celebrities have other needs. I hope my case has influenced the army.”

She also offended Israelis, and not just the orthodox, for her former romantic relationship with non-Jewish American actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

One nationalist Israeli organization asker her in a letter not to marry a non-Jew the sake of “future generations of Jews.”

Four years ago, Haredim in Israel censured her for putting “poison” in Israeli society by allowing a Tel Aviv billboard campaign to feature  a picture of her semi-naked. The billboards later were removed.

She may be secular and not a fan of serving in the IDF, but under almost every Sabra there is a Zionist heart.

Waters got it in his head to promote the Boycott Israel movement after having ignored boycott advocates and arriving in Israel in 2005 to perform. Leftists gave him their side of the story at the security fence near Bethlehem, and he canceled his show in Tel Aviv and moved it to an Arab-Jewish community.

Rolling Stone reported earlier this year that he was re-considering  his position on the boycott campaign.

“I am thinking all of this through extremely carefully and I’m thinking it all through extremely carefully because I care more about the outcome, because I care about the people involved, than I do about the moment,” Waters said.

He didn’t think very much and penned his latest letter this past week, showing Rafaeli he really is ”dumb” about the boycott.

HatTip: IsraellyCool

Last week The Jewish Press ran an article that was critical of the Manhattan Jewish Community Center’s film programs director, Isaac Zablocki.  The criticism was for someone in his position – a paid employee of a Jewish institution whose financial existence is dependent on donations from Jews who are not told their money will be used to promote anti-Israel activity – who published an opinion piece in the Huffington Post strongly endorsing economic warfare against Israel. He wrote boycotts of Israel were “unquestionably” good so long as they do not include boycotts of Israel’s arts and culture and academic world.

To make it clear that it was not just an impression or possibly a misunderstanding of Zablocki’s article as supportive of boycotts against Israel, a block quote from Zablocki’s August 15 article, “Boycotting the Messenger,” was used.  Here it is again, this time with the key words underlined:

In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nonviolence is a welcome form of protest for the region, and the importance of the use of boycott to get international attention towards pressuring Israel to end the occupation is unquestionable. However, the protest of art, culture and education brings up dangers in the realm of freedom and evolution of thought. Artists and educators have an important impact on changing society. Their diversity of opinions plant seeds of thought and help minds grow.

It is hard to see how Zablocki’s own words mean anything other than that he supports the use of boycotts against Israel, so long as arts, culture and education are immune.  It is hard to say because, heck, those are the words he used!

Zablocki made a few feeble attempts to wish away his own words.  This reporter along with many other people were recipients of an email “clarification.” Next,  Zablocki posted a comment on his own article that he also labeled a “clarification.”  In fact, his statement was not a clarification of his article, it was a contradiction of his article.  Here is a screenshot of his “clarification,” followed by a comment pointing out that his article and his “clarification” are inconsistent.

comments to Zablocki’s “Boycotting the Messenger” op-ed in Huffington Post

The lightbulb must have gone off at this point because then Zablocki, presumably with the Huffington Post‘s approval, did more than just wish away his words.  He deleted them from his article.  By deleting certain key, material words from an article, and neglecting to notify readers that there was a substantive change to the article, Zablocki committed an egregious journalistic sin.

As of sometime on Tuesday, August 20, the key portion of the fifth paragraph of Zablocki’s article, the one quoted earlier in this and our earlier article, was altered. The words “and the importance of the use of boycott to get international attention towards pressuring Israel to end the occupation is unquestionable” were deleted.  The beginning of that paragraph now reads:

In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nonviolence is a welcome form of protest for the region. However, the protest of art, culture and education brings up dangers in the realm of freedom and evolution of thought.

And what’s worse, we have been told by sources who wish to remain anonymous, that Zablocki is now telling people that it is obvious from his article that he opposes boycotts of Israel, indeed that that was the point of his article!  Hard to square that with his own words: “the importance of the use of boycott to get international attention towards pressuring Israel to end the occupation is unquestionable.”  What’s unquestionable is that caught in an unpleasant situation, Zablocki took the coward’s way out, and is trying to pretend he never wrote what he in fact did write.

We asked Zablocki for an interview, explaining that if we had misunderstood his original article we needed to clear that up for our readers, but that the email clarification was factually inconsistent with the article.  Zablocki did not wish to be interviewed about this, and instead pointed us to the “clarifying statement” he wrote as a talkback comment to his article.

Here is a screen shot of the original version of Zablocki’s article, as it appeared (minus the highlighting and arrows) when The Jewish Press article was written.

screen capture of original published version of Zablocki article in Huffington Post, before key words were deleted

British rocker Roger Waters published an open letter calling on fellow musicians to join a boycott of Israel.

“I write to you now, my brothers and sisters in the family of Rock and Roll, to ask you to join with me, and thousands of other artists around the world, to declare a cultural boycott on Israel,” Waters wrote in the letter dated Aug. 18. The letter was previously drafted in July.

The former Pink Floyd front man said he was inspired to release the letter after British violinist Nigel Kennedy at a recent promenade concert at the Albert Hall in London called Israel an apartheid state. The BBC said it would remove his remarks in rebroadcasts of the concert.

Waters, who has been active in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement for at least seven years, referred to the boycott of apartheid South Africa, saying that first a trickle of artists refused to play there, leading to a “flood.”

He singled out Stevie Wonder’s canceling of a performance for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces as a recent success story. Wonder quit his participation in the December fundraiser at the last minute under pressure from many corners.

“Please join me and all our brothers and sisters in global civil society in proclaiming our rejection of Apartheid in Israel and occupied Palestine, by pledging not to perform or exhibit in Israel or accept any award or funding from any institution linked to the government of Israel, until such time as Israel complies with international law and universal principles of human rights,” Waters wrote.

Waters recently came under fire for using at in his concerts a huge inflated balloon in the shape of a wild boar with a prominently visible Star of David, as well as a hammer and sickle, crosses and a dollar sign, among other symbols. It is a gimmick he has used for several years.

The shocking news that the 92nd St Y’s now former director was involved in an affair and the possible cover-up of vendor shakedowns, could possibly explain the recent pattern of that institution’s promotion of celebrity proponents of economic and political warfare against Israel.  Perhaps it was simply collateral damage from a leadership gone astray.

But how to explain the New York City Jewish Community Center employing as its film programs director – that is, someone who chooses what films the New York Jewish Community is going to tout for its Jewish audience to see – someone who publicly embraces and encourages others to embrace that despicable movement known as BDS, the Boycott of, Divestment from and Sanctions against the Jewish State?

It did not require any investigative journalism to make this discovery.  The JCC’s film director, Isaac Zablocki, wrote an article touting his anti-Israel bona fides in one of the most widely-read (if frequently anti-Israel) outlets, the Huffington Post.

In an article published earlier this week titled, “Boycotting the Messenger,” Zablocki writes glowingly about the use of boycotts against Israel to punish the Jewish state for “violating the human rights of Palestinians.” He romanticizes boycotts as the paradigmatic “non-violent form of protest for centuries.”

The BDS movement fights against the normalization of the occupation of the State of Israel and pushes to exclude Israel from any international program as long as it is violating the human rights of Palestinians.

But Zablocki does not support all boycotts of Israel.  But his selective warfare against the Jewish State is not the Peter Beinart version of “beyond the Green Line is not kosher, within is kosher” style of boycott of Israel.

Nope, Zablocki, being an artiste and all (he had a one film career), is only opposed to arts and academia boycott of Israel. All other kinds of boycotts are hunky-dory.  We’ll allow him to explain it.  Here, again, from his Huffington Post article:

In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nonviolence is a welcome form of protest for the region, and the importance of the use of boycott to get international attention towards pressuring Israel to end the occupation is unquestionable. However, the protest of art, culture and education brings up dangers in the realm of freedom and evolution of thought. Artists and educators have an important impact on changing society. Their diversity of opinions plant seeds of thought and help minds grow.

Could it be that Zablocki, who grew up in Israel, but was educated at Columbia University (affectionately referred to by some as Bir Zeit on the Hudson) sees only as virtuous those in the industries he knows best?  It makes sense, in a selfish kind of way, that Zablocki would want to protect his comrades in the academic and arts industries from having their livelihoods harmed even by his favorite form of “non-violent protest.”  But businesses?  Manufacturing? Construction?  Those are for the uncultured masses.  Never mind that those are the industries in which most Arabs, especially poor Arabs, in the region are employed.  But let’s not allow that to be a consideration.

On the most fundamental level, the question has to be raised and raised repeatedly: why it is that so many institutions which are presumed to be providing services to the Jewish world, and are certainly raising their funds from Jews, are staffed by people who see their bona fides in the arts world as requiring a lusty desire to damage the Jewish State?

A “victory” claimed by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)-aligned blog Electronic Intifada , stating that Delta Airlines would stop serving a snack produced in Israel’s Samaria region due to a complaint by the “Coalition of Women for Peace,” has been proven false.

Although the blog’s editor, Ali Abunima, claimed that Delta Airlines lawyers “ruled that Israeli settlement-made snacks should not be served,” Israeli activist Avi Mayer got a letter from the airline saying that the snack in question, a vanilla halva bar, was only removed due to “normal” menu changes, Israel National News reported.

Furthermore, Delta said it “makes a practice of sourcing local goods for catering in most international markets we serve.”

Mayer said that when rocker Lenny Kravitz canceled a trip to Israel last year, BDS activists hailed it as a victory even though Kravitz “has said clearly that he was canceling for totally unrelated reasons.”

“The BDS Movement’s tactics are clear: bully, threaten, and—if all else fails—just plain lie. The hallmarks of a failed movement,” Mayer said.

Welsh singer Tom Jones has given the Boycott Israel another kick in the pants by announcing  he will perform in Tel Aviv in October

Jones, now 73 years old, will appear the Nokia Stadium in Tel Aviv.

Earlier this week, Eric Burdon, former lead singer of the Animals, changed his mind about honoring the boycott and said he is not canceling his show, despite a flood of emails, some of them threatening, from boycott activists.

(JNS.org) El Al Israel Airlines said it promptly canceled a promotional package that appeared on its website for an August concert in Budapest by Pink Floyd band member Roger Waters—a vocal activist in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel—when it learned of the “sensitive issue” on Wednesday.

“This matter was brought to my attention yesterday afternoon,” Sheryl Stein, an advertising/public relations/social media manager for El Al, wrote in an email to JNS.org on Thursday. “Our Head Office received my email this morning and I am pleased to say this issue was resolved in a timely manner. On a regular basis, EL AL offers passengers packages to cultural events around the world. As soon as this sensitive issue was brought to our attention, the package was canceled.”

Waters accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid” and “international crimes” in a November 2012 address at the United Nations, and last fall was also at the forefront of efforts to boycott an Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Richard Allen, head of JCC Watch, an organization that is calling for the establishment of new guidelines to prevent Jewish funding of activity that gives BDS a platform, said he was “very pleased” by El Al’s quick removal of the Waters package. JCC Watch is organizing monthly protests until it sees new Jewish community guidelines on BDS, in response to the recent scheduling of events with Waters and “The Color Purple” author Alice Walker, another high-profile BDS activist. The Waters event that was scheduled for this spring was ultimately canceled, but Walker appeared at the Y—which receives $900,000 in funding per year from the UJA-Federation of New York—in late May.

“We hope that El Al’s cancellation of the Waters package is an indication that other Jewish organizations, such as the 92nd Street Y and the UJA-Federation of New York, will stop the promoting and offering of Jewish institutions to be used to proselytize the BDS movement against Israel,” Allen told JNS.org.