Published: 11 July 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
In the lead up to the visit, Professor Falk was pilloried by leading figures within the Jewish community, the main battle being between Falk and The Australian Jewish News. Under a headline, Furore over Falk visit, the AJN claimed last month that Falk had endorsed conspiracy theories, was “widely accused of anti-Semitism,” and had “consistently maligned Israel with anti-Jewish tropes,” including likening Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the Nazis.
The paper reported moves to deny Falk a visa, or at least prevent him from speaking to BDS supporters at Sydney University. The Zionist Federation of Australia, meanwhile, warned that Falk would “spout hate about the Jewish community and Israel” and the tour would do nothing to promote “meaningful discourse” and rational discussion of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Falk responded to the AJN with a 1400-word “point-by-point” rebuttal, acknowledging some errors of judgment on his part, claiming that some comments attributed to him “were torn from context,” and asserting that his “true position” had always been to identify the conditions for peace between the two peoples.
His views, he said, were controversial in “militant pro-Israeli circles” because of his support for Palestinian rights and an end to Israeli violations of international law. Although frequently a critic of the behaviour of states, he had never directed criticism “at the ethnicity or religious identity of any people, including of course, Jews”.
The Australian Jewish News told The Jewish Independent that Falk had emailed a “detailed explanation” of why he believed its article was defamatory and asking the AJN to publish it.
Falk said he had been critical of Israel for its state policies but had “consistently affirmed my Jewish identity”. It was a “nasty slur to suggest otherwise,” or to merge his criticisms of Israel with “anti-Semitic attitudes”.
The AJN declined to publish Falk’s response (subsequently posted on the BDS Australia website). In written comments to The Jewish Independent, the paper noted that Falk had emailed a “detailed explanation” of why he believed its article was defamatory and asking the AJN to publish it.
“We informed Mr Falk that we … didn’t believe the article was defamatory. While it is common for someone to outline why they believe they have been defamed, it is uncommon for a publication to print that document,” the AJN told The Jewish Independent.
The AJN told Falk he could write a letter. That was published and in it, Falk claimed that the AJN’s article portrayed him as “endorsing extreme views that I do not hold” which were part of a wider effort to shut down the serious dialogue needed to end the violence “primarily generated by the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine”.
Falk continued in this vein during his BDS-organised talk at the NSW Parliament House theatrette on July 4, (which I attended), arguing that a “resort to smearing” had become the “modus operandi of the militant Zionist group”.
Israel, he said, now realised that the real struggle was for legitimacy. With the Palestinians “winning the legitimacy war,” Israel was “desperate … to invalidate the BDS idea”.
Asked if the BDS endgame was one state or two, Falk said the eventual shape of the solution was something for the Palestinians, not the campaign, to work out. One of the weaknesses in the Palestinian struggle (besides disunity), he said, was the absence of a “Palestinian vision of an acceptable solution”.
Falk said the eventual shape of the solution was something for the Palestinians, not BDS, to work out. One of the weaknesses in the Palestinian struggle, he said, was the absence of a “Palestinian vision of an acceptable solution”.
The two-state solution, Falk said, was “no longer plausible”. There was no way in which it could be “credibly put forward”. Any accommodation between Israelis and Palestinians “must be based on equality, not hierarchy and permanent subjugation”.
Falk spoke of a “new paradigm of soft power” overcoming “the paradigm of hierarchical power”. His BDS hosts claimed success for the campaign in “awareness raising”. While that is no doubt true, in a world of hard power, BDS’s successes seem insubstantial, especially when placed in the context of trying to force changes to Israeli policy and behaviour.
An analysis in December 2018 of BDS’s direct and indirect impacts by a Swedish political scientist, Anders Persson, concluded that they amounted to “precious little” economically. Israel was “flourishing” in both the economic and diplomatic sphere.
No “sane person,” Persson wrote, could argue that the occupation is closer to ending today than it was in 2005, when BDS was launched. The same applied to realising the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees (a fundamental element in Falk’s argument for a solution based on respect for international law and equality).
BDS, said Persson, had achieved small economic, political and cultural victories but these had “done very little to improve the situation on the ground for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza”.
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During the lifetime of the BDS movement, the number of settlers in the West Bank had grown nearly 70 per cent, to over 400,000 (excluding the 200,000-plus in East Jerusalem).
Persson concluded, nonetheless, that the BDS movement had arguably emerged as a central actor in what he called the "legislative” and “authoritarian” turns in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Elements in this include ever-sharpening acrimony about free speech and the health of Israeli (let alone Palestinian) democracy, criminalisation of BDS supporters, and claim and counter-claim about anti-Semitism.
It hardly seems the stuff of future “meaningful discourse” or rational discussion, irrespective of who’s in Sydney. More furore lies ahead.
