BDS Australia has called for a review of the newly established Parliamentary Friends of International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

We have made a formal complaint and raised the alarm over this Friendship Group in the Australian Federal Parliament due to the fact that it does not conform to the guidelines for such groups which specify that they should be ‘apolitical’.

The IHRA is an alliance which is focussed on promoting its definition of antisemitism (WDA – Working Definition of Antisemitism) which has been widely and internationally recognised as flawed especially in relation to 7 of the examples which are given to illustrate antisemitism which all pertain to Israel and criticism of Israel.

For an IHRA Friendship Group to be launched in the Federal Parliament, when the WDA is by far the best-known example of the Alliance’s work, risks placing the Group on one side of the debate over Zionism and therefore infringing the requirement for such groups to be apolitical.

The potential of the WDA to stifle legitimate public debate can be seen when considering responses in Australia to the series of recent reports, by respected monitoring groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, finding that Israel is operating a system of apartheid towards the non-Jews who live under its political authority.

You can read our complaint here and use it as a guide to make your own complaint.

TAKE ACTION – CONTACT YOUR LOCAL MP OR SENATOR TO ASK THAT THEY CALL FOR A REVIEW OF THIS FRIENDSHIP GROUP