Bid to muddy Monash water

A LEADING water conservationist has described a failed attempt by Students for Palestine (SFP) to undermine a major initiative between Monash University and a biofiltration project in Israel as “really awful”. A debate in the Monash Student Council (MSC) last week heard a motion from SFP calling for the Monash water-reclamation pilot project at Kfar Saba to be ditched because it involves the JNF. SFP called on MSC to “condemn Monash University’s collaboration with the Jewish National Fund [which] occupies land taken from Palestinians and then introduces greenwashing projects on land then only available to Jewish people”. Australasian Union of Jewish Students national chair Daniel Nash said the MSC meeting “descended into farce” after clashes between SFP members and university security, and the motion did not come up for a vote. A further motion calling for the MSC to adopt “neutrality” on Israel-related matters was also not voted on. After an SFP student leader pointed at a bloc of five or six Jewish students and called them “Nazis” and “racist”, the meeting ended and security escorted students from the premises, Nash said. The motion might be put up again at the next MSC meeting in a few weeks, he added. SFP is strongly backed by the far-left Socialist Alternative and both groups have been heavily involved in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activities against Israeli businesses in Australia. Professor Ana Deletic, director of Monash’s Centre for Water Sensitive Cities, told The AJN that any bid to sidetrack the research between Monash and the biofiltration project at Kfar Saba shows a fundamental lack of understanding, as the filtration pilot project, if adopted widely, will benefit both Israelis and Palestinians. “It doesn’t matter which side of the border you live on. An aquifer doesn’t go through a checkpoint. So if we put it in Kfar Saba, and it goes big scale and replenishes the water, it will have a good effect everywhere,” she said. Deletic said the Kfar Saba project has already attracted positive interest from the Palestinian Authority, with a delegation of officials from Ramallah visiting the project. “I’m not going to discuss any political issue. This is about whether the project is good for people ... and that’s why I was really offended because they [SFP] would not even engage in discussions on what this project’s about,” she said. Executive Council of Australian Jewry executive director Peter Wertheim slammed the attempt to force through the motion. “For decades, far-left groups have tried to impose their pet causes and beliefs onto an unwilling campus audience. The bullying, harassment and occasional acts of violence against students have been regular features of their tactics. Time and again, student representative bodies have rebuffed the attempts of anti-Israel extremists to put words in their mouths, but the extremists never learn.”