Professor Andrew Benjamin, PhD (University of Warwick), DEA (University of Paris 7), MA (Australian National University), BA (Australian National University) states: “I am a graduate of Universities in Australia, France and the UK. My predominate area of interest is philosophical aesthetics. With that domain the areas on which my work concentrates are painting and architecture” (see: http://arts.monash.edu.au/ecps/people/andrew-benjamin/ ).
Professor Andrew Benjamin as a signatory on the "Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews” (March 2010): “We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.’ [1].
[1]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010: