Niv Horesh, lecturer in Chinese studies at the University of NSW, writes in today’s Australian newspaper about Jews who signed the Gaza statement by Independent Australian Jewish Voices:
Take China specialist Linda Jaivin, for example, who is no stranger to the ANU. I am sure she would have loved Doron’s article, having just blasted Israel as no less than abominable. She happens to be Jewish, too, but Jaivin does not sound like a great maven in Middle East affairs.
She and her fellow Jewish petitioners are not merely bleeding-heart liberals, they lend themselves to reckless bias in that they did not evenbother to call on Hamas to immediately halt its indiscriminate shelling of the civilian population that has brought southern Israel to a standstill. Their mindset reads: Woody Allen and Allen Ginsberg are chic, yiddishkeit (jewishness) is tolerable, but please don’t pollute our suburban plasma television screens with anything from that horrid place the Levant that might remind us of the complexities of Jewish sovereign existence.
In fact, Horesh has deliberately distorted the statement. We unconditionally condemn any rocket attacks into Israel. Israel’s current war against Gaza was described, thanks to a statement by Gush Shalom, as “abominable”, not the country as a whole. And we argue that Israeli actions will only lead to more hatred against the Jewish state.
The tone of the piece is utterly juvenile. Look at me, he seems to be saying, I once voted for anti-Zionist parties but now I fully understand that Israel is the victim here (despite killing hundreds of Palestinians and using an air-force to bomb a defenseless people.)
A Jew dying to receive establishment love and prove his Zionist credentials.