The Jewish establishment is clearly unprepared or unwilling to engage honestly with the Zionist cause and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. After last Sunday’s sold-out debate at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival - and the Australian Jewish News’ blatantly dishonest interpretation of the same event - today’s Melbourne Age features a letter from one of the usual suspects:
Robert Richter, Antony Loewenstein and Julian Burnside advise the Jewish community to promote freedom of thought and speech, find its collective voice, and be prepared to criticise Israel if it disagreed with its policies ( The Age, 28/8). However, their advice is gratuitous, unfounded and based on a nonsensical premise.
The Jewish community is about as democratic as it’s possible for a religious-ethnic community to be. The Jewish Community Council of Victoria consists of representatives of more than 50 organisations, encompassing a wide range of religious outlooks and political opinions.
The principal reason why there are no loud voices against Israel is that the community sympathises with Israel and understands the nature of the threat against it. If Loewenstein, or anyone else in the Jewish community, doesn’t share those sympathies and considers the threat not worth worrying about, they are free to hold and express those opinions.
As for the premise that Israeli policies and actions are responsible for promoting anti-Semitism, this is ludicrous. Actually, anti-Semitism is caused by anti-Semites. Tough Israeli policies — sometimes necessary in Israel’s fight for survival — merely provide an excuse for anti-Semites to feel free to spout their hatred.
Paul Gardner, executive member, Jewish Community Council of Victoria
Let me get this straight. People are anti-Semitic simply for no reason, a sickness borne out of a malignant hatred of Jews. Israeli actions are totally unrelated. To believe this is as deluded as believing that anti-Americanism is unrelated to US foreign policy in the Middle East. Furthermore, the wide variety of viewpoints in the Jewish community leadership is remarkably well hidden. When it comes to Israel, the default setting is switched on 100% of the time. Such intellectual laziness is dangerous for both Israel and the Jews.
As for Israel’s “tough policies”, I suppose the illegal occupation of Palestine and deliberate targeting of civilians is something the world just has to get used to. Thankfully, Gardner knows the global community is slowing turning against a nation that somehow believes Jewish history insulates it from criticism or censure.
Paul Gardner seems to have been in a self induced coma these pst two months, where in the space fo a few weeks, world opinion against Israeli foreign policy has been at an all time high.
Even here in Canada, the public is turning against the government for being so blindly pro Israel.
Same thing in the UK.
Gardner is right about anti-Semitism, though. The idea that Israeli policies and actions are responsible for promoting anti-Semitism is indeed ludicrous. What they do promote are criticism of Israel and digust at Israel’s actions, but not anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is just another form of rascism.
Gardner’s motivations and rationale for this sort of ‘black is whitism’ are similar to those of Donald Rumsfeld tarring those who oppose the fascism of he and his mates, by calling them appeasers. It’s tactical, and with the media on side, it works. Less so than before, a trend we hope continues. They’re increasingly being called on it for a change (a situation Ant can take pride in having helped create), hence the increasingly shrill tone.
I wonder if those ‘tough policies’ would still be called ‘tough’ if they were able to be employed by the Lebanese or the Palestinians rather than just the Israelis. No, they’d be called ‘terror’ then.
I don’t want opponents of Israel to be overwhelmingly superior as Israel has always been; no, just parity would do. Tit would come back for tat in the same weight division for once and that might concentrate minds in Israel.
Or perhaps it wouldn’t. The Israelis appeared to think the Lebanese would be so cowed by Israeli Shock and Awe that they’d down tools, cack their dacks and submit willingly. I guess the rationale wouldn’t work on Israelis either, but the exercise would have the merit of allowing the Israelis to experience what they visit upon others. It would be Holocaust II or Son of Holocaust, while the damage to the Others would be ‘regrettable’.
Given the evidence that Israeli generals wanted to ensure not all Katyushas were destroyed so that the world could see that Israel was suffering too, there might be high level approval of an approach that used up expendables in the quest for Greater Israel, the waters of the Litani, oil and gas pipelines, lebensraum, whatever the hell it is they want.
I sent this letter to The Age, and of course it was not published, so I am putting it in this post:
Mannie De Saxe,
2/12 Murphy Grove,
Preston,
Vic 3072
Phone:(03) 9471 4878
Email: josken_at_zipworld_com_au
The Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) purports to speak for the majority of Victoria’s Jews, but has no mandate.
How many Jewish groups in Victoria have applied to join the JCCV and been rejected? Aleph, the gay Jewish group was one such. So, one must ask, how representative is this body?
Paul Gardner, executive member, JCCV, (letters 30/8/06) takes to task those who spoke at the Melbourne Writers Festival launch of Antony Loewenstein’s book “My Israel Question”, specifically Loewenstein, Burnside and Richter and refers to anti-semitism in their discussions. He suggests that the actions of the Israeli government are not the ongoing reason for increased anti-semitism around the world, anti-semites are!
The suggestion of the JCCV is, to quote its executive member, “gratuitous, unfounded and based on a nonsensical premise”.
Jews who oppose the actions of the Israeli government are not anti-semites, they are people who care deeply about the human rights of their fellow human beings, a lesson which the JCCV might well learn from.
The attempts of such bodies as The Australian Jewish News, JCCV, and Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council to silence the “loud voices against Israel” in the Victorian Jewish community have been unsuccessful, as the attendance at the launch of Loewenstein’s book proved. So much for Michael Danby MP’s telephone booth of supporters of Loewenstein!
Mannie De Saxe, Jews Against Oppression and Occupation.