PRESS RELEASE
Monday, 5 March 2007
INDEPENDENT AUSTRALIAN JEWISH VOICES
A number of British Jews, including prominent figures such as Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, filmmaker Mike Leigh and comedian Stephen Fry, recently expressed their concern publicly that independent views on the Middle East were not adequately represented by official Jewish bodies. Their group, ‘Independent Jewish Voices,’ issued a declaration that was published in the British press and now has several hundred signatures expressing support. A German group with the same aims, ‘Schalom 5767,’ has also been established and has received 7,000 signatures on their website.
We are Australian Jews who share the concerns of such groups worldwide and today we are launching ‘Independent Australian Jewish Voices.’ Our declaration of principles below will be published in the mainstream media in the coming days. A number of prominent Australians have signed including philosopher Professor Peter Singer (Princeton University), Robert Richter QC, Louise Adler (Melbourne University Publishing CEO), Ian Cohen MLC, Eva Cox (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS), Professor Dennis Altman (Politics, Latrobe), Moss Cass (former Federal MHR Whitlam government), Professor Ivor Indyk (publisher & UWS), Henry Rosenbloom (founder, Scribe Publications), Professor Andrew Benjamin (Associate Dean of Research, UTS), Professor Arie Freiberg (Dean of Law, Monash), Professor Andrew Jakubowicz (Sociology, UTS), Professor Ephraim Nimni (Queens University, Belfast), Professor David Goodman (Contemporary China Studies, UTS), Antony Loewenstein (author and journalist), Dr. Geoffrey Brahm Levey, (Foundation Director of Jewish Studies, UNSW), Dr. Peter Slezak (School of History & Philosophy, UNSW), Dr. Jim Levy (School of Languages & Linguistics, UNSW), Hashomer Hatzair (Socialist Zionist Youth Movement).
For a full list of current signatories (over 120 people), please see our website: http://iajv.org/
Statement of Principles: A Call for an Alternative View
We are Jews with diverse opinions on the Middle East who share a deep concern about the current crisis in the region and have formed a group, Independent Australian Jewish Voices (http://iajv.org/).
We are committed to ensuring a just peace that recognizes the legitimate national aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians with a solution that protects the human rights of all.
We condemn violence by all parties, whether state sanctioned or not. We believe that Israel’s right to exist must be recognized and that Palestinians’ right to a homeland must also be acknowledged.
As Australians we are privileged to live in a democratic state that embodies the principles of tolerance and free speech. We feel there is an urgent need to hear alternative voices that should not be silenced by being labelled disloyal or “self-hating.”
Uncritical allegiance to Israeli government policy does not necessarily serve Israel’s best interests. Our concern for justice and peace in the Middle East is a legitimate opinion and should be met by reasoned argument rather than vilification and intimidation. In particular, we are concerned that the Jewish establishment does not represent the full range of Jewish opinion. Contrary to widespread concerns, anti-Semitism is not fuelled by Jews who publicly disagree with actions of the Jewish State.
Jews understand what it is to suffer racism and victimization and therefore we are not only concerned about anti-Semitism but also the demonisation of all other minorities.
We call upon fellow Jews to join us in supporting free debate to further the prospects of peace, security and human rights in the Middle East.
This is a message of support for Independent Australian Jewish Voices. I am an agnostic, humanist, Australia-born scientist, writer and artist. To my knowledge only about a dozen of my wider family in Hungary survived the Holocaust in 1944-1945. The message from the Jewish Holocaust (and indeed the Holocaust as it was applied to Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Serbs, Bosnians, Roma and others in WW2) is that RACISM is dangerous, deadly and must be resolutely opposed and, further, that SILENCE KILLS and silence is complicity - decent people are obliged to inform others about gross human rights abuses.
My heroes include Raoul Wallenberg (who saved many Jews in Budapest in 1944; he is remembered by a bust at Kew Junction in Melbourne), Polish hero Jan Karski (who tried to alert an unresponsive and unbelieving world to the on-going Jewish Holocaust), George Soros (who saved Jewish lives as a teenager in Budapest and who has recently demanded the “de-Nazification” of racist, violently Islamophobic and imperialistic Bush-ite America) and to outstanding Jewish intellectuals who have had the courage to rise above natural tribal loyalties to speak out for the human rights of Palestinians, such people including Professors Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Bertell Ollman (US), Tanya Reinhart and Ilan Pappe (Israel) and Stephen Rose (UK) and courageous Jewish writers such as Dr Jennifer Loewenstein (Oxford), Antony Loewenstein (Australia) and Gideon Levy and Deb Reich (Israel).
Over the last 3 years I have researched and written a book on global avoidable mortality (excess deaths, avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened). A very small part deals with the post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that total about 0.3 million. The Palestinian refugees total 6 million and 80,000 more are fleeing each year. In comparison, from the latest medical literature and UN data the post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan total 1.0 million and 2.4 million, respectively (and the refugees 3.8 million and 3.7 million, respectively) - largely due to Occupier war crimes and resolutely IGNORED by lying, racist, holocaust-ignoring Mainstream media (for details see my writings on MWC News, Counrtercurrents, Newsvine, State of Nature, Media Monitors, Crosswire and elswhere).
As documented and discussed in the nominated website article above, there are many ugly comparisons that can be made between Apartheid South Africa and Israel. The horrible injustices perpetrated by the Racist Zionists running Israel endanger not only Palestinians and Israelis - they also endanger Jews around the world who are tarred with the Racist Zionist brush. Indeed the largely Jewish US organization Not In My Name (NIMN) protests this highly offensive Racist Zionist conflation of themselves and de facto Apartheid Israel with Judaism and Jewry and the even more offensive Racist Zionist appropriation of the Jewish Holocaust.
Outstanding French Jewish writer Emmanel Todd in his best-selling “After the Empire” (English translation, Constable, London, 2004) warns of the dangerously tight identification of Israel and the Israel Lobbies with Bush-ite American imperialism in its dangerous last throes. A Google search now for the utterly obscene phrase “nuke iran” has yielded 185,000 URLs. This is the unimaginable nightmare to which we have been led by violent Racist Zionism and its intimate partner racist Bush-ite imperialism. I hope your organization of leading Australian Jewish intellectuals can help bring us back from the brink.
All strength to IAJV. Colin Rubenstein’s response to Antony on Radio National this morning only confirmed the truth of what Loewenstein and the IAJV are standing up for. All the usual distortions and lies were there in abundance in Rubenstein’s statement: Blame the Palestinians for everything, the Gaza pullout only shows the benevolent intent of the Israeli government (just don’t mention the ongoing siege of the Gaza, the crippling of the economy, it was typical of Sharon’s benign intent and striving for peace, right?), I could go on and on. You can fool some of the people some of the time…
IAJV zindabad!*
*Long live IAJV.
I salute you Dr Gideon Polya,
You are an inspiration to all people, Jews and other alike, and you exemplify the most admirable and powerful traits of the Jewish identity - wisdom, compassion, humanism and forgiveness.
Shalom.
Ditto to Addamo’s previous comment to Dr Gideon Polya and …
Ant? Do you need to be Jewish to sign the petition?