The following letter appears in today’s Australian newspaper:
The letter from Grahame Leonard and other leaders of Australian Jewry (Letters, 7/3) misses the point as to why hundreds of Australian Jews have signed an open letter calling for more open and reasoned debate on the Middle East within and beyond the Jewish community.
We are not disputing the fact that these leaders are, as their letter states, opposed to vilification and intimidation on racial or religious grounds. But what we do dispute is the McCarthy-like vilification of those who do not toe the “Israel right or wrong” position of powerful individuals and organisations in the community. Saying that we should stand for election to Jewish community bodies if we are not happy is not a solution to the much broader problem of the manipulation of historical insecurities in the Jewish community in Australia and in many other countries. Nor does this solution help with the boots-and-all approach of some leaders to the publication of reasoned criticism of the Israeli government from outside the Jewish community.
Critical views of Israel held by many Australian Jews do not threaten Israeli security. Our views are, by and large, based on the criticism of Israeli policies and actions which appear in the free Israeli press itself. We are told that those who are critical of Israel are supporters of Palestinian terror or duplicitous anti-Semites and that, as the British journalist and author Melanie Phillips, a recent guest of the neo-con (and unelected) Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council has put it, we set in place the foundations for a second Holocaust.
This is the sort of intimidation that offends so many people today and why people are speaking out.
Larry Stillman
Elwood, Vic
The following letter appears in today’s Age newspaper:
If Age readers are still in any doubt about how the Jewish establishment treats dissenting voices, they might like to read the following.
Last week, before the letter to which I was a signatory had been published, the Australian Jewish News ran a news story whose first paragraph ran as follows: “A new coalition of Australian Jews critical of Israeli security policies is set to launch a nationwide campaign voicing its dissent against the Jewish State and its supporters.”
Later in the news item, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein was quoted as saying: “Despite the wording of the declaration, it is clearly being used as a publicity stunt by a minuscule number of Jewish-born individuals who have adopted the ugly but increasingly common belief that alone among the world’s nations, Israel has no right to exist.”
Both the news lead and Dr Rubenstein’s comments were classic examples of why the letter was written and the group was formed. Note that signatories are not Jews: they are “Jewish-born individuals”. They are not unhappy with specific Israeli government policies and their uncritical promulgation by local Jewish leaders: they are dissenters “against the Jewish State” and they believe that “Israel has no right to exist”.
I would not have signed the letter or joined its sponsoring group, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, if I thought it was arguing for this position.
What is most galling, however, is that the moderate sentiments in the letter have been treated with such appalling heavy-handedness.
Both the AJN and Dr Rubenstein demonstrated, by these pre-emptive smears and vicious distortions, the truth of a central statement in the letter: “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.”
Henry Rosenbloom, Carlton North
The following letter appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald:
The Australian Jewish community is one of robust debate and open democracy. Consequently, one reads the announcement of the launch of Independent Australian Jewish Voices with a sense of intrigue and apprehension.
Antony Loewenstein and his group call for “a just peace that recognises the legitimate national aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians with a solution that protects the human rights of all”. That is, of course, entirely consistent with the reasoned and sensible policy positions articulated by the elected leadership of the Australian Jewish community.
Next, they call for “reasoned argument rather than vilification and intimidation”. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has been at the forefront of fighting vilification and intimidation, not only of Jews but of all who face unlawful vilification.
The leadership of the Australian Jewish community is a credible voice in public forums precisely because we use reasoned argument to pursue sensible policies and we base our positions on sound research. We are more than prepared to expose the factually flawed, poorly reasoned material that Loewenstein applauds, such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s attempt to smear the organised American Jewish community.
The group then says that it seeks “debate to further the prospects of peace, security and human rights in the Middle East”. Anyone who has witnessed debate at established open forums such as the monthly public meetings of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies will tell you that debate and airing of diverse views is the norm within the Jewish community.
Members of Independent Australian Jewish Voices could take advantage of the democratic processes which elect the leadership of our Jewish community and nominate for election to these bodies. That they choose not to, but instead imply the Jewish community leadership acts in ways it does not, speaks volumes as to their concern for democratic ideals.
David D. Knoll NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, and Grahame Leonard, Executive Council of Australian Jewry
Once again one has to wonder why, if the community is so welcoming of diverse opinions, David Knoll and Grahame Leonard felt the need to write this letter? Surely, if we are to take them at their word, they should be welcoming yet another outlet for jewish voices with open arms.
I like Knoll and Leonard’s preposterous claim of their attachment to reasoned argument and sound research.
Let them stand in a queue at a checkpoint, let them stand in the rubble of a demolished house, let them survey the fields of uprooted orange and olive groves, let them visit the devastated infrastructure of what exists of the Palestinian administrative apparatus, let them survey the inmates of the Israeli political prisoner network and the terms on which such prisoners are held, let them survey the Palestiniana refugee camps in which generations have come and gone, let them survey the heartbreak of families separated becuase of their race, let them stand face to face with the parents of Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, etc., etc.
The obliteration of all this self-evident facts on the ground constitutes the reasoned argument and sound research of the Hasbara. Goebbels had nothing on this crowd.
Meanwhile, AL missed reproducing the letter from Diane Armstrong, also in this morning’s SMH. Armstrong finished her letter with the declamation that: ‘ultimately peace in the area can only be made by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders themselves’. Just like asking the Nazis and the Jewish communities under their control to get together to resolve their differences amicably.
I urge you to challenge the Australian Jewish News to do both a favourable and a critical review of Ilan Pappe’s new book “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” This book is extremely confronting for most Jews with its tales of Jewish brutality towards long entrenched Palestinian settlements in late ‘47 and well into 1948. It demolishes the myth that Arabs left their homes voluntarily in anticipation of a looming conflict between Arab League Forces and Zionist forces. The book shows comprehensively that Zionists such as Ben-Gurion always planned to forceably expel the Palestinians and to take over their homes for the greater good of a Jewish homeland. Its a great book which challenges many assumptions held dear by people such as Rubenstein about the legitimacy of a solution to the ongoing conflict which does not acknowledge the great crimes committed by Jews, against innocent Palestinians, whose only crime were to live in an area coveted by Zionist expansionists. I urge you to read the book.
The letters in today’s (Thursday 8 March 2007)Age newspaper from two Jewish organisations’ so-called elected democratic representatives made my blood pressure rise enormously to the extent that I had to send off the letter below to The Age as soon as possible. Like yesterday’s letter, this one will probably also not be published in that newspaper which used to be at the forefront of progressive thinking in Australia but now ends up on a level with the Murdoch gutter press.
Mannie De Saxe
2/12 Murphy Grove
Preston
Vic 3072
Phone: (03) 9471 4878
Email: josken@zipworld.com.au
UNREPRESENTATIVE SWILL
The claim by two Jewish groups that “The Australian Jewish Community’s elected representative bodies are open and democratic, which is why the claims of the so-called “Independent Australian Jewish Voices” should not be treated at face value” is a blatant lie!
Who elected them, who do they represent, and how were the votes recorded?
The Australian Electoral Commission does not have a recording of all Jewish voters in Australia and does not conduct elections to these so-called elected representative bodies. As Paul Keating so infamously said, these bodies are “unrepresentative swill” and are certainly not democratic!
When a Jewish gay group requested affiliation to the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, they were infamously refused – just as John Howard refuses recognition of the human rights of sexual minority groups in Australia.
Jewish minority voices are not heard in this country, and we now have the opportunity of changing all this. We are making progress and our voices will be heard more and more. As of yesterday there were already approximately 400 signatories and the numbers are growing. How many signatories are there in the abovementioned “representative bodies”?
Mannie De Saxe, Jews Against Oppression and Occupation
It is odd that Dr Rubenstein et al have reacted so swiftly to your initiative to try and have a less one-eyed debate about Israel.
The Israel right or wrong push have a stranglehold on Australian politics and media.
I have never seen anything in the Australian press that is even the slightest bit critical of Israeli govt policies.
Are there any examples of such a beast?
Our politicans are similarily mute.
John didn’t get the B’nai B’rith international Presidential Gold Medal last year for nothing.
He got it for “outstanding” support of Israel.
What are thay worried about?
I don’t think Israeli Jews are going to have their “divine service” interrupted by anthing emanating from Australia.
Dr Rubenstein can count on nothing but continued support from the Australian polity.
Good luck Anthony, but it’s a pity you don’t recognise perfect when you see it.
Where were the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry when Israeli fighter jets were raining cluster bombs down on Lebanese civilians?
Brownie points to Mannie dw Saxe for uplisting a would-be letter that, on the balance of probability, would not be published. The revenge of the refusees.
The censorship of cowardly letters editors, of opinion page editors, in the face of the omnipresent pro-Israel lobby is legend. All media insiders know the situation. Better still, the capturing of the opinion pages by one’s own team where possible, as in the Oz and the AFR.
The Oz, ironically, has opened a window with the comments box on the letters, electronic version. Censor the letters and ruthlessly control the opinion page, but then open the comments to (generally) uncensored opinion. Fairfax, by contrast, is still hanging on to old rules. YOu can’t publish an honest letter about Israel without having a countervailing load of bollocks from the usual suspects. You still can’t get an anti-Zionist article on the opinion page. At least Gawenda is gone from the Age, writing shit from the US, but basically, both Murdoch and Fairfax remain unreconstructed.
The quintessential, comical, moment of the local Zionist hasbara was Lapkin’s rewriting of history on the destruction of the USS Liberty in the letters pages of the Fairfax press. This in Australia, when few readers would have known or cared about an incident lost in the mists of time, but Lapkin provided the spur for your previously dispassionate Ozzie reader to open a window into an iconic moment of Israeli perfify. Lapkin’s line-toeing on the USS Liberty story highlights that no lie is too base, too outrageous for the local Zionist mafia.
I send that Adrian,
Illan Pappe’s book is essential reading for all people, not juts Jews. Of course, there are hardline Zionists, who are quick to dismiss Pappe as a fraud because they don’t like what he has to say,