The following letter appears in today’s Australian newspaper:
The Australian (”Blaming the victim”, Editorial”, 12/3) seems to be impressed by “high-profile Australian Jews on the subject of Israel”. But, as Winston Churchill’s recently discovered remarks on Jews suggests, “high profile” doesn’t necessarily mean right.
Churchill’s remarks that Jews are “different” and “refuse to be absorbed” offered an opportunity to address what is similarly said today about Muslims. You chose instead to draw the bow to criticising the recently formed group Independent Australian Jewish Voices. Pity.
Contrary to Melanie Phillips’s aspersions about the corresponding British group (Cut & Paste, 12/3), I have defended Israel in various quarters. I was a member of a Zionist youth group for 15 years, led Jewish student groups on campus, have lived in Israel for four years – including during the first Gulf War when we all had to carry around a gas mask and syringes in the event of biological or chemical attack – and ran a university Jewish studies program.
I support and care about Israel. And that is why I signed the IAJV petition. In many ways, the issue boils down to your own observation that “(c)ertainly, Israel is not without sin”. Many in the Jewish community find it difficult to admit this much. It is telling, for example, that you do not mention Israel’s program of settlements on the West Bank. You editorialise day after day on the importance of getting to the bottom of stories, and of calling the shots wherever the fault lies. You should pay Israel and the Jews the same courtesy.
Geoffrey Brahm Levey
Elizabeth Bay, NSW
It seems as though some extremely brave Muslims are finally starting to stick their heads up. Here’s to more brave people like Irshad Manji!
It’s great to see the UN finally taking steps to bring Israel’s continuing human rights abuses into the public arena.
How ridiculous the US must now feel for withdrawing from the United Nation’s Human Rights Council.
Ridiculous? Why? Why should the US share responsibility for the UN-approved Muslim Arab genocide of Africans in Darfur?
How ironic that the editorial of The Oz complains about what Winston Churchill said about Jews whilst repeatedly publishing articles and editorials making the same comments about Muslims.
If Churchill was an anti-Semite and a racist, I wonder what that makes the editorial powers-that-be at The Oz.
But I’d better not say anymore. After all, I might get named again in an editorial and described as belonging to an un-Australian “extraction”.
http://www.newmatilda.com/home/articledetail.asp?ArticleID=1996
Ridiculous because it will no longer be able to control the debate at the United Nation’s Human Rights Council. While it could be argued the council has little or no power, they are in a position to draw attention to Israel’s human rights abuses.
How exactly do you figure the UN approved the genocide of Africans in Darfur, when the US has been a cheer leader all along, even regarding the Sundanese government as an ally in the war on terror?