The following article by Alex Mitchell appears in today’s Sydney Sun-Herald newspaper:
Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV) was launched on Monday with 120 supporters. By Friday, the number had risen to 400. Academics, lawyers, journalists, businessmen, women, artists and doctors are hoping IAJV will provide an alternative to the hardline Zionist knee-jerkery of the existing organisations that claim to represent the Jewish community in Australia. Upper house MP Ian Cohen said he had signed up because “I am sick of the vilification that Jews suffer if they dissent from the official Israeli line – it’s appalling.” IAJV is a carbon copy of Independent Jewish Voices, launched in Britain last month with a host of celebrity supporters including Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, actors Stephen Fry and Zoe Wanamaker, film director Mike Leigh, fashion designer Nicole Farhi, historian Eric Hobsbawm, lawyer Sir Geoffrey Bindman and academic Professor Susie Orbach.