Mel Koss plays with an Aboriginal girl at the playground at Toomelah.

DANNY GOCS

IN an outback Aboriginal community in north-west NSW, there’s an air of excitement among the Aboriginal children as they await a visit by a group of young Jewish adults.

The visits have become a regular feature in the Toomelah and Boggabilla Aboriginal settlements situated in remote country near the NSW-Queensland border, where the Jewish volunteers spend 10 days working with Aboriginal children on holiday programs.

Organised by Jewish Aid Australia (JAA), in association with the Shalom Institute of NSW, the visits are part of the Derech Eretz program held each January and July.

This year’s summer group comprised 13 people, mainly university students from Victoria and NSW, who left Sydney on January 23 on a two-day bus ride to reach the Aboriginal communities. The group was led by JAA CEO Gary Samowitz – who was making his eighth visit – and included Monash University student and former SKIF rosh Rebecca Shonberg, 21.

“As soon as we arrived we got a warm welcome from the kids. They had been looking forward to our arrival,” said Shonberg.
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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Photo: AJN file

IN recognition of the first anniversary of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, AHRON SHAPIRO evaluates its performance on key issues.

GOVERNMENT FORMATION

Binyamin Netanyahu formed Israel’s 32nd government on March 31, 2009, after the forming agreements between the Likud, Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, Labour, Habayit Hayehudi parties. When United Torah Judaism joined the following day, the coalition reached 74 members, a number which is considered to be quite comfortable and stable by Knesset standards.

In particular, Netanyahu should be recognised for his ultimately futile attempt to bring Kadima onboard for a National Unity Government, and his successful effort to recruit Labour which continues to keep his coalition on a more even keel and impressively stable.
However, Netanyahu’s achievement in forming such a wide government must be tempered by the criticism that he gave away a lot of perks in order to achieve it. The current cabinet is the largest in the country’s history, is comprised of 30 ministers and nine deputy ministers.
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AHRON SHAPIRO

IT sounds like something out of a spy movie. Hamas arms smuggler Mahmoud al-Mabhouh checks into a Dubai hotel on January 19, supposedly in town to finalise an arms deal.

According to Dubai police, waiting for him that afternoon are a team of 11 assassins who themselves arrived a few hours earlier, and checked into a number of hotels in the area.

Dressed for business meetings or for tennis, they blend in easily with other tourists in the bustling city. Some spend some time at one of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) famous shopping malls. Others take steps to disguise their appearance.

Police have a great deal of footage from surveillance tapes covering the alleged assassins’ movements, but none capture the actual moment when one or more agents gain access to Mabhouh’s room and smother him with a pillow. His body is discovered the following day.
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Research base in Antarctica.

CHAZ FIRESTONE

IN a small chapel overlooking a frozen sea inlet, Dick Heyman leads a tiny congregation in a Shabbat-evening service. “Blessed are you, endless one, who makes the evenings fall,” he says, opening the Ma’ariv service with an English rendition of the prayer Asher Bidvaro.

“Oh, wait,” Heyman says, pausing. “We can’t say that here.”

Heyman is right. This January Shabbat service –- the first ever in Antarctica to the knowledge of anyone present -– is taking place in a dimly lit chapel. But it’s bright as day outside, and it has been that way for nearly six months.

Here, on the McMurdo Sound near the Antarctic coast, the last sunrise was in August, and the sun won’t dip below the horizon again until the end of February. Few things are black or white, but Antarctica is one of them. Save for a brief transition in March, the continent enjoys either 24-hour darkness or 24-hour light.

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Australia’s Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and South Africa’s International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane in Pretoria.

NAOMI LEVIN

LATER this year, the eyes of the world will turn to South Africa when the country hosts one of the globe’s most-watched sporting events -– the soccer World Cup.

With the Socceroos among the 32 nations competing for the coveted gold trophy, there will certainly be plenty of interest from these shores.

However, it’s not just on the pitch that the Australian Government is hoping for success. It’s also hoping to reap the benefits off the field.

Last month, seven years after an Australian foreign minister last stepped foot on South African soil, Stephen Smith spent two days in Pretoria.

While there, he met with South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, and other African National Congress dignitaries.

Cynics will no doubt accuse the Rudd Government of focusing on Africa for selfish reasons – to try to secure votes for a temporary seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council for 2013-14. However, others argue that Australia is doing itself a disservice by not having closer ties with its fellow middle power and Southern Hemisphere neighbour.
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US President Barack Obama. Photo: AJN file

AHRON SHAPIRO

WHEN the US President told Time magazine in an interview last month that he had erred during his first year in office by raising “too high” expectations of an Israeli-Palestinian peace breakthrough, it was more than an admission that his strategies to date had not been working.

It signalled a re-assessment of expectations for the coming year as well – of what could be realistically achieved and how much time he would devote to it.

Scratching beneath the surface, Barack Obama’s statement reflected a predictable reshuffling of priorities in his Administration that had as much to do with new political realities at home as it did with diplomatic frustrations in Jerusalem and Ramallah.

A successful president needs a supportive Congress to advance his agenda, and Obama is in danger of losing the confidence of his.
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The iconic sign over the entrance to Auschwitz. Photo: AJN file

AHRON SHAPIRO

AS dawn broke on the morning of December 18 at the entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum in southern Poland, it became apparent that something was very wrong.

A sign was missing. Not just any sign –- that sign. The iconic sign that hung over the entrance, that read “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work makes you free), a lie that came to symbolise the Nazi treachery and deceit that helped facilitate their campaign of genocide against the Jewish people.

As the sun rose over Auschwitz, so began a massive two-day manhunt that spread throughout Poland and beyond. For a time, the death camp, together with Holocaust survivors everywhere, was thrust back into the international spotlight.

Then, almost as quickly as it began, it was all over. The artefact was recovered, albeit in three pieces. Police arrested five Poles. The brazen theft, police said, was orchestrated by a Swedish neo-Nazi, who they believed intended to sell the sign to a collector for millions of dollars.
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IDF forces during ground maneouvres in Gaza. Photo: AJN file

GIDI GRINSTEIN

JERUSALEM — A year on from Operation Cast Lead, one thing is increasingly clear: together with the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the two military operations exposed a dire need to reform Israel’s security and foreign policy doctrine.

The borders of Gaza and Lebanon may be quiet, but a fierce global battle for our basic legitimacy is raging.

Many Israelis are frustrated. Within three years, we failed to achieve a decisive success in recent confrontations with Hezbollah and Hamas in spite of overwhelming military, technological and economic superiority.

In 2006, we were dragged through 33 days of an exchange that left a relatively high number of casualties, 133, as well as a trauma to Israeli society that will take years to heal. In the 2009 Cast Lead operation, our military power was unmatched, yet it was offset by the offensive on Israel’s international legitimacy that led to a significant setback in our standing among the family of nations and would constrain Israeli military planning and operations more effectively than any Arab military deterrence. This is a score card Israel finds hard to accept.
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Ground Zero in New York, 2001. Photo: AJN file

AHRON SHAPIRO

Here are 10 of the most significant stories for Jews in the Diaspora since the start of the millenium.

1. September 11, 2001

WHILE there were Jews who died in the coordinated terror attacks of 9/11, they were not assaults that targeted Jews in particular. However, they did create a unique opportunity for bonding between Jews and western societies over a common scourge -– terrorism.

For perhaps the first time, the attacks -– which downed four commercial aircraft, along with New York’s World Trade Centre and a section of the Pentagon in Washington DC -– created a situation in which innocent people were forced to deal with the implications that they might be targeted by the blind hatred of terrorism.
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A distraught settler is escorted out of the Gadid settlement of Gush Katif during its evacuation in August 2005. Photo: AJN file

AHRON SHAPIRO

ISRAEL has been a hive of activity in the new millennium. In fact, narrowing down the key events of the past decade to just 10 major crossroads is challenging.

The order in which these turning points are listed below should not be considered as indicative of their importance. Instead, they are ranked chronologically for the sake of clarity.

1. Camp David peace talks fail, July 2000

ISRAELI prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Yasser Arafat meet at Camp David, as US President Bill Clinton attempts to re-create the magic that led to the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt brokered at the same location more than 20 years earlier. After two weeks, the summit concludes without an agreement.
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