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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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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Musician 8 Ball Aitken. Photo: AJN file

AHRON SHAPIRO

EVERY year at about this time, country music flows down the streets of Tamworth just about as freely as the cold beer flows from the taps of their pubs.

It’s the Tamworth Country Music Festival in the city that’s described as the Nashville of the Southern Hemisphere.

It’s also the city home to musicians who go by the curious names of 8 Ball Aitken and Bird.

“Come on in, we’ve made a kugel for you,” 8 Ball Aitken says when we meet at his home. The Queensland native, who sports a long bright red beard and speaks in a soft voice, will be performing at the festival, which runs until January 24

Aitken has led an interesting life. The Golden Guitar nominee went from picking mangoes and bananas, to picking the strings on his guitar. Though not Jewish himself, his fiancee and manager Bird Jensen are, and Judaism has come to influence his music.
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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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Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom with Aboriginal performers in Sydney. Photo: George Fetting

AHRON SHAPIRO INTERVIEWS ISRAELI VICE PRIME MINISTER SILVAN SHALOM

Regarding the vote on the settlement freeze, you weren’t in the cabinet meeting where it was voted on and I understand that you did not know that it would be voted on that day.

No.

Is it usual for the cabinet to vote on things without them being brought up in advance?

No, I didn’t know, and that’s a fact. If I would have been there, I would have voted against it. But still, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the vote.
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Rabbi Michael Melchior. Photo: AJN file/Peter Haskin

AHRON SHAPIRO

PROMINENT dovish Israeli Rabbi Michael Melchior says that religion, which is often seen as a source of tension between Israelis and Palestinians, has the potential to be a unifying tool for coexistence.

Rabbi Melchior, head of the dovish Israeli religious Zionist faction Meimad, has been in Australia for the Parliament of the World’s Religions. He said that the international faith gathering in Melbourne was an opportunity to see, up close, how interfaith dialogue can cultivate understandings between Jews and Muslims.

The Meimad leader asserted that most Israelis are willing to make peace, even if it means “giving up what is ours and what we seriously believe is ours”, inferring territorial compromise.

However, he said, Israelis have lost confidence that a real peace is attainable.
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A Beirut suburb hit during the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Photo: AJN file

AHRON SHAPIRO

POLITICALLY speaking, Lebanon is like the neighbourhood beer barn that gives a homeowner so much grief.

The rowdies inside – who from time to time spill out and trample your begonias – don’t seem to much like each other and they don’t like you. The police aren’t much help. Moreover, even if things quieten down for awhile, there are no illusions that the underlying problems have solved themselves.

In this little analogy, the frazzled homeowner is Israel, the impotent police are the United Nations (UN), and the rowdies are the splintered groups that make up the political constellation that is the Lebanese parliament – groups that not all that long ago were engaged in their own civil war.

The country’s elections in June, not surprisingly, did nothing to change this basic formula. Driving this point home, last week, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s new cabinet agreed to retain the same policy statement from the previous coalition, acknowledging Hezbollah’s right to use its weapons against Israel.
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