A selection of letters published in the AJN print edition of March 5, 2010

Let’s focus on al-Mabhouh not on the passports

OUR Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, talking on TV stations and on the front pages of the newspapers, made a huge fuss about three Australian passports, in which the pictures were probably changed.

The most important fact, though, is that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh will no longer murder innocent Israelis and will not transfer arms for that same purpose to other terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
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The fallout from the passport scandal

FROM James Bond to Jason Bourne, from Mata Hari to Mission Impossible, it seems we have a hunger for stories of spies and secret agents that is never satisfied. Murder, theft and deception dominate their daily lives, the rules of morality that underpin the foundations of civil society are abandoned, and yet – at least as far as fictional protagonists are concerned – we revel in their exploits and hail them as heroes.

In the real world, however, our attitude towards espionage is perhaps a little more circumspect. We know it goes on, we know for our security it has to go on and, when the interests of our own nation are being served, we welcome the results. But as for how those ends are achieved, the morally dubious details that thrill us on the big screen are, in reality, those we’d often prefer to be kept in the dark about.
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My neighbour the terrorist?

IT is interesting that the same week a local Melbourne newspaper reports on neighbours complaining about “inappropriate” security training at a Jewish school, the government reveals that one of the biggest emerging security threats facing Australia is home-grown terrorism.

In the Jewish community, we are all too aware of the danger of terrorism in our communities. Our volunteers, together with police and Australia’s intelligence agencies, work overtime to identify anybody who may be threatening our community.
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Sharing our experiences

JEWISH Australians should be heartened by the words of Aboriginal rights advocate Noel Pearson, who stated this week that Jews are “at the top of the list” of peoples who have contributed to civilisation, and that indigenous Australians could learn from our communal model.

Writing in The Australian, he lauded the Jewish commitment to education, as well as skills in defending ourselves from racism, without internalising the predator’s message and morphing it into victimhood.
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A selection of letters published in the AJN print edition of February 12, 2010

Treatment of Chazan and the NIF is shameful

THE furore over the New Israel Fund (NIF) has highlighted an ugly underbelly in both Australia and Israel.

The NIF and organisations that have received NIF grants work on civil and human rights; social and economic justice; religious pluralism and tolerance for Israeli Arabs and Bedouin citizens; the environment and assistance for immigrants – issues enshrined in Israel’s declaration of independence.
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Taking a stand against Iran

THE expression “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it” could almost as easily be referring to most of the world’s response to Iran’s unrelenting march towards nuclear armament.

The Islamic Republic’s obstinate nuclear program, for those who have been tracking its progress over the years, has developed as steadily and surely as an apocalyptic train wreck played out in slow motion, with all the horror and frustration etched upon the faces of those who truly recognise its danger.
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A selection of letters published in the AJN print edition of February 5, 2010

Comparison with talking to Nazis is misleading

MESSRS Sztainbok and Lewis (AJN 29/01) insist that trying to talk to Hamas is like trying to negotiate with Hitler. But it is surely misleading to draw parallels between Hamas and Nazi Germany, for the situations are entirely different, even if Hamas is not above using Nazi propaganda for its own purposes.

My original letter was in response to another reader who had strongly implied that the Australian Jewish Democratic Society saw Hamas as peace-loving and a morally worthy partner in discussion. In refuting this, I simply said that Hamas has to be taken into account as long as it has the support of a substantial number of Palestinians. That was all. No good guys, bad guys scenario.
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Inclusion and exclusion at the United Nations

AS a fan of multilateralism, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wants Australia to win a seat on the United Nations (UN) Security Council. But achieving that aspiration has for some time been regarded as a potential liability in terms of Canberra’s policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Australia has not held a Security Council seat in more than 20 years, and pundits say that supporting Israel while trying to scale the greasy pole to the UN’s executive chamber are contradictory aims – because some UN powerbrokers want Australia to be more “even-handed” or, better still, pro-Palestinian.
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A selection of letters published in the AJN print edition of January 29, 2010

Lack of coverage of Israel’s efforts in Haiti

AHRON Shapiro in his analysis piece (AJN 22/01) says “the global appreciation of IDF humanitarian lifesaving work in Haiti is richly deserved”. This may be the case in Europe or elsewhere but certainly not in Australia. I would like a dollar for every person that has commented about the lack of reporting [censoring] in The Age/Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) about Israel’s humanitarian efforts in Haiti.
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Honoured to be Australian

THE words of our national anthem urge us to “rejoice” as a nation, and Australia Day seems the ideal opportunity to do just that. As Australians generally – and as Jewish Australians particularly – we have much to rejoice about; living in a free and, as world standards go, an inordinately decent society that offers levels of tolerance, a celebration of cultural harmony, and an abiding sense of stability and peace perhaps unparalleled on the planet.

For a Jewish community, of which a great proportion descends from the post-Holocaust generation that arrived on what writer Serge Liberman aptly described as Australia’s “firmer shores”, this remote, somewhat barren continent provided a sense of salvation.

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