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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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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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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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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Why we must follow Israel in helping Haiti

IT’S one of the world’s best-kept secrets. Like the concealed work of a great artist, hidden away under layers of paint on a canvas that has been reused, so too has Israel’s true nature been obscured from the public gaze in recent years by layer upon layer of vindictive political propaganda and ill-informed or even malicious media bias. But, every so often, a glimpse of reality shines through.

For those of us aware of the Jewish State’s unbounded capacity for compassion and humanity, the country’s swift and substantial response to the earthquake in Haiti has come as no surprise. A nation born out of tragedy, a people plagued by disaster, albeit manmade, Israel has long been equipped to deal with catastrophe and willing to share its experience and expertise.
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Cranked up from crank status

SINCE man first turned his gaze to the heavens in search of the Creator, he has also sought manifestations of that Creator on earth in human form. Over the millennia, that spiritual quest has led him to invest his belief, his aspirations and his faith in countless leaders, hailing them as prophets and messiahs.

In some cases, devotees were decried as blasphemers or heretics; in others, they became the forefathers of great religions. In some cases, they were viewed as subversive elements; in others, they were dismissed as cranks.
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Massada shall not fall

LESS than a month ago, we reported that the future looked bleak for Adelaide’s only Jewish school. Strapped for cash, Massada College was on the brink of closure. This week, however, we’re delighted to reveal that the school has been handed a financial lifeline and will now be in a position to throw open its doors for pupils in the coming academic year.

Of course, the importance of any educational institution stretches far beyond the mere facts and figures it imparts to its students. A hub of the community, the role a school plays in instilling a sense of identity, commitment and belonging in young minds -– particularly within Australian Jewry -– was underlined in last year’s Gen 08 Jewish Population Study.

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The decade that was

TEN years ago, the eyes of the world turned towards Australia. TV screens across the globe broadcast images of the magnificent fireworks display over Sydney Harbour, heralding a new millennium.

Save for the seers of doom who prophesied Armageddon and the soon-to-be dispelled fears surrounding the Y2K bug -– which we were told would cripple entire economies -– a sense of unbounded optimism filled the air.
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