Author: AJDS

Harold Zweir has an excellent lead letter in today’s Melbourne Age on the politics of refugees in light of the most recent deaths at sea.

Harold Zweir has an excellent lead letter in today’s Melbourne Age on the politics of refugees in light of the most recent deaths at sea.

The Anti-Defamation Commission in Victoria, recently issued a report claiming anti-Semitism and fear on campuses in Victoria Australia. However, the report can be criticized on methodological grounds for how the survey of students was conducted, and the disputed terminology and other material on which the report is based.

Sol Salbe.
Some time ago I circulated one of those good statements put out by the Australian Jewish community’s official leadership on the local refugees/asylum seekers issue. An Israeli friend suggested, not entirely in jest, that perhaps their efforts would be better directed at the Israeli Interior Minister and others inside Israel where the situation is much worse.
Reading Sigal Rozen’s article, maybe we should indeed lobby them to lobby the Israeli leadership.

Twenty or thirty years ago, talk about the transfer of Israeli Palestinians out of their homeland to somewhere else was beyond the pale, something only found amongst the right.
But today, even amongst the most elite of American immigrants to Israel, such talk has currency as does the abandonment of democracy and pluralism.

One of the constant and justified worries of Jews in Israel and the diaspora is the state of security in the future Palestinian state, but the ‘community’ is too often fed spin and propoganda concerning the situation in Palestine.

It’s a full-bodied report, not an easy read. So read and debate.
Report of the international fact-finding mission to investigate
violations of international law, including international
humanitarian and human rights law, resulting from the
Israeli attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian
assistance

Tzipi Livni of the Kadimah party has published a statement concerning a proposed new and open relationship between Israel and the Diaspora. She is particularly concerned about the religious secular split and the growth of extremism and how it alienates Jews abroad. She is clearly positioning herself for the future.
But other than that, is she really saying anything new which challenges the Zionist status quo?

It has only happened to a very small degree in Australia, but as part of an apparently coordinated strategy to undermine criticism of Israeli politics, academic ‘conferences’ are being held at places like Yale to prove the generic evil of Islam. This is on top of the frenzy over the Mosque at Ground Zero. The list of supporters and participants of such events is a who’s who of the Jewish and non-Jewish neo-con establishment as well as representatives of the Jewish right in Israel.