Australian Jewish Democratic Society

There is an excellent commentary the hysteria being whipped up about Iran in the US (and in the Australian Jewish community)
“Who needs AIPAC when all it takes is a few interviews with Israeli “sources” to scare the hell out of the Jews — courtesy of Israel’s spokespeople in the American media?

An opinion piece for Galusaustralis.
In July, Coteret, an Israeli news site, reported that Australian young people were taken on a tour of central Hebron by Birthright/Talglit, a program that has brought hundreds of thousands of young Jews to Israel. The video featured interviews with some of the participants and an Orthodox, American organiser. The tour was run by Chabad, who have a long history in Hebron, in conjunction with Israel Express and the Zionist Federation of Australia.
The video, which is still available on Coteret even though it was removed from it’s original source at WeJew.com, probably when it twigged that the visit was controversial, is particularly scary because of the naïveté of the young people – who think they are in Israel. The interviewer and organiser share a pumped up view of eternal rights in Hebron, despite the reality of extraordinary injustice to others to achieve this. I’d love my son to go on ‘Birthright’, but not on such propaganda tours that dehumanize Palestinians.
More…

Haaretz reports that settlers associated with Kiryat Arba, the Jewish area above Hebron set fire to local Palestinian lands after the Israel authorities removed one of their tiny outposts in the area.
Once again, Palestinians have been victimized and in this case, instead of olive trees being destoyed, arson has been found to be a useful tool. In such dry and hot conditions in mid-summer, this is environmental terrorism as well.

25 rabbis in south Tel Aviv have issued a prohibition forbidding residents to rent apartments to foreign workers. The document (pictured) uses quotations from scripture and commentaries to justify this and is supported by a councillor from the Shas party.
This scandal has nothing to do with Palestinians, nothing to do with terror, though they claim immigrants cause crime (the usual excuse crime, as in Australia, is to blame immigrants). They also don’t want ahem, girls associating with them.

[Middle East News Service comments: The uprooting of the Bedouin village has been covered around the globe. However, an appalling coverage by the Israeli media has meant very little background has been provided. This has been particularly missed in countries like Australia where public consciousness of native title is high. Professor Oren Yiftachel submitted a background article to Haaretz which published on the web only. As agreed with Prof Yiftachel, I forward the translation of the Hebrew article to him. He has tweaked the article by providing additional information as well several new paragraphs.
Prof Oren Yiftachel is a researcher and human rights activist. He teaches political geography and urban planning at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba. He also represents Bedouin communities in courts and planning forums, and has recently been elected as co-chair of B’Tselem, the Israeli information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
Absolutely recommended reading – Sol Salbe.]

There is a petition campaign to the White House to end home demolitions in the Occupied Territories. This is a clearly discriminatory policy and has little do to with security, but lots to do with land grabs.
Since 1967, the Israeli government has demolished over 24,000 Palestinian homes — which families have built on their own land inside the Occupied Territories — in order to:
* Make room for Israeli settlements, businesses or governmental offices;

A long exchange of correspondence with people who should know better last week in advocating the Palestinian cause concerning their ‘crude views about Jews’ led to me wasting too many hours looking at a variety of webites that deal with ‘the Palestine Israel’ problem from the perspective of left organizations and Palestinians organizations. I’ve also seen more comments of a nutty nature than I’d wish too.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about a disturbing visit by Australian kids on the Birthright program to Hebron, where they were fed extremist propaganda,in contravention of Birthright’s own rules about visiting the occupied territories (and what gives a ‘birthright’ to Australian citizens over that of local Palestinians?)
I left phone and email messages for the Australian Union of Jewish Students who run the program to get some clarifications. True to form, no one got back to me.