Letters, April 1, 2011
Fears Libya intervention could set precedent
THE war against Libya’s strong man is questionable. I for one know that Muammar Gaddafi is a dictator who has used violence and torture against his own people, but so have other dictatorships such as Syria, China, North Korea, Cuba and Burma, to name a few. So why is NATO bombing only Libya? Is it because it can, as it cannot touch or will not risk a war against those other countries mentioned?
We must understand this sets a very bad precedent that any sovereign country like Libya can be strong-armed and gun-ship diplomacy can be used whenever the West feels it can use armed force.
What if the Israeli-Arab population rises one day in a rebellion such as the Arab uprisings we have just witnessed and Israel needs to take control and use armed force to quell the violence. Is NATO going to bomb Israel?
This is not about Libya. It’s about the West’s hypocrisy. They allow other regimes to subjugate their minorities, but they manage because they can bomb Libya.
Gaddafi, while called a “Mad Dog” by late US President Ronald Reagan, might seem a loose cannon who has in the past sponsored terrorists such as the PLO. Nevertheless, he has nationalised the state’s lucrative oil reserves and has built Libya into a modern secular North African state. But because a few rebels decided now to emulate their brothers’ actions across the Maghreb, NATO decided to bomb Tripoli back into the dark ages.
Well, we Jews around the world, and Israel in particular, should not cheer too loudly as Libya could be a prelude.
David Cashrein Crows Nest, NSWWhere will boycott campaign end?
THE campaign for a “boycott” of Israel under the clarion called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions is politically and morally repugnant. That Fiona Byrne, the Greens candidate for Marrickville in the NSW state election, publicly supported such a boycott is hardly surprising, given the Greens’ record of intense and often vitriolic anti-Israel sentiment.
There are certainly historical precedents for introducing boycotts against Jews – the Nazis, for example, enforced boycotts of Jewish shops and businesses when they came to power in 1933. They later burnt books by Jewish and other anti-Nazi writers. If a boycott against Israel doesn’t force it to its knees, will the people promoting this boycott demand that we boycott all books by Israeli writers? Given that most Jews are Zionists – and thus in the eyes of many anti-Zionists are aligned with the forces of darkness against the forces of light, harmony and sharia law as personified by the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah – perhaps we should boycott all books by Jewish writers? This would certainly resolve libraries’ shelving problems for many, many years to come.
Amazingly there have even been some academics demanding a boycott of universities in Israel and of Israeli academics. Whatever happened to the idea that open and free debate, that argument and counter argument, are central and crucial to democratic and academic discourse?
Are those who are calling for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel also demanding Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against non-Jewish governments that really are vile dictatorial regimes – Iran, China, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Indonesia (in West Papua) etc. and if not, why not?
Israel is undeniably the only true democracy in the Middle East. It is indefensible to call for a boycott of any description against such a nation.
Monstrous murder of innocent Israelis
IN trying to understand the unspeakable tragedy that is the murder of the Fogels in Itamar, one can only ponder the question: what have some Palestinians become, or more correctly, what has history turned them into?
Records from the early 1900s indicate that the Arabs of the time were keen to welcome their Jewish “cousins” back home, anticipating a concomitant rise in living standards alongside predicted Jewish prosperity. There was no distinction between Palestinian or any other Arab of the region, as they all shared a common language, religion and history.
However, the years following World War I saw Arab tribal chiefs squabbling over the carve-up of territory and jostling for position as leader of the Arab world, and using hatred of Jews as convenient leverage to improve their political stakes.
Under Yasser Arafat, all of a sudden, the Palestinians defined themselves as a nation dispossessed at the hands of a colonising army of Jews who invaded their land, threw them out of their homes and stole their country.
And now, nearly 100 years of vitriolic misinformation later, Israel has to deal with the descendants of those original Palestinian Arabs: generations who have been bred to despise Jews and Israel in the name of Islam and glorify the grisly murder of decent people such as the Fogels.
The Arabs are not the only ones in history who have abused their people for political gain, but they have a lot to answer for. And the rest of the world, to its everlasting shame, has also generally chosen to ignore historical fact over a seemingly ingrained propensity to hate Jews and Israel. The three remaining Fogels can rightly point to the Arab world, to the Europeans, and to the United Nations and accuse them all of contributing to an environment that could facilitate such a monstrous crime.
Shameful silence in face of atrocity
I AM concerned about the bias of the Australian media in regards to reporting the truth about Palestinians in Israel.
There was almost no coverage about the Itamar horror in Australian media, with the exception of a small article in The Sunday Age on March 13. I did not hear or see any mention about this terrorist attack on any Australian radio or TV channels throughout the following week. It seems that the blood of Jewish innocent children does not find any response through the voices of Australian media or any human rights groups.
On March 16, after noticing this lack of coverage for this story, I rang the Herald Sun to enquire whether there was any publication on this event and that perhaps I missed it. I was told by a girl at the news desk that there was not, and after asking why not, was told that the Australian public would not be interested in it.
I than rang ABC Radio 774 and wanted to go on air to inform the Australian public about this terrorist attack that was not reported in Australian media. I was asked what I wanted to talk about. I said that I wanted to talk about the bias in Australian media. I was then asked to state specifically what I wanted to say. I started saying that there was a terrorist attack in Israel by two Palestinian terrorists that was not reported in the media. Before I finished the sentence, and on the word “Palestinian”, I was told: ”I am not putting you on air” and rudely hanged up on.
It seems to me Australian media did not report the event because it did not serve their purpose of delegitimising Israel and puts Palestinian terrorists in bad light. I implore the members of the Jewish community not to stay silent and not allow the terrorist organisations to get their message of “being Israel’s victim” across to the world’s media.
It is important that many voices of ordinary people from the Jewish community are heard. We can thus protect our way of Jewish living. After all, Israel is fighting for all of us to be able to live our lives as Jews.
Global media bias in wake of terror
IF I had not read the report on The Jerusalem Post website after Shabbat two weeks ago, I would not have been aware of the terrorist atrocity in which the Fogel family of Itamar were brutally murdered – it was not reported on the BBC Radio 4 main news at 10pm, nor in the bulletin on Sunday morning.
However, later on Sunday, the BBC managed to mention that approval had been given for the construction of more housing in the “occupied territories” and this was condemned by a UN spokesperson as being “unhelpful to the peace process”.
En passant, it mentioned that this was “only a day after the deaths of five members of a settler family” (with no mention that they were horrific murders including a baby and a toddler), as if their deaths were being used as some sort of pretext for such “illegal” construction. To emphasise this, it stated that the “settlements were illegal under international law though Israel disagreed”.
On the other hand, when what are described as children, probably teenagers involved in firing rockets, are hurt when their launching pads are attacked by Israeli aircraft, this is almost invariably reported immediately and repeatedly, usually without reference to the reason for the air strike.
So much for even-handed reporting by the BBC.
comments