Letters (November 27, 2009)

A selection of letters published in the AJN print edition of November 27, 2009

No statute of limitations on war crimes

OPERATION: Last Chance is our last chance to serve justice to those who committed war crimes during the Shoah.

The generation who went through the dark years of the Holocaust is leaving us fast. Soon we will have neither living eyewitnesses, nor living perpetrators to put on trial.

At this stage we can say that Charles Zentai is accused of a crime that ended the life of a Jewish teenager in Budapest in 1944. Let the Hungarian court decide the case on the basis of evidence. We owe that to the victims who never grew old and could never tell the truth. Zentai’s age should not be an obstacle to justice. Zentai’s alleged actions must be judged, not his current age.

GABOR UJVARI
Caulfield, Vic

Why did we not push for extradition?

IT took nearly five years to get to the point that only one more appeal can “save” Zentai from standing trial in Hungary for allegedly murdering a young Jew.

This is the victory of the Australian justice system, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and its Jerusalem director, Efraim Zuroff.

It is also the victory of the Republic of Hungary, which demanded the extradition. And it is the conquest of the Hungarian Jews living all over the world, especially in Australia.

Unfortunately, the leaders of Jewry in Australia didn’t do much for this to happen. No demonstration was organised, no speeches were made in Parliament, and there were no articles in the newspapers.

The community’s newspaper, The AJN, followed the news from the general media, but never demanded the extradition in an article.

And one more thing: in Hungary, they demolished the death penalty, even for murder.

IVAN SINGER
Castle Cove, NSW

Editor’s note: The AJN did, in fact, call for Charles Zentai’s extradition in an editorial dated June 17, 2005 and entitled “Extradite Charles Zentai”.

Disengagement was ‘ethnic cleansing’

I READ with great interest the letter from Phillip Mendes, “Emotive language in Gaza”, (AJN 13/11), as well as the previous one from Moshe Elkman (AJN 06/11) and also the clarifications made by David Ha’ivri regarding his talk.

While it is true that the expulsion of the Jewish settlers from Gaza was not a pogrom and nobody died during it, its effects were traumatic, to say the least, and had it been done by others or to others, it would have been classed as ethnic cleansing. Worse still, it did not accomplish any of its objectives. In fact, it was counterproductive. Gaza fell into the hands of the worst terrorists, the fanatical Hamas organisation.

The settlers were not in foreign territory, they were in their own land, liberated by the heroic efforts of the Israel Defence Forces in 1967. Gaza did not belong to the Palestinian Arabs who lived there, it was an area occupied by Egypt illegally since 1948. It is, and will always be, an integral part of Israel. If anybody should have been expelled, it was the terrorists, not the settlers.

DAVID GUILBERT ROZENMAN
Turramurra, NSW

Settlements are not the real obstacle

IT is bad enough the media is helping Palestinians perpetuate the myth that it is solely Israeli settlements that are the impediment to peace. Notwithstanding anti-Zionist Jews who have sided with the Arabs, the number of well-meaning friends of Israel taking part in debates and forums pushing this lie is even more disturbing.

Credit must given to the PR gurus behind the Palestinian campaign to de-legitimise Israel, who keep coming up with slogans and tactics to attract western attention, and even get Jews to support their campaigns.

Initially, it was the occupation of Gaza, followed by the security/”apartheid” wall that was the impediment to peace. Then it was the slogan “Occupation, Occupation, Occupation” and now, helped along by US President Barack Obama, the stumbling block to peace is solely Israeli settlements.

These well-meaning Jews who ignore any commitments by the Palestinians, concentrating only on the settlements issue, have been a windfall for the Palestinians in the propaganda war and this does not help the peace process in any way. Supporting the Palestinian narrative only makes Israel more defensive.

It must be obvious to most analysts that if Israel dismantled all, or most, of the disputed settlements tomorrow, the Palestinians -— who have not abided by commitments in the Oslo Accords — would not suddenly elect a single leader representing Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, or cease inciting hatred towards Jews in schools, mosques, universities and the media. They would not completely stop their rockets and other terrorist attacks, or unanimously agree in writing to accept the 1948 United Nations Mandate declaring one state for the Jews and one state for the Arabs. These are the minimum requirements needed before any real peace agreement can proceed.

Perhaps as everything else has failed and the international community holds Israel solely responsible, it’s time for the Palestinians and Arabs to take the initiative and implement all the above commitments and promises first. That would place pressure on Israel to meet its obligations. What do we have to lose?

When will we see mainstream Jewish organisations conducting forums and debates along the lines of “Palestinians do not want peace”? When will they come to the conclusion that it is Hamas’ control of Gaza and the lack of a unified Palestinian leadership that are the impediments to peace and that the issue of Israeli settlements — one component — should be part of an overall negotiated peace deal that would “equally” hold the Palestinians responsible?

MICHAEL BURD
Toorak, Vic

Settlements are the real obstacle

ALAN Freedman (AJN 13/11) believes the Australian Jewish Democratic Society’s (AJDS) support for the right of Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace in their own lands is a motherhood statement. This implies that he not only agrees with that principle, but believes that reasonable people would concur.

Unfortunately, many in our community do not, and even among those who accept the principle, there is a general unwillingness to understand the reality of creating the preconditions for the establishment of two states.

The continued growth of settlements in the occupied territories (a term that former PM Ariel Sharon used) is possibly the biggest hurdle to moving toward a real peace agreement. The alternative is the need for Israel to forever control and suppress an aggrieved growing minority, which could one day be a majority -— surely a frightening thought.

Alan Freedman states that “the political Left is riddled with Jews whose Jewishness appears to play little part in their lives other than as an instrument for criticising Israel and diluting the significance of its Jewish character.” It is not clear whether this is a reference to AJDS.

To set the record straight, members of the AJDS executive include people from a range of religious perspectives: Orthodox, Conservative, Progressive and secular. Most of us have close family ties to Israel and have visited it several times, and our children have been active members of Zionist youth groups.

Speaking personally, I consider myself to be an active member of Melbourne’s Jewish community. But how much more Jewish must I be in Alan Freedman’s eyes before I have the right to express my views when they differ from his?

TOM WOLKENBERG
Glen Iris, Vic

Dunera and Viking are not the same

THE front page of The AJN (13/11) prominently showed two ships with the caption referring to “possible similarities”, which could not be further from the factual circumstances -— the Dunera dating back to wartime 1940, and the Oceanic Viking being involved in a present-day political conflict.

I am one of the Dunera Boys and wish to clarify the vast differences involving the two ships.

HMT Dunera: This British-government vessel carried approximately 2000 refugees, of mainly Jewish background, who had escaped from Nazi oppression with valid travel documents and permits to enter Britain before World War II. Following the fateful fall of France, the British government progressively interned many of the 75,000 refugees in Britain in order to screen for undesirable elements — possibly Fifth Columnists. We became part of this large crowd of refugee internees, ranging from 16 to 60 years of age.

Three boats with internees left for Canada in early July 1940, and the same destination was intimated to us. However, much to our surprise and consternation, after seven days at sea, including a lucky torpedo escape, we were told our destination was Australia.

After the war, even Winston Churchill declared this deportation to have been an unfortunate mistake. Australia and Canada had been asked by the British to hold these internees on their behalf. None of us had either intended, or had papers, to enter Australia. Britain and Australia were at war with our former home country.

Oceanic Viking: This Australian vessel saved 78 people, supposedly Sri Lankan asylum seekers, from a small non-seaworthy craft in Indonesian waters, on the way to Australia. People smugglers had organised this journey, similar to so many earlier ventures.

These 78 people had neither permits nor visas to enter Australia, many being without personal identification papers. Their refugee status had not been established. Some supposedly possessed considerable financial means out of which they paid the exorbitant amounts for the risky journey, suggesting that, unlike genuine refugees, they had left their homeland for economic reasons in order to find better living and material conditions. Their home country was not at war with Australia.

It is hugely important for the general public, including your readers, to understand and appreciate the fundamental differences between the two events, almost 70 years apart, and which have nothing in common with one another.

We express our strong misgivings about this unfortunate attempt of comparison.

MIKE SONDHEIM
President, Dunera Association Inc

Dunera Boys were not refugees

IT is time people got their facts right about the Dunera.

It was not a boatload of Jewish refugees fleeing Europe. Those Jewish refugees had already fled Europe to what they thought was the safe haven of Britain, only to be imprisoned as enemy aliens and then, as the British convicts had been over a century before, sent by ship to be dumped in Australia.

It did not matter to the British that they were Jews; the fact that they were German Jews was enough for the British soldiers onboard the Dunera to treat them appallingly.

When they finally arrived in Australia and were sent to the god-forsaken camps in Hay and Tatura, the Australian soldiers, to their credit, treated them as fellow human beings. Unfortunately, some of their anti-Semitic shipmates, the real Nazis, were also in those camps.

However, the Jewish inmates set up educational classes and managed to survive. After the war, some of the Dunera Boys even stayed on in Australia and became famous musicians and mathematicians, of whom the Australian and the Jewish community are proud.

HELEN BERSTEN
Honorary archivist, Australian Jewish Historical Society

Dreyfus and the bicycle riders

FURTHER to my clarification last week concerning the relationship of the great French sociologist Emile Durkheim to the cause of Captain Alfred Dreyfus (AJN 20/11), your readers may further be interested to learn of the direct relationship of the “Dreyfusards” as accidental “godfathers” to the now widely celebrated Tour de France bicycle race.

At the Auteuil horseraces in 1899, the president of France, Albert Loubet, was struck by the Comte Albert de Dion, the proprietor of the De Dion-Bouton motor works. De Dion was jailed for 15 days.

De Dion’s action was criticised by Le V√©lo, France’s leading sporting daily at the time, and its Dreyfusard editor, Pierre Giffard.

In response, the anti-Dreyfusards, including Edouard Michelin of motor-tyre and gastronomic fame, sponsored in 1900 a rival sporting daily, L’Auto. To back their challenge and boost falling circulation, they offered the Tour de France.

Stagnating sales had led to a crisis meeting in November 1902, where the chief cycling journalist, one Geo Lefevre, suggested a six-day race around France.

Long-distance cycle races were already a popular means to sell newspapers. But nothing so protracted as that which Lefevre now suggested had been attempted. If it succeeded, it would enable L’Auto to put Le Velo out of business and “nail Giffard’s beak shut”.

With the announcement of this strange Dreyfusard stepchild in January 1903, the Tour de France was born.

PROF CLIVE KESSLER
Randwick, NSW

Wisdom from the past

In 1947, campaigning for the establishment of a Jewish state, several teenage orators of the Young Zionist League mounted the proverbial butter box in Sydney’s Domain, a popular venue for the distribution of ideas.

I was one of the foot soldiers handing out pamphlets. I well remember the final words of the two most elegant speakers as they ¬≠dismounted.

One lad (he later became a professor of philosophy) would intone: “Don’t trade Jewish blood for Arab oil.” The other, freshly arrived from England and with a posh accent, British to his bootstraps (as they say) but highly critical of his home country, left the crowd with this message: “Patriotism is not a matter of my country right or wrong, my country must always be right!”

Len Green
Rose Bay, NSW

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