Letters (October 30, 2009)

A selection of letters published in the AJN print edition of October 30, 2009

Not funny, just vulgar

JOHN Safran is an embarrassment to the Jewish community in Australia and he is not funny, only vulgar. The mere fact that his shows consist of mostly religious or ethnic themes tells me that he has no other source for his humour.

Where are all the real Jewish comics who never embarrassed the general public to squeeze out a laugh -— such as Don Rickles, Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis? They were comics, not shock jocks who try to squeeze out a laugh at any price.

DAVID CASHREIN
Crows Nest, NSW

Shameful ABC

THE ABC has shamed itself with the showing of John Safran’s Race Relations program. He appears desperate for subject matter, having to resort to underwear stealing and sniffing (stealing is a crime -— not a joke), ejaculating in view of 700,000 viewers (certainly not a joke) and the degrading deceit of insulting both Jews and Palestinians by substituting each other’s sperm in sperm banks (also a crime -— not a joke).

The entire subject matter and execution is despicable, and no doubt more bad publicity has been showered on us Jews.

NOAH LEVIN
Malvern, Vic

More than one view

CONGRATULATIONS to Geoffrey Zygier and the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) executive for the Viewpoint “We must learn to play the ball, not the man” (AJN 23/10).

Let us hope that this viewpoint is taken seriously by those who are inclined to be intolerant of the ideas of others.

Those members of the community who feel passionately that their views, and only their views, will serve the best interests of Israel and the Jewish people need to understand that others feel equally passionate about their own views.

And by abusing others who hold different views, the perpetrators of this abuse serve to demonstrate how fragile their ideas are when held up to close examination.

I was also delighted to read Naomi Levin’s report that the JCCV is likely to introduce a policy on pluralism (AJN 23/10).

ROBIN ROTHFIELD
Fairfield, Vic

Critics outside the pale

DAVID Forbes (AJN 23/10) asks an interesting question: should Jews who express views about Israel, Zionism and community leadership that do not represent mainstream Jewish opinion be considered “renegade”?

As someone who takes an active interest in what is written about Jews, Israel and Zionism, I find a very disturbing pattern.

A majority of the most virulent and vocal anti-Zionist activists do not have Jewish partners, do not take part in any mainstream Jewish/Zionist communal affairs, do not send their kids to Jewish schools and have no interest whether Israel survives as a home for the Jews. Is being born Jewish enough to express views “as Jews” on Israel and Jewish matters?

While none of this should be considered improper or unusual, the anti-Zionist activists, including those Jews who are advocating Israel boycotts, like to promote their Jewishness to their advantage, which I believe is disingenuous.

Unfortunately, the media and public naively tend to consider criticism of Israel, Zionists and Jewish community leadership by fellow Jews as more credible than other critics, and anti-Israel blog sites use these criticisms to their advantage.

Obviously these Jews have the right to express their anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish views and I am not calling for censorship or silencing them, just making an observation. I wonder how the Muslim community would react if many of their own tried to create more credibility by using their Muslim heritage to condemn Palestinian intransigence and violence.

MICHAEL BURD
Toorak, Vic

The real demons

STEVE Brook (AJN 23/10) asks “where would we Australian Jews be without our demons?” Among the latter he includes The Age, the ABC, SBS, Antony Loewenstein, the Australian Jewish Democratic Society and Richard Goldstone.

The real demons, however, are those he doesn’t list. They include allegations of deicide; the “blood libel” (still current in some Arab states); forced expulsions; the Chmielnitski massacre in the Ukraine in the 17th century; Babi Yar; the six million who perished in the Shoah; Arab anti-Semitism; the bombing of Argentina’s Jewish centre in 1994; the Park Hotel bombing in Netanya in 2002; Ahmadinejad; threats of nuclear holocaust; and the plot, albeit foiled, to blow up the Riverdale Jewish Centre in New York just a few months ago.

Tragically, this list is not even close to being exhaustive.

DR DAVID WEINTROB
Caulfield, Vic

Short-sighted on West Bank’s future

ALTHOUGH there were a large number of issues arising out of David Ha’ivri’s presentation at Beth Weizmann Community Centre titled “Two States? No Solution” on October 25, I want to address just a few.

Ha’ivri’s title is executive director of the Shomron Liaison Office, and his job is to counter the bad publicity Israel, and in particular, the settler movement, receives from world media.

In the presentation, the actions of Israel in the disengagement of the Jewish settlement in Gaza were compared to pogroms and ethnic cleansing. We rightfully get offended when Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza is compared with the Holocaust, but here we have people who compare Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, where no-one was even hurt, to the pogroms of Russia, where tens of thousands of Jews were murdered and mutilated.

Later a question was asked about what would happen to the Arabs living in the West Bank. Ha’ivri’s answer was that they either be loyal to Israel or go elsewhere. Ha’ivri did not consider that in another generation or so, there will be more Arabs under Israel’s jurisdiction, and what will then become of Israel’s democracy.

There were also memorial candles lit in memory of the Gaza disengagement. These were yizkor and yahrzeit candles, but no-one died. This, in my view, was demeaning to the memory of our departed ones.

The Arabs trying to drive the Jews into the sea since Israel’s independence is no longer news, however, it is the main tenet of Ha’ivri’s argument. But to claim that the Israeli government carried out pogroms and ethnic cleansing and to ignore the consequences of having millions of disenfranchised Arabs under Israeli rule is also no solution.

HENRY HERZOG
St Kilda East, Vic

Headline hurts

WHAT annoys me to no end is that The AJN can run the headline “Israel frozen out” on the front page (23/10). Why does our newspaper have to add salt to Israel’s wounds?

Why don’t you headline the condemnation of Richard Goldstone’s report by Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, who addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council, explaining what war is all about regarding the fighting in Gaza?

FRED SESKIN
Killara, NSW

Goldstone narrative is ‘Hamas-speak’

IN reading the 575-page Goldstone report into the Gaza war, we see its conclusions are based on unconfirmed Palestinian testimonial evidence taken at public hearings; limited to the period of the war, not the preceding period when precipitating events occurred; and restricted to testimony from non-governmental organisation operatives (such as the United Nations Relief Works Agency), with a long history of advocacy for Palestinians.

The report is couched in the lexicon of Hamas, with liberal use of words such as “occupation”. The Israeli position is paraphrased and dismissed to create a pseudo-balance. Anyone examining this report can see that it is fraught with logical inconsistency.

And now, even Justice Goldstone is distressed that his report has become an instrument to attack Israel at the United Nations.

PAUL ROZENTAL
Melbourne, Vic

Oslo the problem

GOLDSTONE is simply the latest setback in a string that goes back to Israel’s greatest blunder, the Oslo Accords.

It took many lives in Operation Peace of the Galilee (Lebanon 1982) to dislodge the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) from easy firing range of Israel’s civilians, leaving most terrorists in exile and subject to host nations -— the PLO in Tunisia, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Syria, and so on.

Oslo not only permitted the PLO to enter the territories, but allowed them to invite every terrorist group to join them in forming the Palestinian Authority.

It fulfilled every element of the phased plan to destroy Israel, which was presented at the PLO’s Rabat summit in 1974, including Palestinian residents as cannon fodder. Who can forget Arafat surrounded by Palestinian children, crowing that “these were his future soldiers, his future martyrs”? The pattern was set. Escalating attacks, shielded by a civilian population, which Israel ultimately had to respond to. Then galvanising international condemnation as “legitimate representatives”.

Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have died in this madness, which includes calls for Israel to talk peace with people for whom that option has never been on the table.

If peace is to be achieved, Oslo must be reversed. The only way may be to convince Jordan to accept the territory east of the fence, as envisaged by UN Resolution 242.

MORRY SZTAINBOK
Bentleigh, Vic

Palestinian musicians glorify PLO

I WAS disappointed with Liza Power’s article in The Age (22/10) about the Palestinian music group Ramallah Underground, which has been invited to the Melbourne International Arts Festival to perform.

Power lauds the group’s virulent anti-Israel stance, and the group is said to celebrate the history of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) through its odious early decades.

The “achievements” of the PLO include the wanton murder of innocent Israeli and western civilians in kindergartens and schools, on aeroplanes, and at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

I would not have thought any of these lurid actions would be anything to sing about, but disappointingly, and yet predictably, the arts festival and The Age newspaper, judging from the enthusiasm they espouse about this so-called music group, might beg to differ.

IAN KATZ
Caulfield, Vic

Israeli cinema leftist

ISRAELI films are doing very well internationally and are recognised around the world as thought-provoking and rich in human emotion. They have won numerous European film awards, including at the Berlin and Venice film festivals.

But what are the themes of these films the critics are raving about? They are usually whiny and “thought-provoking” psychobabble about Israeli soldiers’ emotional breakdowns and left-wing ideologies that bring them to rethink their commitment to Israel and its policies. So, of course, the Left-leaning art types in Europe will award prizes to them.

Why don’t Israeli writers produce scripts about historical truths relating to the 1967 Six-Day War and how Egypt and its other Arab allies wanted to throw the Jews into the sea? Or about the 1973 Yom Kippur War when Egypt invaded on the holiest day of the Jewish year?

Or do themes like these make those film critics rather uncomfortable?

URI BUTNARU
North Bondi, NSW

Donors’ mitzvah

MY twin sister Jennifer and I recently celebrated our 60th birthday. It was a poignant event that wouldn’t have happened were it not for the miracle of transplantation. Almost half our lifetime ago, at 31, I donated a kidney to Jennifer in life-saving surgery.

In light of our milestone, we wanted to spare a thought for the approximately 2000 people on transplant waiting lists in Australia. Many of those won’t be as fortunate as Jennifer, and will die needlessly because of our abysmally low organ donor rate.

Those 2000 are not just statistics but are sisters like Jennifer, brothers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. Their lives, like Jennifer’s, interweave with so many others. May they also have a second chance at life and celebrate birthdays to come.

As we go into this new year, as Jews we need to remind ourselves that the greatest mitzvah is to save a life. And as human beings, we all have the capacity to make a difference, in life or in death.

JANINE JOSEPH
Prahran East, Vic

Bright outlook

ALTHOUGH it is flattering that The AJN chose to highlight my aliyah next March with a prominent article, I think it is important to correct some misconceptions that may arise from it.

First, I was not the founder of Melton in Sydney. That honour belongs to a team consisting of Hilton Immerman, Susie Klein and John Glass.

I was on the founding faculty, along with a number of other prominent educators, including rabbis David Freedman and Jeffrey Kamins, who will remain on the Melton faculty once it moves to its new base.

Secondly, Encounters@Shalom, the education arm of The Shalom Institute, which I have had the honour to lead, is preparing an exciting and intellectually sound program for 2010, including having three scholars from Israel, conducting the Sydney Jewish Writers Festival and offering short courses with local educators.

The team of Michael Misrachi and Dina Kaufman will capably manage this program and ensure that the quality that the community has come to expect from Shalom will continue to be reached.

It is nice to think that I will be missed, but it is erroneous to think that Shalom will not continue to be a place of excellence in Jewish adult education.

PETA JONES PELLACH
Director of adult education, The Shalom Institute

Help needed

I WISH to commend the Yeshiva Centre for the continued support and help to the community for those families who are in need of financial support, especially during the high holy days.

I urge individuals and businesses who can support their cause to give generously. I also urge the Yeshiva to assist those families who do not even ask for help because of pride.

RUTH FREYDIN
Bondi Junction, NSW

If you would like to submit a letter, email letters@jewishnews.net.au