Most weeks the Australian Jewish News is filled with letters written by paranoid, ignorant Jews who seem to love the idea of living in a ghetto, a world where Israel is the eternal victim fighting for its life against irrational, hate-filled Muslims. It’s amusing to watch.
Well, here we go again: another two academics of Jewish heritage only too ready, willing and able to criticise Israel, this time calling for an end to Zionism and the existence of Israel as a Jewish state (AJN 30/01).
Another two academics, whose Jewishness I suspect is only of any importance when it comes to criticising Israel, again claiming to represent significant Jewish opinion but really only demonstrating the hypocrisy of this irrelevant band of self-hating Jews.
John Docker and Ned Curthoys decry the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, yet seem to have no problem with the nearly two dozen Islamic states that repress human rights and social expression.
They inaccurately disparage Israel’s creation as a form of settler colonisation that demands dismantling, yet have no problem living in a country that was created precisely this way, along with just about every other country on this globe.
If they are serious about the rights of indigenous peoples, they would be advocating for a total return of Australia to the Aborigines. They would also be advocating for the hundreds of thousands of Jews who have lived in the Middle East for centuries, many of whom were expelled from Arab lands.
The AJN has a duty to report on their activities, and Docker and Curthoys may derive some sense of self-importance from this stunt, but they should know that their time in the limelight will be fleeting and that history will record both them and Antony Lowenstein’s Independent Australian Jewish Voices as nothing more than an insignificant blip in Jewish history.
ALAN FREEDMAN
St Kilda East, Vic
It is worth, I think, saying it straight out: Zionism is not Judaism. When Peter Slezak and Antony Loewenstein were major speakers -– and they both spoke brilliantly -– at the demonstration on Sunday, January 18, in Melbourne and Sydney respectively, against the bombing of Gaza, they were not compromising their Jewish identity. In fact, they were expressing the best part of it.
The text of what both Slezak and Loewenstein said can be found by going to the Independent Australian Jewish Voices website. I would suggest that your paper print at least one of them. It is, after all, The Australian Jewish News, not The Australian Zionist News.
STEPHEN LANGFORD
Paddington, NSW
Loewenstein’s article in The Australian Financial Review (31/01) is nothing more than a continuation of his “self-hating Jew” approach to life.
To quote French sources as fact is not only wrong, but questionable. Were the French protecting its citizens when they killed innocent civilians in Africa and other arenas of war? Where was their morality there?
The use of white phosphorous is not considered illegal in warfare, as attested to by its use in Iraq and other theatres of war. Israel used every precaution available to it, including leaflet drops and phone calls to householders well in advance to vacate populated areas under attack. Hamas, unfortunately, as proven by its own cowardly leaders, had no such morality and used its own population as human shields.
To cry foul is akin to a person who killed his own family and cries for mercy as he is an orphan.
Israel only did what any responsible government would and should do. After eight relentless years of attack on its citizens, it responded to a murderous enemy that was in fact put into power by the same people now crying for world sympathy.
No Mr Loewenstein, Israel is not guilty of anything other than protecting its own.
TED KIRSH
Melbourne, Vic