And purely by chance – or is it destiny? – because of a cousin’s marriage to a relative (by marriage) of a member of the Windsor clan, I can lay claim that but for certain legal impediments such as the Act of Settlement (1701), if all members of the royal family and their descendants and relatives by marriage to the nth degree were wiped out, I too could be King. I know it works because when I last visited Spencer House in London, I said, “I am related to the Queen by marriage you know,” in a not so particularly quiet way to my friend. The serious reaction of the ladies at the postcard till was immediate.

Now stop laughing. This is serious. I am concerned about ‘the aristocratic embrace’, that odious habit of loving a couple of letters after your name to set you apart from the hoi polloi and impress the impressionable.

Rather than honouring those rare and society-changing individuals who deserve special public recognition that might only occur once in a generation (John Monash, Weary Dunlop, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Eddie Mabo), the honours lists continue to be a vehicle for snobbery, status games, political payback, and a means of working over other people about how important you are with that little badge on your bespoke golf jacket.

I say this in part because I know how easy it is to play the nomination honours game if you are rich, well-connected, or know how to write a nomination letter. As part of a political payback game, I’ve been involved in a successful nomination. Others have observed how the honours list overwhelmingly reflects a particularly heterogeneous group: either the old WASP elite or others who have become part of the dominant elite, though of course there are exceptions. The Jewish elite have played this status game to the core.

Out of the eight people named as key commitee  or staff members of AIJAC on their website, five have some form of Australian honour. Likewise, of the 28 or so members of the ECAJ Executive, including life members, 18, that is nearly 65% have an Australian honour. The Zionist Federation of Australia lists no honours but that is fitting, because they are on about Israel, not about Australia, I suppose.

By way of comparison, according to the ACTU website, none of the members of their executive have a gong (or they keep it quiet), despite the important role they play in Australian life.  Of the 12  members of the Federation of the Ethnic Communities Council of Australia only 2 are named as having an honour.  If we look at another specific community, of the 20 or so members of the Greek Orthodox Community of Victoria board, none is named as having a gong. And even that bastion of the elite, Geelong Grammar, does not mention that any of the members of its school council have an honour.

Now what is going on here?

Even accounting for false modesty on elite organisations like Grammar who don’t add the sacred letters after people’s names, there appears to be massive gradeflation and a bit of a nomination industry at the top end of the Jewish community. I am sure it is happening elsewhere but it is harder to reveal through the internet. Perhaps spotting lapel pins at in the Long Room at the MCG would be a good comparative test.

I think it is time to rethink the abuse of the honours system.  Other than having me as King (yechi ha-melech! we would cry), we need something much more restricted, which is not open to game-playing.

The Palestine Papers, as revealed by Al-Jazeerah and the Guardian, are explosive evidence about the state of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, leaning over backwards to break a deal—a deal that never went ahead and has even less chance of doing so with Netanyahu still in power.

What has been talked about for years on the left, and vigorously denounced by the Israeli government and its foreign agents, has been confirmed by cold hard facts.   Israel has not negotiated in good faith. A state of war has been an easier option than a just two-state solution for Palestinians.  The latter would require Israel’s leaders to take some extraordinarily challenging political decisions and undertake territorial sacrifices that shake some of Israel’s core beliefs to the core.

But something very strange is going on at a time when many voices should be heard both about the situation in which Israel now finds itself.  All the machers and fixers, from the well-funded Diaspora lobby groups, those who never seem to lack a comment, who to act as an ‘amen corner’ for Israel at every opportunity, have fallen strangely silent.

Why?

The Palestine Papers show that, contrary to all the public protestations over the years by Israel and its hardline supporters, Israel did in fact have a willing partner for peace, even, if, tragically, in my opinion, the Palestinian Authority offered a solution that is out of tune on several issues with the Palestinian public. 1) The right of return. 2) Proper evacuation of settlements as well as some neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem that have been unlawfully appropriated since 1967. 3) The status and administration of holy places.   This means that if the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government are to be real partners for peace, each of these issues needs to be dealt with much more generously by Israel to the point that the solution is acceptable to most Palestinians (perhaps affirmed through a plebiscite like that held for Sudanese around the world).

Additionally, the papers show the extent of collusion between the Palestinian Authority and Israel on security matters (including the Gaza Invasion, rather than a state of mutual antipathy).  In the long term, this would result in an authoritarian and unrepresentative regime in the State of Palestine, which while useful to Israel, would be along the lines of other authoritarian Arab regimes (and we can see what’s happening to them right now).   Any future relationship between the Palestinian Authority and Israel needs to be based on civil society principles, not authoritarianism.

The papers also demonstrate that both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are in something of a fantasy land if they think that they can keep the screws on Hamas, whose prestige is only going to be advanced through these revelations. This doesn’t automatically mean that Hamas supporters are all supporters of the despicable Hamas covenant with its anti-Semitic calumnies, or that they are Islamic ideologues. Hamas is seen as taking a more just and moral stand than the secular Fatah.  In one way or another, Hamas and Gaza are part of the story.

Finally, without internal constitutional and structural reform that again demands a rethink of Zionist tenets, an Israel-Palestine deal will never gain the support of Israeli Palestinians whose status as equal citizens needs to be absolutely established in a way that does not lead to their situation of being in a kind of citizenship limbo – yes you are equal, but…not absolutely equal.

Now, in the major Jewish Diaspora communities, my bet is that the machers don’t quite know what to spin because nothing makes much sense anymore. None of the old justifications for a poor, weak, massively threatened Israel make sense.  A deal with a supine Palestinian Authority will last five minutes and Israel is seeding the roots of another revolt if it thinks it can get away with it.

It gives me no pleasure to have to take such a critical view of the whole episode, and I am not happy that the Palestine Papers will make Israel haters delirious.  Back in the early 1990s I believed that the Oslo Accords were a first step towards a long-term peace, and I was angry at Palestinian critics such as Edward Said who said in 1993, that it was all a fraud, ‘an instrument of Palestinian surrender’. Sadly, he has been proven correct.

There appears to be no other way around it.   International intervention is desperately required, certainly more than the one-sided and in many ways ineffectual approach taken by US administrations. Israel’s leaders, for all the think tanks and experts it appears to have on board, have not proved that they want much more than an enforced peace with a local Bantustan, without any pain, or apologies for deep injustices over the years.

Trumpeted exceptionalism to the rules of international law and peace-making curry little favour for Israel these days.  Israel’s justifications are looking very thin and will get very little support as the Middle East erupts with new states, some democratic, some not, but most of which will not necessarily play ball with the non-resolution of a problem that has simmered, with increasing fervour, for not just 40 years, but ever since Zionists became political.

And no wonder so many of the local lambs are playing very quiet to their guiding fox these days.

The author is writing purely in a personal capacity.

The Winklevoss twins

By Larry Stillman Some films are best understood by insiders, and The Social Network is a case in point.  This is not to say that its story and message cannot be greatly enjoyed by outsiders, but The Social Network, written by Aaron Sorkin, who also wrote The West Wing, left me reeling for its insider depiction of Harvard undergraduate life and its intersections with electronic age.  Throw in the subculture of Jews at Harvard and it is a cerebral experience.  The mostly cracking script draws upon the semi-fictional book, The Accidental Billionaires, by Ben Mezrich (also a Harvard graduate). When I saw the film in Pretoria recently, it was obvious from the silence that the Afrikaans-speaking audience was missing a lot of the rapid-fire subtlety of the film (it should have been subtitled), particularly from the opening scenes where the asocial and nasty Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg), has an argument with his girlfriend whom he subsequently calls a bitch in a blog post that helped promote his notoriety.  The film cuts betweens scenes of drunken hacking, social-climbing, lawsuits, sex with Asian-American girls, Boston Brahmin accents, Zuckerberg’s house of code-writers on the West Coast, and the crazy guy behind Napster.  This is all packaged as a kind of war between Zuckerberg, the asocial egocentric code writer and inventor of Facebook, and the elite private clubs at Harvard. Having been a very poor postgraduate student at Harvard, the film gripped me because of the accuracy of its depiction of the affected habits and mannered culture of this island of privilege. The film (and the book in particular), also has a strong Jewish angle, because Mark Zuckerberg and the Brazilian, Eduardo Saverin, the cofounder of Facebook (see his own review of the film) are of privileged Jewish background; although Saverin comes across more as an exotic foreigner than Jewish in the movie. In the film, they are presented as outsiders challenging insiders such as the as the twin WASP  Harvard Olympic rowers, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (look them up on Google). At one point, in faux Latin, Zuckerberg refers to them as the Winkelvī.  One critic suggests that Zuckerberg is “the Harvard Jew at war with Harvard’s WASP decorum.” I’d argue that Zuckerman is at war with Jewish decorum as well.  Mannered and Jewish Harvardians resembling WASPs have been around the place since the 1880s, with a numerus clausus (restrictive quota) during the first half of the twentieth century. Zuckerberg managed to get up other Jews’ (reshaped) noses as well by not sitting down for genteel tea, rather than coffee (to paraphrase Tom Lehrer). With such an establishment (which now incorporates elite African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians), the Winklevī think that they can tell the Jewish Larry Summers, the most arrogant of Harvard Presidents in recent times, what to do because Zuckerberg hasn’t played by gentlemen’s rules. Summers basically throws them out of his office to let them settle the problem as undergraduates, rather than corporate giants. He was mistaken, because the Winkelvī got Daddy’s lawyers involved. The Winkelvī and others, including Saverin, subsequently pursued Zuckerberg for financial compensation for intellectual property theft. A good part of the film comprises of excruciating interviews and confrontations in law offices between Zuckerberg and others. By the end, Zuckerberg is alone, trying to reconnect with an ex-girlfriend on Facebook. He is an unlikeable billionaire and a social failure.  You can’t tell if he knows or cares what damage he causes to other people, and you also can’t tell whether he is honest with himself about how rich and powerful he has become.  Even interviews with the real Zuckerberg that can be seen on YouTube still don’t let us know if he has a soul at all.  Perhaps in his genius he has created something whose implications he doesn’t fully understand. So what’s the Australian or Australian Jewish connection to the film?  Not much.  But in comparative terms, it is interesting to think about what Harvard represents as compared to the undergraduate experience in Australia. Harvard is not Melbourne University, nor is it Monash or anywhere else in Australia.  The residential colleges at Melbourne University (and I went to one) are a pale imitation of what goes on at Harvard.  The intense collegiate experience of the Ivy League, with the exception of Oxford and Cambridge, is probably unique in the world, as are the resources, whether intellectual or material. Significantly, at Harvard there are endowed chairs in all aspects of Jewish studies.  American Jewish philanthropy has supported all aspects of scholarship and study at Harvard.  And this is the case across the United States.  It is not just about being Jewish, but being American (in the best sense of the word), and academics work on the basis of such support in total freedom.  There is also an expectation, at least at the elite colleges, that students get something of that experience. Therein lies a big difference between the two Jewish cultures, one very large, extraordinarily diverse, and culturally confident, and the other, relatively peripheral, small and defensive, still finding its own particular path.  I thus wonder if creative people like Zuckerberg could ever arise in Australia. Finally, and as an aside, my take on why Facebook is such a phenomenon as a social networking platform: Facebook takes advantage of what Mark Granovetter  (not just another Princeton and Harvard alumnus, but another Hebe), in a famous sociological article, called the ‘strength of weak ties’. It lets us maintain our strong relationships, but also take advantage of weaker ties for information, fun, and a million other things, some of which haven’t even been thought up yet.

This article is a response to Deborah Stone’s recent piece in Galus Australis and her summary of the ADC special report, “Antisemitism on Campus. Contemporary Jewish experience at Victorian universities”. The article has now been circulated internationally, which may make ADC happy because it’s up there in the propaganda war; but in fact, I received a puzzled query from a professor of Jewish Studies in Canada.

As a preface, let me say that there is a problem with Australian anti-Semitism, and particularly virulent anti-Zionism that crosses into anti-Semitism. Recently I took a Palestinian organization to task for using vile materials produced by the bizarre Gilad Atzom, an Israeli now in the UK. On another occasion I have berated Palestinian protesters for marching with posters taken out of pages of Der Stuermer. I have also gotten into long online ‘discussions’ with well-meaning Anglo advocates whose stereotyping and typecasting are contemptible. I also resent simplistic and stereotypical representations of Jewishness, which the media seems to thrive on (sounds of Fiddler on the Roof).

But there is a problem with misstating or exaggerating the problem of ‘anti-Semitism’ and presenting the ‘evidence’ as authoritative. This is the case with the ADC report. As Deborah Stone says in her report, 50 students who were members of the Jewish students’ organization out of a number we actually don’t know, self-selected to respond online, and that they perceived anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism as direct anti-Semitism. These were students who were motivated and WANTED to respond.

From the start, I will admit that I am primarily a qualitative researcher who understands the ins and outs of that sort of work, but I also know a bit about statistics and validity in social science. There is a basic flaw with the methodology. For the survey to have any credibility whatsoever, it has to be constructed in such a way that the various hypotheses put forward on the basis of the evidence are defensible. The only way to do this is to construct a valid scientific poll, what is known as a random sample of a total population. Usually, in polling, you want at a 95% confidence that the results are valid with a 5% margin of error. For example, with a population of say 3000 Jewish students, you would want a poll of at least 341 students. This can be constructed for example, by phoning a sample of male/female students assuming that everyone has a phone, spread across different age groups and suburbs, as well as faculties and universities. This is the kind of methodology used in the Monash Centre for Jewish Studies 2008-9 Population Survey where it says (p. 39), “A ‘scientific’ sample is only as reliable as the database from which it is drawn”. Thus, a self-selected ‘sample’ of only 50 Jewish students, all of whom are members of the Australian Union of Jewish Students is bound to have an inherent bias because it excludes other Jewish student and working with relatively small numbers and thus making extrapolations is misleading and erroneous.

In addition, the report makes all sorts of assertions without empirical data. As an example, the causal suggestion that Latrobe is more anti-Semitic because it is in the Northern suburbs of Melbourne and closer to Muslim populations and has a training program for Muslims is made without any evidence. Could it not also be due to a strong presence of fringe leftists of Anglo or other persuasions who dominate campus politics? If the ADC’s conclusion is not true, then the ADC could be guilty of stigmatizing the Muslim/Arabic community. I see many Muslim students at Monash and if anything, they are too studious and apolitical.

It can also be argued that the poll had leading questions, because it asked, for example, whether students had seen ‘anti-Semitic’ acts (as distinct from anti-Israeli acts). A cleverer poll would have investigated student’s understandings of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and their relationship to campus politics. It would have closely examined the types of acts that were considered anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist and scaled their perceived and if possible, actual severity. How do you compare ‘Fuck Jews’ on a toilet door to a nasty banner at a rally?

Thus, the survey resembles push-polling, which results in self-fulfilling and confirming answers for the polster. Since anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism are difficult and contested terms, there is a need to unpack the terms in research and get some insight into how students, a) perceive the relationship between the two, b) see the responses of non-Jews, and particularly political antagonists in terms of the distinction, and c) if possible, deal with some real facts (the very hard stuff).

The survey has another problem, because it doesn’t look at how students perceive Israel’s actions (good, bad, ugly) and how actions at particular times lead to activity on campus. Instead, the survey works from an unproblematicized picture of Israel, that is a ‘Zionist approach’, which again, excludes or marginalizes legitimate and /or extreme critique.

Another issue that the survey fails to address adequately is that of identity on campus. The report claims that students live in fear on campus and that they play down their identity. But again, the survey only looks at the responses of the most highly motivated of students who responded to the survey. I suspect that on campus, many Jewish students who come from a relatively cloistered and privileged existence are somewhat shocked to be in contact with the rest of the population. Unquestioned Zionism comes into strong conflict, and assertive and not very polite debate with very different sorts of people with elements of a culture clash. But again, this is just a hypothesis that has to be tested through much more careful forms of research.

The ADC report is a very sloppy self-fulfilling report that should not be called research. Yes, there is a problem with ultra leftists and a few others on campus and over-enthusiastic embrace of the Palestinian cause at all costs, but the effects of what they do (and what Jewish students do in response) are not well analysed.

Reading

Anthony Lerman, Sense on Anti-semitism

Free speech vs. hate speech - a delicate balance

By Larry Stillman

Hate speech is often characterized as ‘words that wound’, words that are deliberately intended to cause severe discomfort, stigmatization, a feeling of being sullied, and humiliation in the face of others.”

Within the Melbourne Jewish community, there appears to be a well-established tradition of encouraging public hatred through the denunciation of people, mostly for political sins, some of which may be true, more often than not (in my opinion) fabrications.

Recently,  on  Galus Australis, I was accused by an observant Jew of being part of a group of “whores who would let their own nation perish,”  with a suggestion that a tree and rope as  part of the solution for dealing with people with opinions such as mine. Others used the word ‘traitor’.  The president of the JCCV has now said that the AJDS is engaged in ‘vilification’ against Israel, and a number of brave pseudonymous individuals continue to regularly interrupt reasonably polite online conversations  on this site with the intent of causing discomfort and stigmatization. Alex Fein suffered such a fate on ‘Sensible Jew’, with simply appalling behaviour by a number of people who clearly delighted at inflicting pain and hurt.  Someone associated with AJDS has been called a ‘capo’ in the pages of the Jewish News, and the list goes on and on and on of insults which are clearly examples by hate speech.

Of course, many Jews and Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation Commission are highly critical of what they claim are expressions of hate speech by artists or actors, Palestinians activists, politicians such as Julia Irwin, Antony Lowenstein (who I think is often wrong), and even journalists (at the Age and Sydney Morning Herald in particular). Getting close to the bottom of the anti-Semitic sewer, there are people like the truly horrible egomaniac known as Frederick Toben, of the Adelaide ‘Institute’ a promoter of neo-Nazism and holocaust revisionism, and self-martyrdom for his cause.  For his sins, he has spent time in a German prison, and been pursued in the courts by the ECAJ. The ECAJ has also pursued the obscure Tasmanian Olga Scully as well as Muslim extremists.

We also know that manifestations of hatred of Israel which at times melt into anti-Semitism are manifested in chants of ‘Israel out of Palestine’, and the Israeli flag has been burned on the steps of Parliament by Palestinian extremists.  Fortunately, more intelligent Palestinian advocates deplore and have nothing to do with such material, but in an environment of strong political anger, things do go awry (as we see with settlers burning Korans).   And of course, there are plenty of people who hate other minorities such as Muslims, with a hate pamphlet being circulated in Elwood recently.

Locally, in 2004, Joseph Gutnick won a landmark lawsuit for libel for material published online in the US but available in Australia, albeit to very few people.  The magazine article made a connection between his business and religious associations that Gutnick particularly objected to.  While there were no grounds to bring suit in the US, a judgement was sought in Australia because of tighter libel and defamation laws.  The case has major free speech implications because it is made it possible to sue for online materials published in one place and read in another.  There is now a case before the courts in which Andrew Bolt, the nasty and quite vindictive Herald Sun commentator has complaints made against him by a number of indigenous Australians, and the judgement when made, could also have significant implications for free speech.

Whether in the case of Jews slandering each other, others slandering Jews, or others slandering others (indigenous Australians, gays), what are the limits to free and particularly hateful speech in today’s environment when language and symbols are in endless play in different contexts?   I understand that a very recent case has ruled that a swastika graffiti done in a workplace was not necessarily offensive—but just graffiti. In fact, it is getting harder and harder to draw a boundary between critical remarks and hate speech, given the free use of swear words, and a culture of confrontation in the media and politics.

My solution is that in the age of the internet, we increasingly need thick hides and ear-plugs, and at the same time, deal with invective as rationally as possible, thereby isolating those who write or speak drivel from their supporters.  Pursuing such people legally only gives them oxygen, and banning their material only sends them onto another website.

The Gutnick case, and potentially the Bolt case, are warnings about the dangers of bringing about lawsuits for viewpoints and statements that disturb people, because they can limit free speech.

Thus, in the case of the Jewish community, which has by and large supported strong legislation against hate speech, I do not think that it has been considered that members of the community could in fact be guilty of encouraging hatred, yet Jews as much as anyone else can be vitriolic haters.

What is the solution?

I think we need to err on the side of free speech rather than censoring people.  If they rant, there is no need to lie down and play the victim, because the new media allows us to hit right back.  We need to counter with rational argument and public excoriation that shows what fools the haters are.   We also need to educate the community, particularly kids about the dangers of prejudicial thinking and action.

By Larry Stillman

I’d like to argue the moral case for supporting a selective boycott of products from the Occupied West Bank. I take the view that it is illegally held territory in which its prior and current non-Jewish inhabitants (Palestinians, whatever their citizenship) live under a form of military rule and control system which completely privileges Jewish settlers and Israeli businesses and abuses human rights.

There are a number of ways to approach the problem of the occupation and the denial of the right of self-determination from a moral point of view.

This first is a universal human rights approach, reflected in UN principles and international law which is opposed to such things as military occupation or land seizures, of the denial of affective legal remedies against oppression, and second, from the position within the Jewish tradition.

Second, the Jewish social justice view can be summarized as the principle of Tikkun Olam derived from the Mishnah, which is the struggle to repair or install righteousness in the world, as well inspirational mottos like “Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof” (Justice, Justice you shall persue”, Devarim 16:20). This also relates to the concept of ethical mitzvot, for both religious and non-religious Jews alike; obligations to make the world a better place, including challenging authority, which traditional Judaism appears reluctant to do. Unfortunately, this tradition barely exists in Australia, with attempts to stomp out dissent on issues relating to Israel going back many decades.

In the US, where I lived for many years, there is a tradition of speaking out and being pro-active for the greater good by rabbis and ordinary people alike, because sometimes, speaking out, even in a symbolic way brings about change. Here are some examples of people (sorry, all middle-aged men) who have supported dissent, including boycotts:

• Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, has written for many years about the need to combine a inclusive spiritual dimension into both everyday life and social justice from an inclusive approach. His first major book, Surplus Powerlessness (1986), had a strong influence on my own thinking about contemporary forms of social justice at that time.
• Rabbi Samuel Korff of the Boston Beit Din developed halachic rulings to support boycotts to support the rights of underpaid farm workers in the 1960s and 1970s.  He was also responsible for the denunciation of Jewish slumlords in Boston.
• Rabbi Joshua Heschel, who is revered by many Christians and Jews in the US his activity in the Civil Rights movement in the US, was close to Martin Luther King, and he supported the boycott movement of segregated facilities in the South, along with many other Jews. He also opposed the war in Vietnam.
• More recently, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of the Philadelphia-based Shalom Center, has supported the establishment of a Mosque at ‘Ground Zero’ in New York, and he has also taken a strong stand on Israeli politics.  Waskow has been active in the Reconstructionist movement for decades.
• Saul Alinksy, who came from an Orthodox background, developed powerful and highly influential organizing techniques including non-violent grass-roots community action and boycotts.
• Other American Jews have been active in many other causes including the labour movement and anti-racism movement.

Returning to the current excoriation of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society for suggesting the most modest form of boycott—against products from the West Bank. I suggest that people in AJDS who are supporting a limited boycott are coming out of the moral position and tradition I have outlined and are no one’s stooges, nor exploitable by extremists.

AJDS has been dumped in with the ‘deligitimizers’ by the so-called official leadership even though AJDS has indicated its disagreement with many elements of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign and the positions it takes within the Green Line. Thus, those who have seen the countless of posts by me in Facebook of late know that I have been vigilant in attacking anti-Israel extremists, whose views are Judeophobic, and AJDS on its website and elsewhere, has clearly distanced itself from extreme positions.

I do not endorse a BDS position that crudely blocks economic, social and cultural exchange between Israel and the rest of the world.  Tactically, the BDS is engaging in erroneous tactics, creating a gulf with the Jewish community. The position that AJDS supports is a far cry from some of the rhetoric and actions taken (not always with the nicest of motives) by the BDS Movement, including a number other Jewish organizations that support a full boycott.  I hope that supporters of BDS ask us why we have taken our position, and I will argue the case. To claim that the moral position we take threatens Israel, or that it delegitimizes the country or that we are mates with crass anti-Semites is an insult to the intelligence of thinking people who care about the future of Israel.

Furthermore, the tactic of Jewish community ‘leaders’ that claim that proponents of boycotts are no more than ‘delegitimizers’ is in fact a way of turning attention away from the Occupation—that is, what is causing the problem in the first case: the Occupation itself and Israel’s consistent behaviour of playing for time at the expense of others’ liberty.

I care deeply about the future security of Israel, but I know that its future cannot be linked to a continuation of 43 of its 60 years as an occupier and thief of another’s birthright.  Saying that putting a ‘Made in Israel’ label on something from the West Bank is morally wrong and asserting that we should not buy such products is the right thing to do.

Larry Stillman is a member of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society Executive, but is expressing his own and not anyone else’s opinion.

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.

That ‘downtown’ Hebron, around the Tomb and Mosque of the Patriarchs or the old Casbah is a flashpoint, is an understatement.  Of course, Hebron has a sorry history in modern times, going back to the massacres of 1929, but this is no excuse for current behaviour by ‘settlers’. The Goldstein massacre in 1994 only intensified the tensions between the communities. The Israeli army has to maintain a very large presence to secure the safe passage and complete dominance of a few hundred settlers who make life hell for the Palestinian residents and have no compunction in taking over homes.  Economically, the locals have suffered enormously. Acts of vandalism and violence by settlers including their children are well-documented. Checkpoint abuses are frequent and monitored by organizations such as Mahsom Watch.

The tour was conducted in clear breach of  ‘Birthright’ policy.  Their website has the following stipulation: ” Our tours do not travel to or through areas of the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem, other than the Jewish Quarter of the Old City (changes are possible when permitted by the security authorities).”   It’s pretty scary that these tours are being hijacked for pumping kids full of the most extreme form of  ‘birthright’ Zionism. Alignment with current Israeli politics of repression or an absolutist view of religious history are not a very good example of respect for the rights of other people.

It also appears that Birthright kids have done other exciting things like visit an outpost overlooking Gaza and use it as a ‘photo opportunity’.  How nice. Nothing like an Arab refugee encampment in the background. Of course, technically, such visits are within Israel, but it gives the impression that Birthright is about short-term brainwashing of young people with the hope that they become strong converts and unquestioning supporters of Israel.

Palestinians are real people whose rights are trampled on, and an example that has hit the headlines has been the   destruction of a  ‘unrecognized’  shantytown of  very poor Bedouin in the northern Negev.  High school volunteers took part in this destruction.   A hard line is being undertaken towards such settlements to make way for JNF forests and later on, Israeli housing  ( some call this ‘greenwashing’ of Palestinian presence). One Israeli critics calls such actions ethnic cleansing and forced urbanization .  I find that kind of language painful to use, but it appears accurate.

It needs to be remembered that the Australian JNF has a special association with the Negev as well, and supports community development for the Bedouin, though the effects of such community development are disputed.  Whatever the case, we are vicariously linked with what goes on.  Of course, I am not associating Taglit-Birthright or the Australian JNF with such extremism, but they are all part of a disturbing pattern that can be no longer ignored as Israel embarks on an all-out campaign to ‘explain’ itself.  Such things can’t be easily explained away.  We should stand up for the underdog in Israel.

My opinion of the presence of young Australians in Hebron and others having photo ops over a community in a state of siege, or the presence of Israeli kids in the destruction of a village may make you very angry because I take the view such acts they are antithetical to human rights by Israel and in the Occupied Territories.

Of course, vehement anti-Zionists argue that these activities and attitudes are inherent in  Zionism.  I actually think that Zionism is far more heterogeneous but it is undeniable that something is fundamentally wrong in the examples I have cited.

Where do we go from here?  If the solution is ultimately to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinian people, then what should Birthright be doing to promote peace making and the fulfilment of a peaceful and democratic dream for all communities?  There are many other organizations in Israel (and even on the West Bank) which could both provide impressionable young people with exposure to identity the meaning of  human rights and democracy for both communities.

“In recent years, Israeli groups have put forward several constitutions for the state of Israel. However, these proposals…have been preoccupied with the question of, ‘Who is a Jew?’ and have neglected the primary constitutional question of, ‘Who is a citizen?’” Quotation from the preface to the ‘Democratic Constitution’ proposed by Adalah, 2007.

The position taken by Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, intrigues me because it argues for the transformation of Israel within 1967 borders.  Adalah is an organization that has been funded by the New Israel Fund and the fact that it has produced such a document has been used to bash the NIF but here I want to address the Adalah proposal, rather than re-hashing issues with the NIF. The proposal comes from sober-minded, well-educated, middle class Palestinian Israelis, different to the stereotypes that many have about Palestinians.

To reject Adalah’s proposal and to say that it is a cover for a  ‘Greater Arab State of Palestine’, endangering Jews, or naïve ultra leftist solutions for ‘secular democratic Palestine), is a simplistic rhetorical scare. It ignores the very sober nature of the proposal, which is about the nature of citizenship in a country for all its citizens founded on “distributive justice” rather than specific ethnic rights.

The proposal is thus far from a call for a dhimmi (traditional, second-class) status for Jews in an Arab country but it also confronts the notion of the special (legal) Jewish character of Israel, preferring a constitution in which all communities are equal in a legal sense. It can be seen as an important positional document for a practical way forward.  I interpret the document as supporting a ‘two state’ solution, though others, in the current environment, may see it as a ‘one state’ answer. I am more focussed in this article on ‘Israel’ than whether there are one or two states.

It is interesting that a number of Israelis on the  left including Meron Benvenisti in a recent Haaretz essay, and now Yehuda Shenhav in a new book (not yet in English),  have been suggesting similar proposals for a new, democratic state to break the current  impasse,  though these seen as highly controversial, being tagged as anti-Zionist, a form of suicide and so on, but it is clear that the issue is going to re-enter the discussion-sphere in Israel, as it has abroad.  I also understand that even some in the settler movement are considering the possibility of citizenship in a Palestine as a quid pro quo for continuing settlements.

Adalah sees no justice to the fact that the actual rights of Arab/Palestinian Israelis are for all practical purposes, like those in the pre-civil rights USA for African Americans, theoretically equal but practically, separate and unequal. Despite the many exceptions, e.g. members of the Knesset, Israeli Palestinians do not get their civil or taxpayer’s worth of benefits (see this) and legal discrimination is endemic.

Notwithstanding arguments over legal philosophy, the proposal also needs to be taken seriously for other, practical reasons:

• Arabs within the 1967 boundaries constitute at least 20% of the population with a rapid rate of natural increase.
• If the proposal would be widely supported by the different Arab communities in Israel (and surveys show they do mostly identify with the country), then it represents a ‘coming to terms’ with the existence of a State called Israel with a Jewish majority, and a desire for the end of belligerence.
• If the proposal was accepted by Israeli Arabs, then there would be strong pressure for Arab countries to accept it, and this of course, would pull the rug from under rejectionists—those who oppose Israel in any shape or form, including some elements of the western left.

In addition, the massive subsidies provided to Israel will eventually end, or be seriously reduced and the country will have to stand on its own two feet.  While this may cause heartache to Diaspora Zionist organizations who would lose much face, the ontological needs of American and Australian Zionists, should not alone determine the status of Israel.

While according to the proposal, the ‘Jewish community’ would lose its politically privileged position, cultural rights for self-determination of Jews (a key principle of Zionism), would not be abrogated.   As an example, the Adalah document speaks of the preservation of Jewish and Arab school systems, religious and cultural institutions and so on.

A new bi- or multi-cultural Israel would be able to engage economically with its neighbours, but at the same time, it would mean the end of the ‘special relationship’ with the USA, something which only began after 1973 when the country became increasingly important to US global strategy (and which may be changing, see my blog piece).

The potential is for a return the kind of Zionism espoused in the 1920s by Judah Magnes, who supported “a binational state in which the two peoples will enjoy equal rights as befits the two elements shaping the country’s destiny, irrespective of which of the two is numerically superior at any given time”.

Of course, this picture of the future has some enormous challenges. The democratic constitution is the death knell for the Law of Return of 1950, and by implication, the end of the legal, rather than cultural connection, between Jews in Israel and Jews in the diaspora. Instead, like other countries, immigration quotas would be set. Jews could not expect dual citizenship automatically.

There also is the danger of a multi-party ‘confessional’ or ‘consociationalist’ society, strongly linked to guaranteed representation for ethno-religious blocs, which is inherently unstable (Lebanon, Belgium, Quebec). Thus, Adalah proposes a veto vote for Arab parties on issues affecting Arab rights.

Other than an outright rejection of anything which limits Zionist (and for the other side, Palestinian nationalist) ideals, fear of violence and terror is probably the strongest reason why many people will oppose the New Constitution. Because of militant Islam and nationalism in many parts in the world, the task of building trust will be enormous.

Given that the past 60 years have presented such traumatic experiences for both communities, is it time to consider a Democratic Constitution seriously? Perhaps for the sake of the security of Jews in Israel, the health of its relationship with Jews  abroad, and a new form of Zionism.

Larry Stillman is a member of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society Executive, but is expressing his own and not anyone else’s opinion.

Photograph by Larry Stillman

By Larry Stillman

It hurts. Israel is increasingly called an apartheid state.

In this opinion piece, I wish to deal with the issue from the ‘inside’, from the perspective of an Australian Jew with an abiding connection and deep concern for the future of Israel as a democracy, and a country that has the potential to become a richly multicultural society.  I believe that Israel has lost its soul and is eroding its democratic foundation, replacing it with something that is difficult to justify as anything close to a democracy.

I distinguish between my position and that of people, including some on the left, and Palestinian nationalists who take an uncompromising ‘Israel be damned position’ and condemn Israel as an inherently exclusionary, racist state, while ignoring the racism and religious intolerance that pervades other countries in the region. I do not ignore the racism and religious intolerance in the region, but nonetheless focus on Israel because that’s my connection, and I don’t expect the other countries to be democracies.

Akiva Eldar, a writer for Haaretz (4 January 2010) argued that

“In Israel … institutional discrimination is meant to preserve the supremacy of a group of Jewish settlers over Palestinian Arabs. As far as discriminatory practices are concerned, it’s hard to find differences between white rule in South Africa and Israeli rule in the territories; for example, separate areas and separate laws for Jews and Palestinians.”

This is an opinion that is also shared by long-time civil rights activists such as Shulamit Aloni, Naomi Chazan, and others who argue that the solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is political, but that Israel has instead developed a culture of permanent militarisation and intolerance. Of course, such opinions are rejected as ‘offensive’, both within and outside Israel, but I can only focus here on why such an opinion is regrettably, on the mark.

The case for supporting the view that Israel has gone down a dangerous supremacist path is based on a human rights perspective: should I distinguish between the values I hold dear for Australia and those that should apply to Israel as a liberal, open and non-discriminatory democracy, even as the argument goes, the state is imperilled by internal and external enemies?

Could we accept such state behaviour in Australia on the grounds of national security, and are we so sure that it would not lead to  abuse of power? And particularly, could security measures like those in Israel (including the Separation Wall, separate roads, different colour ID cards, and separation of families) be accepted as a means of benefitting one group of Australians over another (similar to the way that Israeli policy benefits settlers over Palestinians)? Could we accept ‘Aussies only suburbs’ (shades of Cronulla)? Could we accept collective punishment (Gaza) as a solution to dealing with a minority population in revolt?  Would we still be able to argue that with such laws and practices on the books,  Australia would remain an open democracy unlike non-democracies that surround it?

The fundamental issue for me is that I can’t separate my human rights values and expectations into one set for Australia and another for Israel. I also apply the same standards to other countries, particularly democracies. Consider the following scenario. It is set in Australia and I believe that it is realistic.

Australian policy towards boat people is overlayed with paranoia about security and contamination that far outweighs the real threat posed by the very small number of people who arrive here by boat. Yet we have recently built prisons for refugees and imprisoned their children. Politicians and public officials have abused power, all in our own name. Public hysteria has been whipped up (Children Overboard) and we have jailed a number of people in unclear circumstances (such as the Haneef case) on the grounds that they were terrorist sympathisers.

Frighteningly, it’s clear from a number of surveys that at least 30% of the Australian population sympathise with Tony Abbott’s views on refugees, hold deeply reactionary views on many other things, and given half the chance, they’d  bring back hanging, drawing and quartering twice a week at the MCG.  Persecution of minorities is a part of Australian culture.

Indeed I’d argue we had our own version policy of apartheid, whether by way of legislation or informal practice, for indigenous Australians that carried on until at least the 1970s, coupled with the White Australia Policy. I remember a lecture at Melbourne High in 1970 by the Secretary of the right-wing Australian Natives Association (an old civic organisation) praising the South African regime as a model for this country.  Like Israelis and their defenders who deny anything wrong can ever happen, we also have our deniers of ‘black arm band history’, including a former Prime Minister.

I want to make this claim—if Australia suffered from a severe security problem, far worse than Bali, and enough politicians and troglodytes wanted it, I have no doubt that our government would set up a similar system of social exclusion as has occurred in Israel.  Of course, it would appal me, and I hope many other people would see the evil in institutionalised exclusion as a means of enforcing national security, or religious and ethnic cohesion. It’s not something that I could defend in the name of the nation’s security or even on the grounds of defending democracy.

That’s what’s happening in Israel.

If you care about Israel as a democracy (not just in a formal legal way, but in the way that rights and resources are distributed fairly for all its population groups-which they are not), and as a positive centre for Jewish life, rather than a myopic society living on borrowed time and others’ money, the policies that have developed under the excuse of security have gone on for too long, and the unchecked abuses have gone too far.  The self-talk about ‘existential threats’, or pumping up fear of another Holocaust gets less and less sympathy as the settlers behave more and more like lawless thugs.   You need to oppose what’s happening and realised that the Zionist dream, hijacked by money, power, and crazy nationalist and religious ideologies  has become a nightmare.

Israel does have an option, and that is to stop acting as an occupier and oppressor when the excuse of security has increasingly become an excuse for real estate  and resource theft, the collapse of the rule of law, and  forced movement of populations, called by some, ‘ethnic cleansing’, all in the name of  Jewish majority.  Short of behaving like the old minority regime in South Africa, Israel will have to come to terms with the fact that in future, Jews won’t be the majority population group, and this means that over time, the country’s identity will change.  That’s perhaps the subject of another article: can Israel survive as a multicultural state?  And if such a state can live in peace, does it matter that it is no longer a Jewish state?

If you believe in Israel at all costs; not as a country with human rights and an effective democracy, but rather one based on exclusivism, religious imperatives, nationalism, and an iron fist;  then you have to accept what is happening for what it is commonly known – institutionalised separation, known in Afrikaans as Apartheid, and be prepared to live with it.

For further reading, I recommend this reasonably dispassionate piece in Wikipedia.

Larry Stillman is a member of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society Executive, but is expressing his own and not anyone else’s opinion.

A promotional poster for the film District 9

By Larry Stillman

I saw the film last night but this is not District 9.

I write this in Johannesburg, out of touch with the latest “boat’ people crisis” back in Australia, but nonetheless very concerned.  Despite the distance it seems to me that we cannot see the wood for the trees.

‘Unlawful arrivals’, ‘illegal refugees’, the order to not call detainees by name, and numerous other documented abuses, the lies of the faked Children Overboard scandal, the housing of children in jails, the Cornelia Rau scandal – all were part of a deliberate attempt to separate people in desperation from other human beings (that is, us).  The Rudd Government has adopted similar tactics with its hard line against Tamil asylum seekers.
The latest ‘flood’ of rickety boats makes it is easy to gain the impression that Australia is under siege from an Asian-cum-Islamic invasion, with the possibility that terrorists may be sneaking in too.  The fact that many of these refugees have paid money to shady characters only adds to a public perception of criminality.  One letter I saw in the Herald Sun argued that ‘those people’ are spending the same amount of money as a first-class airfare to London, as if to say, ‘aren’t they really the same as rich tourists?’

The reality is that these people are desperate and will do anything to escape persecution and a life of limbo, trapped in Indonesian refugee camps.  In case we have forgotten our legal and moral obligations, we need to remind ourselves of Article 33 of the Refugee Convention of 1951:

“No Contracting State shall expel or return… a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”

Public perception of refugees causes razor sharp public anxiety with every boat arrival.  Yet after rigorous scrutiny by the UNHCR or Australia’s Immigration Department, the vast majority of asylum seekers can in fact be classified as genuine refugees.  Australia’s situation must be also seen from a global perspective.  The five or ten thousand people who come in Australia in this way are just a drop in the ocean of global population movements.  These movements are an international reality from which Australia, one of the world’s most affluent countries, cannot be isolated.

We must not forget that the Jews who fled Hitler were not offered a welcoming hand from this country either, with its restrictive immigration policy and racist stereotypes.  This was despite the fact that all of these Jews clearly had a ‘well founded fear of persecution’ (to quote the UN).  Jewish tradition and memory also records that we were slaves in Egypt, and we celebrate the liberation from slavery each year at Pesach.

In South Africa there are at least one million refugees, who have fled countries such as Zimbabwe and other African countries. In total there are at least 17 million refugees in Africa, almost the size of Australia’s total population.  Many of the refugees in South Africa live in tin shack shantytowns, some of the most squalid and heart-wrenching conditions imaginable.

Photo by Larry Stillman - click to enlarge.

Just down the road from Monash University’s South Africa campus is the Zandspruit ‘informal settlement’.  It wouldn’t surprise me if the film District 9 had been made there.  At least fifty thousand people live here cheek by jowl, inhabiting hovels the size of garden sheds, without running water, electricity or proper sewerage. There are piles of garbage. Fleas and lice are endemic and then there are the rats.   There are only a couple of health clinics here, each with huge queues of mothers and babies desperate for basic health care. If someone is seriously ill, ambulances cannot get into the camp because roads are almost non-existent and the lane ways are tiny. Instead, people must be piled into wheelbarrows and brought out.  The chances of dying en route are high.   It is bad enough when it rains, but when there is a downpour (like tonight, when I drove home to middle-class comfort), Zandspruit becomes a sea of filth and mud.  Because of the struggle to survive, Zandspruit is very violent and there have even been killings.

There are some non-government organisations involved in supporting the community. The people who work for the NGOs are extraordinary, and the local white councillor  (who at first site seems like a relic of the apartheid regime), is an ANC member and a tireless advocate on their behalf.  Monash University gives homework assistance to two hundred children and runs fun activities every Saturday morning.  Amazingly, some of these kids are even making it to university, despite their struggles.

I have gone into such detail because it is easy to forget how horrible life can be for people whose displacement is no fault of their own, just as it is easy to fall into cold governmental language that dehumanises these people.  Just as the Nazis found good for use for bureaucratic language, Australians have a penchant for a similar characterization of supposed enemies, aided by venal politicians and enthusiastic bureaucrats.

Australians should make every effort to cut down the razor wire, and help such people who ‘choose life for themselves and their descendants’ (Devarim 30.19), instead of a slow death.   The numbers of people who get to Australian ‘illegally’ are tiny compared with what happens in the rest of the world, and we can afford not only to treat them better, but also to invest in civil reconstruction and development abroad so that they needn’t flee in the first place.

This piece was written by Larry in a personal rather than professional capacity and does not reflect the views of Monash University.