It's hard too see what positive contribution this could add to Limmud Oz

By Anthony Frosh
As happened last year at Limmud Oz in Sydney, advocates of the destruction of the State of Israel have had their application to host a session rejected. And just as happened last year, these same advocates and their supporters have been complaining via social media that they have been censored by the Limmud Oz committee. They claim that their free speech has been violated, and they also claim that it is a violation of Limmud’s principle of pluralism.

However, these claims do not hold up to much scrutiny.

The organisers misrepresent themselves as peace activists. In actuality, they are rabid anti-Israel activists, who call for the destruction of Israel. The organisers should at least have the decency to be honest about who they truly are.

The organisers are in favour of full boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) against Israel (including academic boycott) and therefore it is disingenuous of them to claim the moral high ground with regard to pluralism or free speech.

While Limmud is pluralistic, there of course needs to be limits.  For example, Limmud includes sessions on the Holocaust, but need not include sessions that promote Holocaust denial or take a pro-Nazi line.

Likewise, just because Limmud has some sessions that delve into the Arab-Israeli conflict, it does not mean that Limmud is under the obligation to accept all applications for sessions relating to that conflict. It is also worth mentioning that Limmud Oz will include at least one panel session involving Palestinians and AJDS members focussing on Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue .

This is not about Freedom of Speech, as the complainants try to frame it.  Rather, it’s about the freedom of an organisation to choose to whom it grants a platform. Similarly, at an event at which one of the session organisers spoke recently, where the crowd marched under the Hezbollah flag, one can safely assume that Zionist voices were not welcome. And that is the fair prerogative of the organisers of that event.

Furthermore, these people who support calls for the destruction of Israel are free to organise their own day of learning (or day of hatred at it would likely be). One can only imagine the very limited level of pluralism that would be on display if that were to occur.

In the interests of full disclosure: Galus Australis is involved in promoting Limmud-Oz events. However, the above is solely opinion of the author, and is unrelated to any association between this publication and Limmud Oz.

In response to a recent discussion on Galus Australis relating to the ethical and moral issues that arise if one chooses to serve in the Israeli military, Larry Stillman has submitted the following article.

The key issue relates to the view that the Israeli Army is an army of occupation in the Occupied Territories and the occupation has little to do with defence imperatives but a huge amount to do with expanding Israeli territory well beyond any strategic necessity.  I am not questioning the fight against terrorism, or the principle of self-defence under fire, but the fact is that ‘defence of Israel’ has been extended to institutionalised maltreatment of civilians under the Occupation of the West Bank in situations that have nothing to do with armed resistance.

These acts often occur to people (including children), not even engaged in acts of violence or minor acts of resistance in which the response has been disproportionate.    The kinds of activity that Israel is engaged in have been well debated in discussions about just and unjust wars under the influence of such writers as Michael Walzer.  Thus, Raymond Kou has written that The Israeli Army considers the situation as an ‘armed conflict short of war’.  However, this imprecise definition also creates a legal and moral hole: the Palestinians are undefined individuals who fall between civilian and combatant categories, but with shifting guidelines on their treatment by the IDF” [“Occupation and the Just War” International Relations 22 (2008), p. 305].

Over the years, it has been revealed that Israeli commanders have been consistently loose with the rules of engagement and many human rights abuses occurred, though these claims encounter predictably strong official opposition. Soldiers are thus in breach of Israel’s own Code of Conduct called The Spirit of the IDF, particularly point 6. “Soldiers must accord dignity and respect to the Palestinian population and those arrested”, as attested in the work of such organizations as Mahsom Watch, which, for example demonstrate the Israeli army does little to protect Palestinians from settler violence.

The result of this undeclared occupation are consistent breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which covers the treatment of civilian populations under occupation, including issues such as harassment, forced transfer of populations, transfer or theft of property (including land for settlements, also known as colonies), restriction of movement, collective punishment, or infringement on the rights of children.  Israel is a signatory to the convention.

However, even if Israel claims that its acquisition of territory is ultimately benign, and leads to increased living standards and so on (as it often claimed in defence of the Israeli presence), there is another question and that is, as Walzer says, “What do the inhabitants want? The land follows the people. The decision as to whose sovereignty was legitimate … belonged by right to the men and women who lived” [In Just and Unjust Wars, p. 55].  Palestinians don’t want an Israeli presence, benign or otherwise, and the longer the Occupation continues, the more difficult a bilaterally acceptable agreement will be to establish.  The Oslo failure is an indication that Israel needs to make much more real concessions in response to the overtures and opportunities made through the Arab (Saudi) Peace Plan and so on.

Because Israel is so linked to many of our lives—and claims to represent our interests—we also have every right to insist that it holds itself true to democratic, legal and ethical principles,  Jewish or universal.

If we cannot question how the force of arms is used, or the ‘justice’ of its occupation then democracy is threatened because the principle of ‘might is right’ prevails.  This is the view taken by many Israel progressives, including for example, Gershom Gorenberg-who considers himself an orthodox Jew and a Zionist—who states that  ‘settlement project’  as part of the occupation has turned occupation territory into a realm where, ultimately, there [is] no law’ [The Unmaking of Israel, p. 88].   The soldiers are there to project the settlement project, not defend Israel. The settlement project has been expanded over the years from a tiny of number of people to 300,000 residents, but these numbers do not excuse Israel from its legal and ethical responsibilities.

One result of this ethical and moral slide from the ideal of ‘tohar ha-neshek’, or purity of arms,  as well as ‘havlagah’ (restraint) was the the ‘Combatants’ Letter in 2002—a statement of refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories was . Significantly, their letter stated:

“ We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people. We hereby declare that we shall continue serving the Israel Defence Force in any mission that serves Israel’s defence. The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.”

Unfortunately, a response that justifies militarism and occupation appears to come out of two trends in Jewish religious nationalism.  The first, to use the words of the philosopher Emil Fackenheim in his To Mend the World)  , is that we are  commanded to do everything to deny Hitler a posthumous victory.  Harold Schulweiss, making critical remarks about Elie Wiesel, said that the danger with this kind of thinking is that it become a ‘cudgel’ against recognising  others ‘who have their claims of suffering’, and this becomes linked to constant cries of an ‘existential crisis’  in Israel’s existence, to justify almost all and any activity in its defence.

Second, as an extension of the teachings of Rav Abraham Isaac Kook, his son, and others, the sacredness of the land of Israel has become a predominant doctrine in religious nationalist and Zionist haredi thinking. Anyone or thing that stands in the way should be removed or has no rights. The worst case of this kind of thinking is found in a stream of thinking which justifies the killing of Palestinian women and children found in works such as ‘The King’s Doctrine’ written by a settler rabbi. Increasingly, this ideology is having an effect in the Israeli army, where many of those command positions actually live in the Occupied Territories and thus have an interest in preserving Israeli rule, whether or not the Israel government continues to want to hold on to them.

Thus, when we have young people in Australia being indoctrinated about a ‘greater Israel’ in which Palestinians have no place or are a nuisance, and such people join the Israeli military they are in grave danger of becoming ethical and moral abusers or worse.  The excuse cannot be made that we do not know about such matters or they are irrelevant for young people who make aliyah.  Eighteen is legal adulthood, and the law for an adult includes the assumption that one is able to make an informed choice. The fact is that the Occupation has been with us for over 40 years now and I find it hard to believe that any young Jewish person is unaware that the Occupation is not benign.

Choices can be made.  Many Israelis choose not to serve in the Occupied Territories by either refusing service there, or undertaking alternate forms of conscription.  The same choices are available to Australians who commit themselves to a life in Israel.

For more reading, see the following:

Norman Solomon, ‘Judaism and the Ethics of War’  International Review of the Red Cross 87 (June 2005)

Yeshahayhu Leibowitz, ‘Heroism.’ In Cohen and Mende- Flohr (eds),  Contemporary Jewish Thought.

Larry Stillman would like to stress that this article is written from a personal capacity.

Sam Stoller (2nd from left) & Marty Glickman (3rd from left), removed from the US 1936 relay team by Avery Brundage, in order to not offend Hitler any further following victories by African American athletes such as Jesse Owens

By Ashley Browne
So how many women will be competing for Saudi Arabia at this year’s summer Olympic Games?

The answer is zero, just as it has been at all eight Olympics to which the Saudis have sent a team since first competing in Munich in 1972.

Once again, the Saudis have resisted all calls to emerge from the Stone Age and to allow women to represent their country at the Olympics. This time around will be the only nation to do so.

Brunei and Qatar have opened their selection to women in 2012 and certainly in the case of Qatar, it had little choice but to do so given the aspirations it has to host the 2020 Summer Games.

The Saudis played it beautifully, telling the world it was considering a change in selection policy. Once the utterly predictable decision to stick with the status quo was made, it was too late for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to do anything about it.

Human rights activists have started a campaign to ban Saudi Arabia from the Olympics, but not much will come of it. After all, if women don’t even have the right to drive a car in the kingdom, what chance would they have of swimming, running and jumping for their country.

If the IOC had any smarts, it would put the Saudis on notice now that the situation for Rio de Janeiro in 2016 must change, but we’re not holding our breath about that one.

Nor are we holding out much hope of the IOC yielding to another request, one that we think is equally reasonable.

The London Olympics will mark the 40^th anniversary of the darkest episode in Olympic history – the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Games in Munich.

The efforts by the IOC to commemorate the lives of the murdered athletes since then have been lukewarm at best. There was a memorial service in the days afterwards, but even then IOC chairman Avery Brundage barely mentioned the victims and used the occasion for a ‘state of the Olympics’ speech and to rail against the encroaching professionalism and to shout down those arguing for Rhodesia, as it was known at the time, to be booted out of the Games.

Brundage’s lack of empathy wasn’t a surprise to many observers. He was the same guy, who when in charge of the US team in 1936 agreed to the removal of sprinters Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller from the team in order to appease the Nazi organisers of the Berlin Olympics.

Google “Avery Brundage and anti-semitic” and you will be left in little doubt of what people thought of Brundage then and now.

There are memorials to the slain Israelis at the Olympic village in Munich and of course, in Israel. The only other Olympic host nation to have erected any sort of monument is Australia, where a plaque sits at the base of one of the light towers at what is now known as ANZ Stadium at Homebush.

This year, change.org has taken up the cudgels, launching an online petition calling for a minute’s silence in memory of murdered athletes during the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. There have been such calls before, but this time the campaign has gone viral.

Writes Ankie Spitzer, the wife of Andrei Spitzer, one of the murdered Israelis: “Silence is a fitting tribute for athletes who lost their lives on the Olympic stage. Silence contains no statements, assumptions or beliefs and requires no understanding of language to interpret.

“I have no political or religious agenda. Just the hope that my husband and the other men who went to the Olympics in peace, friendship and sportsmanship are given what they deserve. One minute of silence will clearly say to the world that what happened in 1972 can never happen again. Please do not let history repeat itself.”

Chances are strong that this plea, like all those before them, will fall upon deaf ears. The Australian Olympic Committee could make a representation on this behalf, such is the strong standing our country has in the Olympic movement. But AOC chairman John Coates has bigger fish to fry such as the seating arrangements at the forthcoming fundraiser that the Prime Minister has chosen not to attend.

Having chosen not to stand up to the Saudi Arabia, winner of one silver and one bronze medal it its Olympic history, the IOC has shown itself to be a bit soft when it comes to the issue of human rights. But a minute’s silence at the London Olympics, for all victims of terror, not just the murdered Israelis, would send a powerful message.

Is the IOC up to it?

Ashley Browne is a senior writer for AFL Media and the co-founder and consulting editor of leading Australian sports blog, BackPageLead. He is a former national editor of the Australian Jewish News. You can follow him on Twitter @afl_hashbrowne

The most entertaining aspect of the episode was watching Dawkins on several occasions bellow at the audience (whenever they laughed) “Why is that funny?!” As one rather witty aired tweet alluded to, this would be, along with the question of whether there exists a deity, one of the great scientific or philosophical questions that Dawkins would never be able to answer.

At rather one dramatic point, host Tony Jones tried to paint Pell as having said something anti-Semitic, an event that brought much joy to the face of Dawkins, as well as that of Jones.

TONY JONES: George Pell, can I just come back to you on this question of the existence of God. Why would God randomly decide to provide proof of his existence to a small group of Jews 2,000 years ago and not subsequently provide any proof after that?

GEORGE PELL: Well, I don’t think there’s ever been any scientific proof. I don’t believe God does anything randomly, although he might set up he might set up a system which works, apparently through, you know, through chance, through random but if you want something done, you’ve got to ask somebody. It’s no good, say, my asking everyone in the congregation will you would do something. Normally you go to a busy person because you know they’ll do it and so for some extraordinary reason God chose the Jews. They weren’t intellectually the equal of either the Egyptians or the…

TONY JONES: Intellectually?

GEORGE PELL: Intellectually, morally…

TONY JONES: How can you know intellectually?

GEORGE PELL: Because you see the fruits of their civilisation. Egypt was the great power for thousands of years before Christianity. Persia was a great power, Caldia. The poor – the little Jewish people, they were originally shepherds. They were stuck. They’re still stuck between these great powers.

TONY JONES: But that’s not a reflection of your intellectual capacity, is it, whether or not you’re a shepherd?

GEORGE PELL: Well, no it’s not but it is a recognition it is a reflection of your intellectual development, be it like many, many people are very, very clever and not highly intellectual but my point is…

TONY JONES: I’m sorry, can I just interrupt? Are you including Jesus in that, who was obviously Jewish and was of that community?

GEORGE PELL: Exactly.

TONY JONES: So intellectually not up to it?

GEORGE PELL: Well, that’s a nice try, Tony. The people, in terms of sophistication, the psalms are remarkable. In terms of their buildings and that sort of thing, they don’t compare with the great powers. But Jesus came not as a philosopher to the elite. He came to the poor and the battlers and for some reason he choose a very difficult but actually they are now an intellectually elite because over the centuries they have been pushed out of every other form of work. They’re a – I mean Jesus, I think, is the greatest the son of God but, leaving that aside, the greatest man that ever live so I’ve got a great admiration for the Jews but we don’t need to exaggerate their contribution in their early days.

Leaving aside Tony Jones’ error regarding historical timeframes (2000 years??), it was wrong of him to try to imply Pell had smeared the Jewish people as an intellectually inferior people. It is a reasonable statement that from the point in history when the Hebrew patriarchs are believed to have lived right through to when the Exodus is believed to have happened, the Egyptians were a far more technologically advanced society than that of their Hebrew contemporaries.

As Pell clarified, intellectual capacity is not intellectual development. Our Hebrew ancestors were not less intelligent than their Egyptians contemporaries, but they were at an earlier stage of their development. The Egyptians had already reached their zenith as a civilisation, a civilisation that would soon be at its end, whereas Jewish civilisation was in its relative infancy.

In the above exchange, Pell could perhaps have been accused of having spoken clumsily, but in fairness to him, it probably wasn’t a topic he was expecting to have to speak about.

Other points of interest included Dawkins confusing atheism for agnosticism.

I live my life as though there is no God but any scientist of any sense will not say that they positively can disprove the existence of anything. I cannot disprove the existence of the Easter Bunny and so I am agnostic about the Easter Bunny. It’s in the same respect that I am agnostic about God.

In actuality, Dawkins is an avowed atheist who lives his life, like most of us, as an agnostic. After all, on the program, Dawkins, not without a modicum of pride, refers to explaining evolution as his “life’s work”. It seems contradictory to have pride in a “life’s work” if one is really operating with the understanding that all a human being amounts to is a complex set of atoms. (For more on this reasoning, see here).

As for the Cardinal, he likely disappointed many critics and followers alike who have a simplistic understanding of religious belief when he stated he believes that human beings have evolved from primate ancestors. Pell made the mistake of saying humans had evolved from Neanderthals, when orthodox scientific theory in fact places Neanderthals on a side branch from Homo Sapiens, both species having had a common ancestor. Instead of graciously accepting that Pell was not rejecting evolutionary theory as Dawkins would have posited, Dawkins instead rudely tried to embarrass Pell for having the details wrong. This from a man who routinely misunderstands the religious beliefs of those he belittles.

Image: Aaron Vincent Elkaim

By André Azoulay
I must have been 12 or 13 years old. Yet, more than half a century later, my mind dearly treasures, with the same emotion, force and exceptionally rich uniqueness, an image, a fleeting moment, a short-lived flare, as if it were yesterday.

An image, a moment and light that would mark my life and lend to my entrenchment in a Muslim, Berber, Arab and Jewish Moroccan community depth and legitimacy that got the better of the unforeseen turn of events at the moment, of all the doubts and amnesia dizziness which have, for too long, undermined the cultural, historical and human texture Muslims and Jews have woven together, for nearly a millennium, in the Maghreb and the Middle East.

One autumn evening in the 1950’s, a family friend, Haj Limam, entered my father’s office at the back of an alley in the Kasbah of Essaouira. After the customary salutation, he pulled out of his jellaba a small beige bag full of soil that he gently placed into my father’s hands saying: “This is for you and your family. I have just returned from pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and as you cannot go there I come to share my prayers with you and bring you some of this holy soil that belongs to both of us!”

It was much later that I understood the full extent of what I had experienced, of the now almost surreal character of the scene whose depth, modernity and quintessence had more substance than my child mind, my father or his friend could possibly grasp. This spontaneous brotherly sharing of the sacred was not exceptional. For the three of us, it was part and parcel of everyday social life of Muslims and Jews in Essaouira.

Everyone would have understood that that had been more than an anecdote; and that flashing lightning of the possible that I have, after due consideration, chosen to favour to give full meaning to the evocation of my Jewish childhood and life in the land of Islam.

Almost at the same period of time (it must have been 1953 – 1954), I recall having very naturally and spontaneously joined forces with my Muslim fellow compatriots to protest every evening at dusk, chanting slogans calling for the end of the French protectorate and the return of King Mohammed V from exile in Madagascar.

There was no heroism in that. We were children, running through Essaouira streets, calling for independence and freedom. We were hounded, without much conviction, by the auxiliaries of the time. The ritual had endured for a few months, to the great displeasure of parents worried about their progeny.

Here is, for once, what could have been an anecdote: Today, I wonder what could have pushed a 12 year old boy, attending the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the French school, to spontaneously identify himself with the Moroccan national movement while he had been indoctrinated, every single day in school, that the Gauls are his forefathers and that France is his alpha and omega.

A posteriori, the answer to this question was naturally imposed on many amongst us when we were consciously in keeping with this Jewish – Muslim capillarity built and maintained by both Jews and Muslims, and whose depth and continuity are expressed through the most common and truest gestures of our daily life. Such capillarity determined, more than any other rhetoric or theory, our main choices and our most fundamental attitudes.

Today, I revisit the episode, and many others, of the daily lives of Muslim and Jewish children in Mogador – Essaouira, with enthusiasm and elation.

Upon invoking this episode, a strange feeling of guilt overwhelms me for having unveiled something unutterable; something to handle with due care. The History of textbooks, research and literature had hardly opened its gates for us. This emptiness paved the way for clichés and fantasies.

Due to omission and ignorance, suspicion is lurking, sparking disbelief and, at times, concern at the evocation of the brainstorming which has the audacity to go against the current of the mainstream and unique thought. One which, at best, would have condemned me to amnesia, and, at worst, to knowing silence together with those who have finally lived with the fact of seeing their identity and history reconstructed or rewritten according to the unforeseen turns of the moment’s events.

In this attempt to resist oblivion, the typically Moroccan celebration of the last day of Passover takes on a dimension which is both emblematic of the art of the possible and symbolic of the extent of affinity and spiritual closeness Moroccan Muslims and Jews have cherished over the centuries.

Once a year, for centuries now, the Mimouna Passover last day takes on an air of carnival with all its parades and bonfires. Jews and Muslims in Essaouira came together, sung the same songs and celebrate, with the same fervor, freedom and happiness for being together.

In the streets of Essaouira, and in the market square, transformed for the occasion into a huge stage of blissful brotherhood, endless waves of dancers, musicians and families flowed, at dusk, and for hours, embracing and congratulating one another, exchanging the traditional Arabic greeting of solidarity “Terbah”[1].

Before this particularly touching event, Muslim families paid their Jewish friends visits in their homes. The doors were thrown wide open, from sunset, to Muslim neighbours and friends who came and brought trays filled with milk, honey, butter, wheat ears and flowers to celebrate this moment of grace which commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the Jews had been freed from slavery in Egypt.

The history of Jews living in the land of Islam, which has yet to be written down, is by no means fiction staged out of kindness or for the sake of the cause at the service of, more particularly, those with whom I identify myself and who struggle so that both Palestinians and Israelis live in peace, each in their State; each admitting the other’s rights to dignity, justice and sovereignty.

It is rather time to say, write and propagate, through our testimonies, that our respective religions, cultures and histories should no longer be excuses or fig leaves to hide political realities which require political responses. Today, delicate issues between Jews and Muslims are neither religious, nor cultural or historical. They are political. Our spiritual traditions are all but dialectically related to the issues.

The long awaited and cherished trend is at last taking shape in the Muslim Mediterranean region. It is one of winning back and reconstructing the cultural and spiritual diversity which had shaped, and largely determined, our communities. Such recovery is legitimate in itself, but can be crucial for the start of new dynamics, more particularly between Jews and Muslims.

What held true in the past may inspire the modernity and universality of values our communities must recover.

Morocco has well absorbed the ideal and consequently entrenched in the preamble of its new Constitution, adopted in July 2011, the deep rootedness of Berber, Jewish and Andalusian civilization          al components in the Moroccan society and the identity of the Moroccan people.

As far as I am concerned, the indisputable nature of historical facts will eventually prevail and make up for the gaps, omissions and the errors of a moment.

More than half a century ago, a Moroccan Muslim had brought his fellow Jewish citizen a small bag of soil from Jerusalem which had been under Jordanian control. The bag has lost nothing of its topicality, exemplarity and truth.

Decades ago, I had witnessed this episode between my father and his friend Haj Limam. None of us, however, would have imagined, in the magic of the elating moment of shared brotherhood, that this true story would, one day, find its continuation in the preamble of the new Constitution put forth to the Moroccan people by King Mohammed VI.

While the joyous common celebration of the Mimouna no longer marks Essaouira market square, the city has been, for nearly a decade now, the unique meeting place in the world where Jewish and Muslim poets, singers and musicians are still celebrating with music lovers from around the world, the Atlantic Andalusias. The embroidered lyrics and music woven with a shared heritage sung alternatively in Arabic and Hebrew.

Indeed, history has often staggered in the process of this laborious and uncertain recovery of the often lost richness of our cultures.

Nevertheless, it should be understood that my Judaism in the land of Islam is not merely a nostalgic reminiscence about my childhood. I don’t want it to be written in the past tense only!

André Azoulay is a senior adviser to His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco.

The above is the text of letter from Mr Azoulay, which was addressed to the participants of Friday’s (30/3) Capital Jewish Forum event in Melbourne, which was held in conjunction with JBD-Jews of the CBD, featuring the Ambassador of Morocco, His Excellency Mohamed Mael-Ainin (who was accompanied by the Deputy Ambassador, Mr Abdelkader Jamoussi). The letter was presented passionately by Mr Abdelkader Jamoussi.

Kony is the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla group that has forced thousands of children to fight in a murderous armed conflict lasting more than two decades. He has avoided capture for over 20 years. 10,000 children have been abducted by the LRA to form the army of “prophet” Kony, whose aim is to take over Uganda and run it according to his vision of Christianity. The boys are turned into soldiers and the girls into sex slaves.

Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court for his crimes. According to the Invisible Children organisation, the reason Kony has been allowed to wreak havoc for so long, is because not enough people are aware of his crimes.

However, many NGOs and academics have noted the Kony 2012 campaign does not address the real problems on the ground, nor does not offer the right solutions.

In the Mishneh Torah, Rambam explains how there are eight levels of tzedaka, including lower forms that are shaming, and higher forms that are empowering. Rambam explains that the highest level of tzedakah should aim to “strengthen the hand of the poor by giving him a gift or [an interest-free] loan or entering into a business partnership with the poor person. By this partnership the poor man is really being strengthened as the Torah commands in order to strengthen him until he is able to be independent and no longer dependent on the public purse.”

I wonder how donating to the Invisible Children organisation by purchasing the Kony 2012 kit for $30 would fit into Rambam’s criteria. Does it strengthen the people most affected by his crimes in Uganda? Will his capture end their suffering?

Whilst I agree with the director Jason Russell that the LRA should be disarmed and Joseph Kony should be brought to justice, there are still many questions to be asked about what is the best way to achieve these two goals. The author of DRC: Between Hope and Despair, Michael Diebert, has noted that “the campaign to get the US government to provide military support of the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, ostensibly to facilitate the arrest of Joseph Kony, appears to be a road fraught with peril. The Museveni government has been undergoing a serious crisis of legitimacy since at least 2001, when the Supreme Court of Uganda, while upholding the vote in presidential elections that year, also found that “the principle of free and fair election was compromised.” Through reckless military adventurism and a hunger to retain power, Museveni has routinely trampled on the values of human rights that Invisible Children claims to champion.”

Other critics of the video have also claimed it to be just another case of stuff white people like or the whites in shining armour phenomenon where stories about international development only generate interest if centred around a neat narrative of – cause – intervention – outcome – with the hero of the day being a young white foreigner.

Other criticisms of the film note that it ignores the role that local communities need to play in making decisions about international aid and that there are some far better strategies worth advocating other than those offered by Jason Russel if one is really concerned about the wellbeing of the Acholi people in Northern Uganda.

On the other hand, Jacob Acaye, the Ugandan former child abductee at the heart of the film who is but one of thousands of victims of the LRA, has responded (in this interview in the Guardian) to Russel’s critics who highlight that the LRA has largely stopped operating in Uganda since 2006. Acaye states “It is not too late, because all this fighting and suffering is still going on elsewhere.  Until now, the war that was going on had been a silent war. People did not really know about it. Now what was happening in Gulu is still going on elsewhere in the Central African Republic and in Congo. What about the people who are suffering over there? They are going through what we were going through.” Invisible Children has also responded to many of the other critiques against them which are both strategic and financial in nature here.

Whilst I still feel that we should all do far more research before deciding which charity and which approach to support, I think there are a number of broader questions raised by this campaign which are relevant to both educators who are looking for meaningful ways to engage their students in issues overseas, and to us as a Jewish community.

Ethan Zuckerman notes that “the Invisible Children story presents a difficult paradox. If we want people to pay attention to the issues we care about, do we need to oversimplify them? And if we do, do our simplistic framings do more unintentional harm than intentional good? Or is the wave of pushback against this campaign from Invisible Children evidence that we’re learning to read and write complex narratives online, and that a college student with doubts about a campaign’s value and validity can find an audience? Will Invisible Children’s campaign continue unchanged, or will it engage with critics and design a more complex and nuanced response?”

I think the same can be said of the many simplistic right wing and left wing advocacy campaigns that we often share about the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.  Do they help or hinder our understanding of the conflict?

If there is one thing that Kony 2012 has affirmed for me, it is the danger of only hearing a single story and believing that there is a simplistic solution to a complicated conflict. In the words of Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

Ittay Flescher is a Jewish Educator in Melbourne.

We're surprised that this bully used the correct form of "You're"

By Larry Stillman

In an article I wrote in Galus Australis (November 2010), I said that “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.”  I also said that “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?”

Now we have an episode that affects the reputation of the Jewish community because of who has said it (the son of Zelman Cowen), a highly educated Orthodox Jew with a Chabad background and a very modest association with Monash University.

Four years ago, The Age reported that Cowen spoke on behalf of a coalition of conservative Christians, Muslims and Jews saying that government “is indulging in social engineering in giving lesbians and single women access to fertility treatment, giving lesbian partners legal recognition as parents and allowing surrogate mothers.”

In the past week, more intolerant comments have come to light from an article Cowen has published about the Safe Schools Coalition Victoria program to prevent bullying of gay children in schools. Cowen has launched into a jeremiad against what he sees as modern secularism, liberal religion, and materialism resulting in the promotion of homosexuality.

According to those with much greater theoretical and practical insight into these matters, he is dead wrong on many counts, and I accept their counsel after having read his tendentious argument.

His opinions have been widely reported in the gay and lesbian media, as well as in MX daily (the freebie on trains), with a front page story.

I understand that thankfully, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has distanced itself completely from his remarks.  The problems of the Jewish Orthodox community with diverse sexuality can probably be better dealt with by those with more expertise in sexuality, bullying, religious prejudice, and institutionalized child abuse in Orthodox communities. This is something that Cowen should have addressed in his remarks if he was serious about morality.

But what has particularly angered gays and lesbians is the use by Shimon Cowen of his association with Monash University to provide credibility for his screed.  The byline to his article states that “Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen is Founding Director of The Institute for Judaism and Civilization, and is an Associate in the School of Philosophical, Historical and International studies at Monash University.”

Such is the concern over Cowen’s viewpoint that the Vice Chancellor of Monash University, Ed Byrne, when alerted, quickly distanced Monash from Cowen’s comments, while asserting the principle of academic freedom.  The Star Observer (a gay and lesbian newspaper) also reported a statement by Monash that “Dr Shimon Cowen is not employed at Monash. He holds an adjunct/honorary role (unpaid) in his field of research expertise – Jewish philosophy and theology – which is why he is listed in the staff directory”.

I have also raised the issue with the National Tertiary Education Union, and while the matter still has to be considered at a committee level, I know that the leadership would be appalled by Cowen’s stance, but at the same time, would also stand up for the principle of free speech.

As well as this, a group of academics in the Education faculty at Monash have condemned his views. I also understand that some academics want all ties between Cowen and Monash cut.

Monash University (and other universities) has a very large number of people in what are known as adjunct (what used to be called honorary) positions. These are provided to people on the basis of their qualifications or academic status, on the recommendation of faculties, as a means of providing them with some access to university resources (often the library), rather than the bowl of porridge or beer as was customary in medieval times. At one time, he had an adjunct association with the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilization. I understand that he no longer has that association with the Centre, but he does have adjunct status attached to the Faculty of Arts.  I don’t know when this expires.

I have searched the Monash Research Profile directory to see the status of his research but as far as I can see, there is nothing, unless I am mistaken. Perhaps his work, such as the article that has caused controversy, has not been reported to Monash.   This lack of productivity may be taken into account when his appointment comes up for renewal.

Thus, it appears, as an act of generosity, Cowen, like many other people, has been given a leg-up to his professional career (though the website of his Institute has almost no content). Perhaps he has now overplayed his cards by publishing this dreadful article along with his Monash association. What can be done?

The terms and conditions of being an adjunct at Monash also include reference to Equal Opportunity and Human Rights legislation.   I suspect that any case brought against him would fail because he would claim that he was engaged in academic argument in good faith. Moreover, some people use their academic association to impress those who naively think that their views are officially ‘endorsed’.  Modesty is often absent in academia.

This is painful news for gays and lesbians, and others outraged by his comments. However, as far as I am concerned, the principle at stake is much the same as dealing with hate speech coming out of people like Frederick Tobin of the anti-Semitic Adelaide Institute, or for that matter, the right of SBS to broadcast the political drama, The Promise.   In the same way, while I think that Students for Palestine and some in the BDS movement a menace, I  have to defend their right to free speech, as I do to Joe Gutnick’s politics in Hebron with which I strongly disagree.   In a desire to censor or pull the rug on disturbing opinion, we can endanger everyone’s freedom of expression; because the problem is that it is very, very hard to draw the line correctly.

Thus, it is all too easy to turn people like Shimon Cowen into a martyr, particularly as he would become a pin-up boy of the conservative forces in this country who are engaged in a culture war against what they view as evil modernity.  It would also strengthen the forces of intolerance in the Orthodox community.

We also have to defend Cowen’s right to free speech, because next time “they could come after you.”  The Senate Inquiry of a couple of years ago into alleged leftist bias in higher education showed how little the principle of free speech is understood by those who see a left conspiracy in every lecturer’s class.  The danger is that those accusations of one sort or other could all too easy result in suppression of free speech and thought.  We should not forget until very recently, Australia and its States were renowned for their censorship zeal.

The solution to Cowen’s bigotry is more free speech, and at the same time a vigorous challenge to his views in a way that will educate the public, including the religious community.  He is welcome to defend his pompous assertions, but he will have to deal with people who are educationists, not specialists in Jewish philosophy and theology, as is Cowen. Peer review would be very cruel if he submitted his work to a respected educational journal, or even a moderate rabbinical school in the US or Israel.

And then, there may be Orthodox and more liberal Jews locally who are prepared to challenge him on religious grounds.  Cowen has clearly gone out of his area of expertise, covering his prejudices with a academic ‘gloss’ and that is his real weakness.

Show his ideas up for what they are –prejudiced rubbish, but don’t blame Monash University for supporting the principle of free speech by someone with a very modest, and possibly tenuous link to it.

Larry Stillman was a Committee member of Liberty Victoria for a number of years. He is on the Executive of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society, and is also a Senior Research Fellow at Monash in the Faculty of IT and with the Monash Oxfam Partnership.    However, these views are absolutely his alone.

Stepan Kerkyasharian

Stepan Kerkyasharian, the Chair of the Community Relations Commission for a multicultural NSW and President of the Anti-Discrimination Board, wrote the letter below to SBS in relation to The Promise. Notably, Kerkyasharian was the Head of SBS Radio in its formative years and member of the Executive team which set up SBS Television. He was also a member of the Independent Complaints Review Panel of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for ten years. This letters follows Jewish community complaints to SBS and this response from the SBS Ombudsman.

I refer to the series, “The Promise”, recently televised by the Special Broadcasting Service.

The Community Relations Commission has the legislated responsibility to promote community harmony in our multicultural and multi-faith society.

I am acutely aware of the distress that the series caused to the Jewish Community, particularly to the survivors of The Holocaust.

At the core is the concern that the series negatively portrays the WHOLE of the Jewish People. Such a portrayal cannot be justified in ANY context. There is a distinct separation between condemning an action by a government on the one hand and condemning the whole of the people of a nation collectively, through stereotyping, on the other hand. In the context of television, I am of the view that the portrayal of an entire nation in a negative light as part of a dramatic work is not acceptable either. This is reinforced by SBS Code 1.3.

Stereotyping, particularly in the context of race or ethnicity not only creates distrust and hatred but condemns the generations yet to be born.

I urge the Board of the Special Broadcasting Service, as the ultimate editorial authority of its programming content, to re-consider the representations from the Jewish Community with due regard to the potential destructive consequences of racial stereotyping and desist from further publication or distribution of the program.

I write in relation to your formal complaint to SBS about The Promise, a four part series broadcast by SBS on four consecutive Sunday evenings from 27 November 2011. Your complaint was among a number of complaints investigated, then reviewed and determined by the SBS Complaints Committee, chaired by the Managing Director, Michael Ebeid, which met on 17 January, 2012.

The SBS Complaints Committee is constituted under Code 8.9 of the SBS Code of Practice (see annexure 1) and was convened in light of the number of complaints that the broadcast of the 4 part series The Promise breached the SBS Codes of Practice.

The SBS Complaints Committee investigated, reviewed and determined each of the complaints about each and all of the 4 episodes of the series The Promise, including your complaint by email received on 28 November 2011.

This letter is to advise that your complaint was not upheld and the reasons for SBS’s decision.

Your complaint was investigated against Code 1.3 of the SBS Codes of Practice (see annexure 2 below). Some of the complaints investigated also raised the issue of accuracy and balance, perhaps seeking to invoke Code 2.2 of the SBS Codes of Practice (see annexure 3 below). Code 2.2 has no application to this drama, being limited to programs produced by SBS’s News and Current Affairs division. The Promise was not produced by SBS’s News and Current Affairs division.

Your complaint specifically included concerns that The Promise:

• presented one-sided Palestinian propaganda;
• was anti-Semitic; and
• characterised Jews as liars, untrustworthy and wealthy while Palestinians are portrayed as poor, loving and considerate.

That complaint was investigated and reviewed specifically. In addition, the Complaints Committee investigated and reviewed all complaints in respect of three over-arching Code-related issues raised across all the complaints taken as a whole, which, in summary, were that the program:

• was anti-Semitic;
• promoted, endorsed, or reinforced inaccurate, demeaning or discriminatory stereotypes (relevantly of Jews and/or Israelis); or
• condoned, tolerated or encouraged discrimination or prejudice against Israel and/or Jews as a people or a religious group.

Allegations of historically inaccuracy were investigated and reviewed insofar as they related to the above issues. But, as noted earlier, accuracy per se is not a Code requirement in respect of a drama such as The Promise.

Some complaints alleged that the broadcast of The Promise (either in a particular episode or collectively the series) amounted to racial vilification. These allegations have been investigated and reviewed against the Code provisions precluding condoning, tolerating or encouraging discrimination or prejudice. The advice of SBS Legal department also was taken into account in this respect.

In assessing against The Promise against Code 1.3, the Complaints Committee had regard to Australian Communication Media Authority’s test of the ordinary, reasonable viewer as defined by the ACMA’s Investigation Report No. 2537 of 2 March 2011. It states:

“In assessing the content against the Codes, the delegate considers the meaning conveyed by the relevant broadcast material. This is assessed according to the understanding of an ‘ordinary, reasonable’ viewer.

Australian Courts have considered an ‘ordinary, reasonable’ viewer to be:

A person of fair average intelligence, who is neither perverse, nor morbid or suspicious of mind, nor avid for scandal. That person does not live in an ivory tower, but can and does read between the lines in the light of that person’s general knowledge and experience of worldly affairs.[1]

The delegate asks, what would the ordinary, reasonable viewer have understood the program to have conveyed and, in so doing, the natural, ordinary meaning of the language, context, tenor, tone, and inferences that may be drawn.

Once this has been ascertained, it is for the delegate to determine whether the material has breached the Codes.”

The Complaints Committee’s investigation and findings

The Complaints Committee noted that The Promise is a high quality drama series that was written and directed by Peter Kosminsky and produced by DayBreak Pictures in association with Stonehenge films, Canal+ and Arte France. It was produced in association with SBS TV although SBS had no editorial control over the production. It was first broadcast on Channel 4 (UK) in February 2011. It was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for the Best Drama Serial. Apart from the United Kingdom and Australia, the drama has been sold to SVT Sweden, YLE Finland, DR Denmark, RUV Iceland, RTV Slovenia, Globosat Brazil, TVO Canada.

The Promise is a four part work of fiction. Its dramatic narrative makes reference to some political or policy debates between the Jewish/Israeli and Palestinian communities and, at different times, to the political status of the area. But these references are incidental to the purpose of the series, namely, the dramatisation of the personal experiences of two related people, a grand-daughter and her grandfather, visiting the same region six decades apart.

On the Channel 4 website Peter Kominsky describes the series this way:

This is first and foremost a drama. I wanted to take two characters on a journey – starting pro-Jewish but then becoming less certain, in keeping with the thrust of our research. There are no caricatures – all the characters are based on people we met, read about or interviewed. One character is a soldier who was in Belsen, another is an Arab thrown out of his village in 1948. It would do an immense disservice to a complex situation to attempt to over-simplify it. I’m not attempting to be definitive. It’s not a comment piece. It would short-change the viewer to tell them what to think in a simplistic way.

The series is detailed and the characters portrayed are complex in the interwoven storylines which show a range of political and personal positions. As Mr Kominsky says, the film did not claim to be historically accurate, nor to be a documentary. However, it is fair to conclude that by the end of the series the sympathy of audience is more likely to be with the Palestinians than with the Israelis.

The SBS Codes of Practice do not limit the subject matter of fictional dramas, nor do they restrict the range of political views presented. Consistent with the general principles of freedom of expression, Code 1 (General Programming) of the SBS Codes of Practice acknowledges that SBS will broadcast a broad range of program material:

SBS’s programming can be controversial and provocative and may at times be distasteful or offensive to some. Not all viewpoints presented will be shared by all audience members.

Allegations of anti-Semitism

The Complaints Committee found that the series was neither anti-Semitic nor racist. While many characters in the series display increasing antipathy towards Israel, Israelis and Jews at different times, this is merely part of the dramatic narrative, creating the conflict that provides the momentum of the storyline. As you know, it is quite common to portray individuals, groups or even nations in a negative light as a part of a dramatic work.

The central character is a young English girl, Erin, who appears in the contemporary storyline, and provides the dramatic relief for the historical storyline, whose central character is her English grandfather, a British soldier Len. These two characters are brought together by being shown to make similar journeys, driven by their respective relationships with people who happen to be Jewish, a lover in Len’s case; and a school friend in Erin’s case.

The changing political perspectives of the central characters across the narrative, is a matter of politics, not race or religion. As the characters develop, the series traverses issues of betrayal, trust, love and loyalty. These highly emotional issues are the standard structures of drama on television, stage and film.

It was the view of the Complaints Committee that the series does not, demonise Jews either individually or as a collective, nor deny their individual and collective right to selfdetermination and therefore does not vilify Jews or Israelis.

Further the Complaints Committee does not accept that the program simply made the Jews look bad and by contrast made the Palestinians look unproblematic. True, some Palestinian characters criticise Jews as being “greedy” or having “stolen” land or homes but the Palestinian “suicide” bombers are obvious negative characters among the Palestinians, where the drama finds it colour in actions rather than words.

In addition Erin is critical of Omar’s suggestion that it is disrespectful to leave the home of the of the “suicide” bomber in Gaza she says “…. I didn’t respect his daughter, she murdered three people. I’ve been blown up by a suicide bomber. OK. I know what I am taking about”. In a similar vein, in the contemporary storyline, the principal Palestinian character Omar, is threatened with a gun by a Hamas supporter at the home of the “suicide bomber”, and tells Erin they have to go because “the son is Hamas and he will not have me here”.

The drama presents a range of views and perspectives, and the characterisation of the main Jewish characters, including Paul and Clara are nuanced. The same is true of the Meyer family, who are shown as complex characters. The point is underlined as the Meyer family, individually and as a whole, continues to show Erin respect and provide her with support and hospitality although she challenges and criticises them at almost every level.

Although The Promise has two interwoven stories set in different times, it is about the drama of various human relationships, which happen to involve characters from different cultural and political groups who are brought into conflict. It is the differences and tension that is critical to the drama, not the identity of the players.

Discrimination or prejudice against Israel and/or Jews as a people or a religious group

The Complaints Committee reached the conclusion that the various political or policy debates between the Jewish/Israeli characters on the one hand, and the Arab/Palestinian characters on the other hand were incidental to the main purpose of the storyline in the drama series as a whole; namely the dramatisation of two personal journeys made some 60 years apart as a young girl becomes obsessed with her grandfather’s diary.

Like all drama, there is tendency towards a binary play of “good guys” and “bad guys”. That characterises all drama, to a greater or lesser extent, and is almost inevitable given the need to hold the viewer’s interest. It is an oversimplification to cast the drama as being bad Jews versus good Palestinians.

After a careful investigation and review of each of the episodes individually and the four part series as a whole, the Complaints Committee is of the view that the film does not breach Code.1.3.

Inaccurate demeaning or discriminatory stereotypes

The Complaints Committee noted that many complaints specifically referred to stereotyping of Jews, including allegations that Jews are stereotyped as liars, untrustworthy, wealthy, conspiratorial, cruel, hateful and violent. The Complaints Committee considered that this was an incorrect reading of complex characters, which ignored their individual and collective positive characteristics.

Some complaints alleged that this perspective was reinforced by a contrast with the depiction of other (non-Jewish) characters in a favourable light. Some complaints focused upon the disparity of wealth. For example, in the contemporary storyline, The Promise depicts the Meyers as being rich family. These are Jewish characters, but their wealth has a dramatic function in the narrative, about the effects of political turmoil reaching every Israeli. The drama is set in one Jewish family’s home, almost in isolation.

The Complaints Committee rejects the allegation that the use of one family involves any stereotyping, positive or negative. It is simply a family around whom a drama is hung. There is no suggestion that the Meyer family is a typical Israeli family, they are clearly affluent. However they can be contrasted against the settler family who appear to be only moderately comfortable. The Complaints Committee found that as only two Jewish families are shown, the ordinary reasonable viewer would not conclude that these families typify Jewish or Israeli society.

Conclusion

This is a complex drama, that is obviously presented as a work of fiction. Each of the main characters has many facets. Obviously, some viewers will focus upon particular facets of each character. But in any drama as densely layered as The Promise, characters are depicted at different time in different ways; the loving father may also be a stern taskmaster, the reckless teenager may be a loving daughter too. The portrayals vary with the narrative and the development of the drama. This is typical of all drama.

The Complaints Committee is satisfied that the ordinary reasonable viewer fully appreciated that The Promise was a fictional drama and nothing more than that. The Complaints Committee found that that the characterisations in The Promise did not cross the threshold into racism, and in particular that it did not promote, endorse, or reinforce inaccurate, demeaning or discriminatory stereotypes.

In the light of some early representations after the first episode of the series was broadcast, SBS prefaced the broadcast of each subsequent episode with a reminder that the film was a drama to negate any suggestion it was a historical or documentary film. SBS considers that the disclaimers highlighted what is obvious from the content of the film, that it is a work of a fiction.

If you consider that this response is inadequate you are entitled to take your concerns to the Australian Communications and Media Authority for external review. SBS appreciates you raising your concerns with us, and would like to assure you that SBS presents a wide range of factual and fictional program material on the Middle East.

Yours sincerely

Sally Begbie

SBS Ombudsman

The late Andrés Escobar, reacting after his sadly infamous own goal in 1994

By Anthony Frosh

In attempting to ban DVD sales of The Promise, a polemical mini-series recently screened on SBS, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) have done a proverbial Andrés Escobar.

Attempts, or even perceived attempts, at censorship only ever result in cultivating more interest in the object of the censorship. If you want to get your high school students to read their physics textbooks, you can’t do much better than banning them.

I only saw the first episode of the series. As a piece of drama, I found it too unsophisticated to keep my interest. One of the first things I noticed, besides the lame acting and dialogue, was that Israeli youths were driving far more expensive cars than those driven by even some of their most spoilt Toorak or Vaucluse contemporaries, a sure sign that the film makers had little interest in being true-to-life. Perhaps they were trying to perpetuate a stereotype (that has nothing to with Israel) about Jews that one might sometimes encounter in Western universities concerning Jewish kids being rich and spoilt.

The first episode, although lacking in accuracy and realism, seemed more balanced than I had expected. Later, I heard that the hostile portrayal of Jews, Zionism, and Israel, really takes off as the series progresses. When I heard this, I wondered whether this was an example of the hostile media phenomenon, whereby emotionally invested parties perceive relatively neutral or balanced media content as strongly hostile to their own side.

However, if this were merely a case of the hostile media phenomenon, then the scientific literature predicts that Palestinian advocates would have also had similar reactions; that is, they would have perceived the series as being highly hostile to their side. A little bit of research reveals this is not the case. Australians For Palestine (which would be more accurately named Australians against Israel) called for supportive submissions to SBS and the relevant politicians within the communications portfolio concerning the series. I also witnessed a number of anti-Semites on Facebook championing the series.

All this leads me to believe that ECAJ is accurate in its perception of the series as anti-Semitic. As for their comparisons to Nazi propaganda, well I have not seen the series other than the first episode, but I think everyone should be extra-cautious when it comes to Nazi comparisons, as these risk trivialising the horrors that Nazis represented.

None of this changes the fact that censorship is not only wrong in principle, but is highly counterproductive. ECAJ’s efforts will sadly see a lame piece of propaganda disguised as art get far more attention than it deserves. It will also result in the Australian Jewish community once again being labelled as advocates of censorship and media control.