The most interesting, and apparently controversial, census image that we could find

By Anthony Frosh

‘There’s this unspoken thing among Jews,” comedian John Safran was quoted in a recent interview published in The Age,  ”that no matter whether you’re kosher or not, you always ask for kosher meals on aircraft to help keep the demand up.”

Now, while I’ve never heard of this, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the rumour exists and if there are Australian Jews who do just that.

And while I generally order the Asian Vegetarian meal, I must confess that last Shabbos I was telling my machatonim to make sure they include Hebrew and Yiddish when they answer the census question on language spoken at home.

“But we don’t speak Yiddish at home,” my sister-in-law pointed out.

“What’s that got to do with it?” I retorted. “Do you want to be personally responsible for the cancellation of the SBS Yiddish language hour?”  I proceeded to impress on my sister-in-law and mother-in-law, who do frequently speak Hebrew to each other, that they should answer every question on the census with an eye to how the resultant data might be used.

“But we can’t lie!” they exclaimed.

“I’m not suggesting you lie. We do use Yiddish words and the bureau of statistics don’t provide a minimum quantity, so technically, you wouldn’t be lying.”

The Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) believe that the Jewish community misses out on vital services and funds as the Jewish population in Victoria is not adequately represented in the census due to the voluntary nature of questions relating to religion and ethnicity, and low participation rates in the census.

John Searle, president of the JCCV stated,

“If you are Jewish, then be counted as a member of the Jewish Community by answering Question 19 on religious affiliation as – ‘Jewish’ or ‘Judaism’. Accurate representation ensures that effective planning and funding is allocated to the Jewish community by Federal, State and Local Governments. It also enables community services and organisations to adequately resource schools, healthcare, aged care, childcare and other essential services”.

And while on the topic of the underreporting of Jews, it is known that a number of Jews, particularly Holocaust survivors, and even some of the next generation, do not declare their Jewishness on the census, given the history of how census data was used by the Nazis to round up Jews.

I’d be interested to hear how you and your family approach the census.

Census night is this Tuesday August 9th .

Greens Senator Hanson-Young, with some friends who just bought some new scarves at The Gap

By Yaakov Gorr

Whilst Shabbos shul-goers were leyning Parashat Metzora, the Victorian Greens were in their State Conference and dealing with a leprosy of a different kind.  A representative of the Greens’ NSW branch had been invited to attend in order to explain the policy adopted by several candidates in the recent NSW state election on “boycotts, divestment and sanctions” against Israel.  The national position of the Green, and also that of the Victorian branch, is not supportive of the idea of BDS.

According to a senior Greens member who I’m in contact with and who had attended the meeting “BDS is not the Victorian position and not the national position.  BDS has been proposed as a policy for the Greens a few times but the proposal has been defeated.”

And the red spots affecting the Marrickville Town Hall?  Well, supposedly the spreaders of evil speech will be taken outside the organisation until they are considered to be ritually pure, and this may involve Marrickville City Council reassessing several of its positions. According to my contact, it is not uncommon for municipalities to take points of view on international issues if there are members of that community within the municipality – for example Yarra City Council did a lot of work with East Timorese, many of whom were living in Yarra during that country’s struggle for independence, and currently does good work with asylum seekers.  There are, however, few Palestinians in Marrickville.  Many Marrickville politicians – both from the Greens and Labor – have viewed the backlash against the policy and are having second thoughts.

Those second thoughts ought to have been influenced by a reading of two new documents, produced by Arab intellectuals, which were made available to Victorian Greens, which showed that of the best countries to be an Arab in the middle east, ranked by education, unemployment rate and GDP per head, Israel was in the top six along with oil rich countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and UAE.  GDP per head is twelve times higher in Israel than in Egypt, eight times higher than in Syria and four times higher than in Jordan.  Unemployment rate for Arabs in Israel is half that of Egypt, Syria, Iran and Morocco.  School completion for Arabs in Israel is eight times higher than that of all citizens of Tunis, Mauritania or Algeria.  Israel doesn’t just rank ahead of every Arab country in the UN Human Development Index, it also ranks ahead of Finland, Austria, and the UK.

Some Victorian Greens now have a desire to meet “Green-minded” members of the Jewish Community with a view to thrashing out a new Middle East policy.  Many appear impressed not only by Israeli achievements in terms of the return to collective farming by disaffected city youth, water recycling, service taxis as a means of public transport, and take-up of solar hot water systems, but also of new industries of an ecological bent which could provide green jobs in Australia such as commercial fisheries, methane production from farm waste, and drip irrigation.

A scene from The Reluctant Infidel, where the main protagonist, Mahmud/Solly has an identity that blurs the lines between Jewish and Muslim

Jews should welcome a Muslim prayer group in St Kilda, argues Deborah Stone.

I don’t know the Muslims who want to use the Alma Road Community House for their prayers. I have no reason to believe they are terrorists, any more than I have reason to expect that the applicants to run the next Italian restaurant will be using it as a mafia hideout or that the local Catholic school is sheltering a paedophile priest.

It’s true the Muslim community contains a small section that support fundamentalism, and an even smaller group of potential terrorists. It’s also true that there are bubbles of underworld activity and paedophilia and other terrible crimes within certain groups for complex historical and sociological reasons.

But people are innocent until proven guilty. The day we start assuming all Muslims are a threat is the day we end religious freedom – not just for others but also for ourselves.

Alma Community House is a Port Phillip Council venue for hire by all kinds of welfare and cultural groups, from rummy players to children’s birthday parties. It’s in East St Kilda, in the heart of Jewish Melbourne, just down the road from Temple Beth Israel, Melbourne’s largest progressive synagogue, and St Kilda Shule, a heritage-listed orthodox shul.

An application for a new planning permit is currently before the council to designate it as a place of assembly for use by up to 100 people.

There are the usual concerns about parking and neighbours – although it seems that the House is already being used pretty much as a place of assembly and it’s a moot point whether the neighbours will get any more noise from the projected use than they already get from the sugar-high toddlers who clamber over the playground equipment there on weekends.

What has really got the goat of some local objectors is that the extended permit would enable a Muslim group to use the House a couple of hours a week to hold prayers.

A group of petitioners have come up with a long list of objections to allowing Muslim prayer in East St Kilda.

The group calls themselves QSoc claims to be upholding “Australian values” – a claim that should always be viewed with suspicion because it is usually used to argue against the Australian value of multiculturalism and a “fair go” for minorities.

Some of their objections are farcical. They argue that Muslim ablution requirements waste water. I hope they are planning on banning sport too, on the grounds that all the extra showering by sweaty players after the game is environmentally unsound.

But some of their claims are far more damaging. They claim Muslim prayer is racist and rejecting of other religions, that Islam is separatist and proselytising and that prayer gatherings may encourage violence. They tar the group with associations with extremists and imply that because they are Muslims they want sharia law.

Their stirring has prompted a series of rumours now circulating in the Jewish community that are without foundation: for example the extraordinary claim that the prayer group is actually a banned terrorist organization.

Even worse, the opponents of the Muslim prayer group argue that East St Kilda is “a bastion of Judeo-Christianity” and Muslims are “trying to infiltrate”.

As a Jew, and as the executive director of a Jewish organization dedicated to countering antisemitism and racism, this kind of claim makes my blood boil. Imagine how we would feel if the tables were turned and a Jewish prayer group wanting to meet across town was turned down on similar grounds? (And don’t tell me you can’t find extremist or separatist writing if you start trawling Jewish texts!)

The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) supports the right of all faiths and cultural groups to hold prayer services and cultural activities in any part of Australia. We support freedom of religion for all religions and oppose extremism and hate by anyone.

For this reason, we welcome this application by a Muslim group to hold a prayer service in an area where there are a number of synagogues and a significant Jewish population and look forward to a harmonious relationship with this community.

We encourage those who support diversity and justice to show their support by signing this petition in support of diversity.

Because Jews are often the targets of the most extreme and dangerous Muslim groups, some people have argued ADC should not be supporting a Muslim prayer group in the heart of the shtetl.

I take the opposite view. Jewish people know only too well what it is to find oneself subject to stereotyping. We are familiar with being the stranger in a strange land, and for this very reason we are enjoined to welcome the stranger within our gates.

This is not only a just response, it’s also a pragmatic one. We at the ADC understand that by defending everyone’s freedom we ensure a freer society for ourselves.

We also understand that when all Muslims are treated as extremists, some are more likely to become extremists. Muslim moderates need the support of other faith groups, particularly a group like Australian Jews who have experience in retaining our identity while integrating successfully into Australian society.

When I am in Israel I love to visit the Old City at a time when I can hear the Jewish prayers at the Western Wall, the call of the muezzin from the Dome of the Rock and the bells of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre simultaneously. I always feel the prayer is lifted by the multiple melodies that carry it.

I’m looking forward to the day yomtov falls on a Friday. I might choose to attend services at one of the synagogues on Alma Rd just so I can have the multicultural pleasure of being within cooee of some other Australians at a different kind of prayer.

Deborah Stone is executive director of the Anti-Defamation Commission.

Myer Brott, a Jew born in the Polish town of Lowitch in 1915, holds the record as the longest serving Carlton member

By Philip Mendes

This week the NAB cup started again, and those of us suffering from summer-long withdrawal symptoms have regained our voice. But more prescient is the link between Jews and the AFL. Anyone can point to those Jews who are influential in the AFL – Graeme Samuel as master of the universe, those who are prominent at club level such as David Smorgon and Ross Levin, commentators such as Mark Fine on SEN, the only AFL senior player Todd Goldstein, and those who serve as medical professionals such as Harry Unglik.

But the real question everyone wants answered is how many Jews support each AFL club. Well I am going to answer that query by delving back into my own history. From 1972-1981 I attended the Burwood campus of Mount Scopus College. And in those days every male Jew had a football team, and almost every male Jew wore one of those old VFL woolen jumpers to sports sessions. Mine was Fitzroy which requires some explanation given that we neither lived in Fitzroy or had any connection with Fitzroy, and didn’t even know Ernie Joseph, the Jewish businessman, who was then President of Fitzroy.

In fact, my father had grown up in an avid St Kilda-supporting household. But, his first love was cricket and St Kilda Cricket Club in particular. So when St Kilda Football Club left the home of the St Kilda Cricket Club – the Junction Oval – in 1964 to play their home games at Moorabbin, he felt betrayed. So he stopped supporting St Kilda Football Club which he regarded as traitors. Then when Fitzroy moved to the Junction Oval in 1970, he adopted them as his new team. So that’s how I came to support the maroon and blue.

But I was in a small minority. I would estimate from my admittedly imperfect memory the roll call in Grade 3 (1972) as follows: about 60 per cent Carlton, 20 per cent St Kilda, 10 per cent Collingwood, a small number of Essendon and Richmond, one South Melbourne, no Melbourne, no Footscray, no North Melbourne, no Geelong and no Hawthorn. There was one other Fitzroy supporter who soon left the school. A later replacement also departed quickly. They were obviously pussies rather than lions. The breakdown in secondary school changed little. One or two Melbourne supporters popped up, and the St Kilda supporters became quieter and quieter in the dismal post-Alan Jeans era. There were also a few South Africans who either stuck to rugby, or alternatively were too gentle to support AFL.

So why Carlton? I assumed it was because many of their parents had first lived in Carlton after arriving in Melbourne as refugees from Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s. And there was also a bit of group think and conformity involved. At that time, Carlton was the most successful club in the competition, boasting Big Nick, the flying doormat Bruce Doull, Robert Walls, the great indigenous goal sneak Sid Jackson, and the greatest of them all – Jezza. When the kids flew for marks, they would all yell Jezza – trying to imitate Jesaulenko’s famous mark over the hapless Graeme Jenkin in the 1970 Grand Final. I would yell Ruscuklic when I flew for a mark – he was the high-flying Fitzroy full-forward in the early 1970s – but no one took any notice.

I hated the Carlton masses. Their fanaticism and arrogance bred in me a life-long dislike for the Carlton Football Club that has only mellowed slightly over the years as they transformed from leader to also-ran. I remember almost every Monday morning on the school bus, two older Carlton supporters would taunt me as I jumped into my seat: “What happened to Fitzroy?” The sneer would be even louder when Fitzroy had fallen victim to Carlton. And that is to say nothing of Carlton stealing Fitzroy’s champion young wingman Frank Marchesani at the end of 1980, or John Elliott’s later despicable refusal to allow Fitzroy to attain match-day reserved seat or catering fees whilst they were guests at Princes Park from 1987-93.

Has much changed since the 1970s? In pure numerical terms I think not much. The many wooden spoons Carlton acquired in the last decade don’t seem to have reduced their avid Jewish support base. Three of my closest Jewish friends and my uncle, who lives in Israel, still passionately support them. St Kilda also still seem to have plenty of Jewish supporters spurred by their relative success of the last five or so years. A few other clubs have or have had Jewish Presidents and committee members, but lack major Jewish rank and file support. But nobody has done an empirical survey. Surely the Monash Centre for Jewish Civilisation can offer a scholarship for a worthy scholar to investigate this important topic.

Philip Mendes was greatly saddened by the death of Fitzroy in 1996, but after some grief moved on and regularly attends North Melbourne games with his son Lucas. He retains a long-term ambition, however, to write a book on his younger AFL memories to be titled, “Superboot Bernie Quinlan and Fitzroy’s last Golden Era, 1978-86.”

The Great Synagogue in Tunis. Photo source: Galus Australis

By Anthony Frosh

With the political state of affairs in Tunisia now lying somewhere between anarchy and revolution, it’s a troubling time for all citizens of this North African republic.  For the Jewish community, such instability must be particularly concerning.

Last April, after enjoying Pesach in Israel, my wife and I had the pleasure of spending some time in Tunis, as well as some of the surrounding towns, such as Carthage. For me (although not my wife who had previously travelled in Egypt), it was my first trip to an Arab country, and this in itself was something of a source of excitement.

One of the first things to surprise me about Tunis, apart from the rather cool and damp spring weather we experienced, was how secular it was. For example, I don’t think I saw a woman wearing a hijab (head scarf) the entire time we were there, with the exception of the some tourists at the airport who had just flown in from one of the Gulf countries, and possibly a few locals in the Médina (Old City) of Tunis.

One of the other things we noticed about Tunis was how friendly the people were.  Almost everyone speaks both French and Arabic, but English is not that common.  However, it seemed that any locals we met who could speak some English were keen to have a conversation with us.  One gentleman in a supermarket even wanted to know if we had any brothers that would make a good match for his sister!

What was most intriguing to me was the chance to visit a Jewish community residing within an Arab country.  Once a community of over 100,000 people, the Jewish community of Tunisia is now estimated at less than 2000.  The vast majority of these live either in Tunis or on the island of Djerba (which time did not allow us to visit).

The security surrounding Jewish institutions in Tunis certainly puts our CSG into perspective.  Generally, any Jewish building had about three uniformed Tunisian security police with machine guns.  However, their level of attention did not always match the size of their firearms.  On one occasion, we set out to find what time and location the Shabbat services would be.  From the street, we noticed a building that had mezzuzot, and walked in through the gate.  At this time, the attention of the security police happened to be elsewhere.

My wife walked through the entrance, and was soon deep in Hebrew conversation with the rabbi and principal of the school, as he explained to her our best options for Shabbat.  Not wanting to immediately display my poor Hebrew conversational ability, I lingered in the front courtyard, still visible from the street.  The guards suddenly noticed my presence and appeared quite alarmed.  They started shouting at me (in French I think, but I was too stunned to comprehend, even if I could have). In my memory one of them pointed his machine gun at me, although the more rational side of my brain is fairly sure that didn’t happen (see the film Waltz with Bashir for a nice understanding of the phenomenon of dynamic memory).  I raised my hands slightly, with open palms, to make myself as non-threatening and as calming as possible, and said Je suis juif (I am a Jew).

At that point, the principal emerged and came to my rescue, explaining to the guards that everything was ok.  The lesson I learnt was not to take the security guards by surprise.  When we visited a synagogue subsequently, I made a beeline straight for the security men, showed them my passport, and explained to them in terribly broken French that we were Jewish tourists from Australia who wished to go inside the synagogue.

With regard to the political situation, the Jews we spoke with were quite optimistic.  They felt that the current president (current until a few days ago that is) treated the Jewish community well.  One high school student we had a conversation with spoke about President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in glowing terms (with regard to protecting the Jews), reminding us of the way Thais often speak about their king.

An astute looking gentleman who spoke with us after Erev Shabbat services told us that the then president, Ben Ali, believed it important to protect the Jews as the presence of a safe and secure Jewish community demonstrated to outside investors that Tunisia is a safe, secure, and open place to do business.

Having said all that, this same gentleman also explained to us that it would be very unwise for the community to express any visible signs of Zionism.  As an example, he pointed to a large mural on the wall inside the synagogue that closely resembled the Israeli coat of arms.  However, most crucially, instead of saying ישראל (Israel), it said שלום (Shalom, i.e. peace).  He smiled as he explained to us that even with the substitution of the words, the resemblance of the mural to the Israeli emblem was probably as much chutzpah as they could afford.  Not incidentally, this was the Great Synagogue that was burnt down in 1967 during anti-Jewish riots, and had been rebuilt under the Ben Ali regime.

We asked him if it would be ok for me to wear my kippah on the walk back to our hotel.  He replied that it would most likely be ok, but it would be better if my kippah blended in with my hair more, as his black kippah blended in with his jet-black hair, rather than my colourful knitted kippah.  In the end, his advice boiled down to “why take the risk?” I thought his advice was sensible, but he also might have given us extra-cautious advice, not wanting to bear the responsibility in the unlikely event that my kippah brought us into trouble.

The perception of Ben Ali as treating the Jews well in recent times can be juxtaposed with the hostile treatment of the Jewish community by the regime prior to Ben Ali’s, which saw a mass exit of Jews from Tunisia.  However, it should be recognised that Ben Ali also allowed the PLO to maintain their base  in Tunis in the 1980s and early 90s.

Furthermore, Ben Ali’s wife has long been very close with Suha Arafat, the wife of the late Yasser.  Indeed, it seems Ben Ali’s wife and Suha shared a penchant for using enormous amounts of public funds to spend on their own luxurious upkeep.  And that brings us to the demise of Ben Ali’s regime.  Once the economy turned bad, a flow on from the European economic malaise, the people were no longer so forgiving of the nepotism, corruption, and largesse of Tunisia’s ruling families.

For now, there is no anti-Jewish element in the rioting being carried out in Tunis.  In addition, there is no Islamist element to that rioting either. That’s at least some good news for the Jews of Tunisia. Hopefully, a more democratic regime will form in Tunisia, but one that also values the security of the Jewish community.  Still, it may be a while before anyone bumps into a large group of middle-aged Israeli tourists like we did at the Carthage National Museum.

Parent Circle-Families Forum, a peace-building initiative that would be boycotted under the framework of BDS

In the wake of the NSW Greens officially backing a BDS policy against Israel, Phillip Walker, a Greens candidate in the recent Victorian election, argues that BDS is counterproductive.

For people seeking a just, equitable and peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine issue, the question has arisen of the purpose and impact of the call for Boycotts, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the state of Israel. Invariably proponents of the BDS campaign draw analogies between Israel and sanctions introduced against Apartheid South Africa. The BDS movement calls for “the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the Apartheid era. … until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law”.

In this regard imposing BDS is a tactic for exerting pressure and could, just as appropriately, be applied, for example, to China in support of the Tibetans, Indonesia in support of the West Papuans, or Russia in support of the Chechens. Tactics however must suit the context and should have some realistic chance of contributing towards the intended objective. My position is that BDS is actually counterproductive to its intended purpose and in fact could have a negative impact on achieving a just peace in the Middle East, and that the analogy between Apartheid South Africa and Israel is superficial and inaccurate.

Israel is a recognised member of the United Nations. South Africa was not regarded as a legitimate regime; the UN declared Apartheid a crime against humanity and South Africa was suspended from membership. The UN General Assembly imposed the first set of economic sanctions on South Africa in 1962, although international campaigns were required to both strengthen and enforce sanctions. No UN sanctions have been endorsed against Israel.

Sanctions against South Africa were designed to bring down the Apartheid state and replace it with one unified state with majority rule. The BDS call is to support the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination however the BDS Movement does not give any indication as to what form that inalienable right will take. In the unlikely event that the BDS movement achieves its aim of bringing Israel to its knees, it is unclear what outcome the BDS proponents foresee. Some might visualise the eventual destruction of the Israeli state. One of the founders of the BDS Movement, Omar Barghouti, is quoted as saying “a Palestine next to a Palestine, rather than a Palestine next to an Israel”.

Accordingly, the key question for BDS proponents is whether they accept the existence of the state of Israel. I do, recognising that both Jews and Palestinians have countless generations of unbroken occupancy of the land, that Israel is home for millions of Jewish people and that legitimate Palestinian aspirations are best met by the creation of their own unified state. The Australian Greens also take this position calling for “the creation of a viable state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel based on the pre 1967 borders and the right of all peoples in the region to peace”.

In Apartheid South Africa the call for sanctions was a key demand of the African National Congress (ANC) and supported by its allies. They recognised that sanctions would have an important impact driving White South Africans towards acceptance of majority rule. The same situation does not pertain to Israel-Palestine; the Palestinian authority and al Fatah, along with progressive Israeli organisations such as Gush Shalom call for a limited campaign of boycott and sanction directed against the Occupation and the West Bank Settlements. The BDS movement acknowledges this, stating that “the BDS campaign is not a Palestinian government initiative” but they then blur the distinction between the West Bank settlements and Israel by citing support from people who call for boycotts on the West Bank settlements, while also demanding boycotts of Israelis who hold the same position.

Unquestionably sanctions against Apartheid South Africa were important both economically and morally. Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery cites a discussion on the impact of sanctions with South African Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu. In 1989, the moderate white leader, Frederic Willem de Klerk, was elected President of South Africa. Upon assuming office he declared his intention to set up a multiracial regime. Tutu says “I called to congratulate him, and the first thing he said was: Will you now call off the boycott?”

While economically impacted by sanctions the Apartheid government did find ways to bypass them. Manufactured products did not display country of origin and continued to be sold throughout Africa; a government owned company called SASOL was formed that used a highly-polluting process to convert coal into oil; South Africa and Israel secretly shared military technology. But the biggest impact on South Africa was on morale – they felt rejected by the world and they were denied access to sporting links (like Australians, South Africans are sports mad, imagine the reaction here if international sporting links were broken).

While sanctions hurt South Africa the ANC cadre that I knew and worked with commonly cited three primary reasons for the fall of Apartheid:

First, internally the United Democratic Front (UDF) campaign of mass civil disobedience was making the country ungovernable.

Second, in 1986 the battle of Cuito Carnivale in Angola – when Cuban, Angolan and ANC forces fought the South African military machine to a standstill – started the strategic retreat of Apartheid.

Third, and significantly, was the collapse of Soviet bloc. The new global political climate associated with the end of the Cold War gave the South African government the confidence to boldly move into unbanning the ANC and entering into negotiations.

Many readers of this article may well have seen the movie Invictus which deals with the period in South Africa immediately after democratic rule was achieved in 1994. The movie highlights the attention Nelson Mandela gave to understanding the Afrikaner psyche, and the concessions he was prepared to make, even in defiance of his own party, to accommodate their interests so that they could learn to accept living under Black majority rule (something they had been raised to believe was unfathomable). It is a lesson many could learn including, it would seem, the proponents of BDS.

To form insights into the emotions and motives of the ‘other’ is to be able to appreciate base concerns which can lead to accommodation of interests, and in return compromise and concession from them. Without this insight it is questionable whether any resolution can be achieved. I continue to be surprised by the number of compassionate Jews who display little empathy for what the Nakba and 43 years of Occupation means for Palestinians. Political progressives often find common ground with progressive Jews and then fail to understand why there is a sudden differentiation when it comes to the Israel-Palestine question. Likewise, an unfavourable comparison between Israel and Apartheid South Africa unintentionally or otherwise antagonises many Jews. The legacy of the Holocaust makes comparison with an ideology that had fascist origins offensive and diminishes opportunities for compromise or even dialogue.

The legacy of centuries of persecution has undoubtedly impacted on the Jewish psyche. Insecurity and mistrust lead many to perceive the world as an existentialist military threat. If a just resolution to the conflict is to be achieved then it has to be premised on Israel knowing that its continued existence is guaranteed and not threatened. Israel needs to feel the sense of security to be flexible and accommodating to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for their own state. The BDS campaign is unlikely to soften the attitude of Israeli people; rather it will reinforce the view that “the whole world is still against us”. Accordingly BDS is defeatist as it despairs of the possibility that Israel can be a partner for peace.

There is another corollary from South Africa that for the Middle East context remains aspirational. The period from February 1990 (when the ANC was unbanned and Nelson Mandela was released from prison) and April 1994 (when the first all-inclusive democratic elections were held) is a positive example of how previously implacably opposed foes were able to negotiate a mutually acceptable resolution. During the negotiation period extremists from both left and right, along with an insidious ‘Third Force’ associated with Apartheid security agencies, were instigating violence and setting off bombs in an attempt to derail the movement towards democracy. On more than one occasion the country was on the verge of civil war. The South African Human Rights Commission has estimated that during this period up to 15,000 people died as a result of political violence.

In this context that South Africa was able to successfully transition to democratic rule is testament to the political will of the leadership of all the parties involved. Instead of using politically instigated violence as a pretext to cancel negotiations in fact it became a reason to push ahead and reach agreement. In the Middle East, while there have been times when it appeared that agreement has been in reach, unfortunately the political will to overcome the final hurdles has been lacking. In writing this I am not apportioning responsibility for failure (I will leave the finger pointing blame game to others), rather highlighting that it is only rarely that maturity of political leadership from all sides exists in sufficient quantity to reach a solution, and that it is achievable and we must keep on trying.

BDS extends to the boycott of joint Palestinian-Israeli dialogue promoting peace-building initiatives such as Combatants for Peace, Parents Circle and the Hand in Hand Schools. It means cutting ties with advocates of the stature of Uri Avnery. Efforts have already been made to impose a boycott on the Said-Barenboim Foundation and its associated West Eastern Divan Orchestra.

In summary, while boycotts against Apartheid South Africa contributed to pressure that led to the negotiated dismantlement of the Apartheid system, BDS against the existing state of Israel will not further peace initiatives but polarise positions and diminish opportunities for achieving a just outcome.

Phillip Walker was the Greens candidate for Caulfield in the 2010 State election and for Melbourne Ports in the 2007 Federal election. From 1991 to 2000 he lived in South Africa and was a member of the African National Congress (ANC). He is writing in his personal capacity.

Ironically, by boycotting Israel, the NSW Greens will be boycotting some of the most advanced green technology in the world, such as this really cool electricity-producing skylight

By Anthony Frosh

Last week, the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) issued a press release calling on “Australians to welcome asylum-seekers into their communities and embrace the benefits refugees can offer Australia.”  The full statement is available on J-Wire.

As someone sympathetic to the plight of refugees, I naturally welcome the statement, which is strong and unambiguous.  And to those that have criticized the ADC for only being concerned about the mistreatment of Jews, it is another sturdy example demonstrating that such critics need to reassess their criticisms.

However, the question needs to be asked as to why such a press release did not materialise sooner.  The optimal time for such a release would have been prior to the Australian federal election held this August.  Indeed, when the immigration debate was at its most heated phase, Galus Australis published an article by Mandi Katz titled “People of the Boat – A Jewish Perspective on the Asylum Seeker Issue”.  That was July 8. The ADC’s press release was precisely five months later, December 8.  Would it not have been more relevant back then, rather than now?

If this statement had been released in the lead up to the federal election, one consideration (and I have absolutely no knowledge whether this was a consideration of the ADC) for those who might have been influenced by the statement is that the most mainstream political party with a refugee policy approximating the ADC’s was the Greens.

While many Australian Jews would naturally be pre-disposed to message sympathetic with the plight of asylum seekers, it also needs to be said that a significant proportion of the Jewish Australian voting population has reservations about the Greens in terms of their perceived antipathy towards the State of Israel.  Of course, some Jewish supporters of the Greens did make the case that the Greens were kosher in the lead up to August election.

Last week, the NSW Greens officially threw their weight behind a boycott of Israel. Their official support for the anti-Israel BDS movement will only make it harder for the majority of Jews to feel comfortable voting for them.

Ittay Flescher, one of the authors of the much read Greens advocacy piece cited above, has stated that he is disappointed with the resolution, and has written a letter to the NSW Greens explaining to them why their BDS resolution is not the right way to go, and most importantly will not further the cause of peace. The Melbourne-based Mr Flescher has also pointed out that this resolution is specific to the NSW branch and supported neither by the Victorian branch of their party, nor the federal branch.

Federal senator Bob Brown, has issued a statement to the Jewish Australian media distancing federal part from the NSW motion on BDS. “The motion passed by the NSW Greens is not the position of the Australian Greens … A proposal to call for a broad boycott of Israel was put to this year’s Australian Greens National Council meeting but was not supported,” Senator Brown said.

Even Sol Salbe, a person whose fulltime job it seems is to put up links on his Facebook page to stories critical of Israel for the pleasure of his hordes of fanatically anti-Israel “Facebook friends”, wrote, “the NSW Greens position in support of BDS is the least nuanced version I’ve encountered. The fact it is allegedly unanimous tends to indicate a fairly narrow range of views within that branch which is not duplicated in other branches where a broad shul exists.”

If even someone like Sol Salbe, a relentless critic of the State of Israel, albeit one who is always careful to leave himself wiggle room, is offering this kind of nuanced reaction, one can only imagine the reaction of the vast majority of Australian Jews who resent the inexcusable attempt at the deligitimisation of Israel represented BDS.

Unless the federal branch of the Greens vocally and unambiguously (as opposed to making more discrete assurances to Jewish audienced) condemns this resolution of the NSW branch, they will be hard pressed to gain a handy (let alone top) position on the ballot paper of the vast majority of Australian Jews.

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

Very little subtlety here.

As the ADC releases its report on Antisemitism on Campus in Victoria, Deborah Stone reflects on the increasing grey area between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

I’m a Jew. I’m not an Israeli. I could have been an Israeli. Like many Jews of my generation I had the gap-year Israel experience and chose, for all sorts of reasons, to live in the Diaspora.

Though I love the place, my feelings about Israel are inconsistent, rather like my Hebrew-language skills that include the odd sophisticated metaphor while balking at simple verb-preposition constructs.

But I’m quite clear on my Jewish identity and my rights as a Jew to be free from hate speech. I’m also clear on my responsibility, as a Jew and as a human being, to advocate for respectful pluralism in Australia. So when an opportunity to use my media and research background came up at the Anti-Defamation Commission, it seemed a good fit.

Opposing antisemitism and racism is a task I can approach with moral clarity, particularly so as I am by nature a bridge-builder with a genuine belief that interfaith engagement and shared experience is the way to handle differences. For the same reasons, I can stand firm against vilification of any sort.

I don’t have the same moral clarity about Israel. I care about Israel. I care about Palestinians too. I care more about Israel for the same reason I care more about my son than yours, but that doesn’t give me the right to advocate for my son at the expense of yours.

I believe in the right to a Jewish state and I get a buzz out of the place that’s unparalleled by any other place on earth. But my positions on given issues may be wildly at variance with the decisions of the Israeli government of the day – not to mention some of the decisions of the past.

My ambiguity is caused by the fact that advocates for Palestinian causes and opponents of Israel’s policies outside the Jewish community rarely make such distinctions. Attacks on Israel are habitually vilifying and their targets are anyone with Israel attachment of any sort. Read Jews. So although I’m in my role to defend Jewish people from vilification, I often find myself criticising Israel’s critics – even when I think they have a point.

It would be easier if our interlocutors were clearer in their discourse. When they yell “Israel is a terrorist state” do they mean “Israel made some wrong decisions in Gaza” “or do they mean “Israel is an illegitimate entity – Jews have no rights to self-determination”? Are they critics of Israel or antisemites?

I’m happy to be a voice of moderation and to argue that we need to be very clear about what constitutes legitimate criticism and the ways in which attacks on Israel are now frequently used to stereotype, demonise and delegitimize  – tropes which any student of antisemitism will recognize.

But I’m struggling to put the boundaries on the grey area of antisemitism and anti-Zionism because so much of the criticism of Israel is intemperate, delegitimizing and comes so close to the essential experience of being Jewish in the 21^st century.

There was a time when political Zionism was a controversial ideology within Jewish thought. History has moved on and Israel is now a key part of Jewish identity and experience for most Diaspora Jews.

Certainly it is possible to be a cultural or religious Jew with no attachment to Israel. But Bundists and Neturei Karta are marginal sects. Their existence says little about the experience of most Jews.

It is also possible to be a biological Jew and dedicate a successful media career to a narrative that paints Israel as pure aggressor. But if being Jewish means anything it’s about being part of a historical and continuing community and such a position puts one outside the community.

The real experience of most Diaspora Jews is that Israel is a significant, though not necessarily a defining part of our Jewish consciousness. While there’s clearly a continuum here, the language, religious, and historical connections are deeply ingrained. For many of us, these links are reinforced by gap year or summer programs, attachment to family or friends living there, engagement with Israel-based charities, business or cultural interactions. We begin to feel that that “when they say Israel they mean us”.

My recent work on antisemitism on campus has made it clear to me that most Jewish university students experience attacks on Israel as if they were traditional antisemitism. In response to increased reports of antisemitism on campus and intimidation of Jewish students, the ADC recently invited Jewish students in Victoria to fill in a questionnaire about their on-campus experiences. Fifty respondents completed the questionnaire. This group is clearly self-selecting and it is probable that students who have experienced antisemitism or who more strongly identify with the Jewish community were more likely to respond.

But the results, available in the ADC’s Antisemitism on Campus report, give a clear indication that Jewish students do feel intimidated and attacked and that Israel is at the core of that experience. Their reports range from informal harassment – for example, verbal abuse of a student wearing a souvenir Israel t-shirt – to more considered political attacks – for example, academics using their positions to deliver polemics attacking Israel, sometimes in courses unrelated to political issues.  Students in settings as diverse as architecture and psychology have reported being subject to anti-Israel harangues during classes.

More than two thirds (68 per cent) of respondents reported experiencing or witnessing some form of antisemitism. The students defined as antisemitism many broad anti-Israel messages such as “Israel is a terrorist state”. The situation was particularly bad at La Trobe University, where all the respondents said they had experienced or witnessed antisemitism.

In an effort to judge whether students saw these attacks as purely about their attachment to Israel or also about their Jewishness we asked students whether they or their friends ever hid their Jewishness or Israel views. Few students admitted to hiding themselves (possibly this smacks of disloyalty) but many said their friends did. Significantly students were just as likely to hide their Jewishness as their Israel views.

There are, of course, a number of other reasons that students might hide their views about Israel: they may disagree with Israel’s actions but feel disloyal expressing this disagreement; they may be ambivalent; they may agree with Israel but feel insufficiently competent to defend their position; or they may wish to avoid conflict.

But the consistency of their willingness to identify as Jews and their willingness to identify as having opinions on Israel suggests none of these factors is overriding the perception that being Jewish and supporting Israel will attract pretty much the same degree of opprobrium on campus.

The tone of protests that characterise Israel as a violent and oppressive regime create an increasingly uncomfortable environment for Jews because most of us feel attached to Israel, whether or not we agree with a given policy. We feel uncomfortable or worse because Israel is on the outer and that puts us on the outer. That sense of being unwelcome in the wider world is the experience of antisemitism.

Deborah Stone is executive director of the Anti-Defamation Commission