In Australia, Claims of Bigotry, Blackballing & a Baklava

 As seen at left, and below, in very recent Tweets, Lebanese-born New South Wales Labor MP Shaoquett Moselbane is a vigorous pro-Palestinian proponent. 

In March 2013, Mr Moselmane sparked outrage when he gave, inside that chamber, what Dan Goldberg writing in Haaretz described as "a firebrand speech ... a vituperative tirade" alleging that the creation of Israel was a “corruption of justice,” that Gaza is “the world's largest open-air prison camp,” and that Israel ran “torture camps” in southern Lebanon.

Continued Goldberg:

'Moselmane also accused Israel of “massive violations of human rights,” saying: “If there was ever a group in need of protection from war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, it is the Palestinians.”

The first Muslim ever elected to the NSW parliament added this: “I salute the [Lebanese] resistance. Imagine what the response would have been in 1941 or 1942 if we had condemned resistance against Nazi Germany. Guns would have been blazing at us for not resisting Nazi Germany. In Lebanon the resistance was able to force the Israelis out.”

Moselmane was supported by fellow Labor MP Linda Voltz and by Greens MP David Shoebridge, both known for anti-Israel activism.

Afterwards, the CEO of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Aldaheff, who had sat in the gallery during the entire three-hour debate, said, according to the same report: 

“It was very disappointing to hear such outrageous slurs and baseless comments made against Israel in an Australian parliament.

Fortunately, they came from a handful of marginal MPs and were quickly and appropriately condemned by Labor and Liberal MPs.”

He described Moselmane’s comparison with Nazi Germany as “outrageous” and “beyond belief,” adding: “I would describe it as a one-off rant but a one-off rant that showed the depth of animosity from a marginal group within the parliament.”

Alhadeff ... said he was in the gallery during some of the debates about the Israel boycott in 2011.“While there were hostile critics of Israel no one ever made a comparison to the Nazis,” he told Haaretz."

 During the past week Mr Moselmane has sparked outrage again.

 Reported political editor Andrew Clennel in The Australian (14 August):

'The first Muslim MP in the NSW parliament has sparked a row overnight, refusing entry to a respected Jewish leader to a Labor Party multicultural launch.

Upper House MP Shaoquett Moselmane refused entry to Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff at the launch of the Labor Union Multicultural Action Committee launch last night saying, according to Mr Alhadeff, that he was not a Labor Party member before offering him a baklava on the way out.

The baklava was declined.

Mr Alhadeff had had an invitation to the Sussex Street event by Labor General secretary Kaila Murnain and Unions NSW chief Mark Morey.

But his invitation only came after Mr Alhadeff had questioned why Mr Moselmane had not invited him in the first place.

“While I appreciated the goodwill in receiving an invitation from Kaila Murnain and Mark Morey, it is unfortunate that Mr Moselmane would defy his party leadership and deny entry to a leader of the Jewish community,” Mr Alhadeff said.

“Given that the invitation which Mr Moselmane sent to others specifically said he hoped this new organisation would become a conduit between the multicultural community and Labor and the union movement, it made no sense to exclude the CEO of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies when we represent the Jewish community and are an active component of multicultural NSW.”

NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley said he has apologised to Mr Alhadeff for what occurred.

“He did receive a written invitation to the meeting,” Mr Foley said. “Unfortunately Mr Moselmane says there was a miscommunication. NSW Labor maintains healthy and constructive relations with Vic and other leaders of the state’s Jewish community, and that will continue.” ....'

Taking to Twitter, Mr Moselmane declared:

(The Australian is the flagship newspaper of Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorporation empire Down Under, and is the most pro-Israel of this country's broadsheets.)

But, wait, there's more!  It seems that the Jewish media outlet J-Wire, as well as the Australian Jewish News, failed to receive invitations to cover events to which they might reasonably expect to be able to cover.  Here's how the Sydney Daily Telegraph (16 August) reported the matter:

Here's Mr Moselmane's reaction:

Of the apparent snub to the Jewish community Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer, no stranger to readers of this blog, comments over at J-Wire:

 'The NSW Labor Party appears to be following in the footsteps of the openly brazen Jew-hatred displayed in the UN Human Rights Council – as emulated by the British Labour Party through its leader Jeremy Corbyn.

NSW Labor party leader Luke Foley needs to deal with Moselane firmly and promptly to prevent the spread of this disease in his own backyard. If Foley allows his party to continue to be tainted by Moselane’s actions – Foley will bear the electoral consequences that must inevitably flow from his inaction.

I hope to see J Wire and the Australian Jewish News receive the same respect and recognition accorded to other ethnic media in NSW.'

Oh, and talking of NewsCorp and Jeremy Corbyn, The Australian's foreign editor Greg Sheridan has an absolute humdinger of an article about antisemitism, Corbyn and the Corbynistas today! Too bad it's behind a paywall. Catch it if you can.)

Mr Gatoff Presents ... (videos)

Spending New Year's Eve at home?

Get a load of these.

This video begins with Aussie federal minister Josh Frydenberg telling it like it is about the Sydney-based Grand Mufti (see my post here):

 And a sassy summing up of the year now closing:

 Interesting stuff from Newt's News, eh?

A Warning From Wilders

The Dutch politician has a warning for Israel:

Chillingly, at The Hague:

 Hat tip: Vlad Tepes blog

And from a perspicacious Aussie (coincidentally of Dutch extraction) salient observations on Islam and Jewry here and here

"Compassion Is A Jewish Imperative. It Must Not Be Diluted To ... Flow Over The Undeserving": Jews & The Great Australian "Asylum Seeker" Debate

By cartoonist Ron Tandberg of The Age newspaper

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has been inviting Aussie Jews to comment on its draft changes to its position regarding of the nation's refugee and asylum policy, due to be discussed at the ECAJ's meeting next week.

"Asylum seeker" is, of course, a loaded term.  It implies that all those who come to Australia's shores seeking "asylum" are indeed bona fide refugees with reasonable fear of persecution or maltreatment if returned to their countries of origin.  It takes it as a given (as, evidently, does this cartoonist on Melbourne's The Age newspaper, which, incidentally, is like others in the Fairfax group no great friend.to Israel).

Under the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees (amended by the 1967 Protocol) the definition of a refugee is a person who 

"… owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence … is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it."

And the expectation has been that asylum would be sought in the "first safe country" to which the would-be applicant for refugee status and consequent granting of settlement rights came.

Australia, with its generous welfare system, is facing similar challenges to another welfare state, Britain, where economic migrants claiming to be asylum seekers are trafficked into the country by ruthless "people smugglers" in the backs of lorries, and where hordes of young men, a great many of them from the more benighted, misogynistic parts of the Islamic world, wait in France (itself a "safe country") trying to sneak aboard such vehicles, or aboard the Eurostar train to London.

Although Jews arrived in Australia with the First Fleet in 1788, and although the organised Australian Jewish community began to put down its roots with the advent of the "free [i.e. non-convict] migration" during the 1820s, the Australian Jewish community today is composed largely of the progeny of twentieth-century immigrants and refugees, including a large contingent of Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

This remembrance of plights and flights past has led to the hearts of many in the community ruling their heads, as the widespread and self-righteous condemnation of the reasoned and reasonable views of Australian Jewish News publisher Robert Magid (the subject of two posts on by me this blog) shows.

Observes a Melbourne correspondent in the letters column of this week's  brand-new (23 August) issue of the Australian Jewish News, such Jews

"are unable, in spite of copious evidence, to philosophically accept the notion of an illegal immigrant"

while a Sydneysider writes of the

'kind-hearted folk who champion the rights of those rescued from leaky boats, many still in Indonesian territorial waters.... A fair number admit (!) to just wanting a better life ... and, meanwhile, those patiently waiting on refugee processing lists (just like my postwar family) are left to whistle Dixie.  One contributor [to the newspaper's columns] mentions the Torah's edicts about treatment of strangers, but conveniently omits the bit about the strangers being fellow Jews, not our cousins from countries where no one leaves school without an A+ in anti-Semitism.'

Over at News and Views from Jews Down Under, a commenter observed some days ago:

"As Jews we are commanded to not stand idle while our neighbour bleeds. But going to bat for people who make our society bleed, is a bit too much. Showing compassion for people on the basis of Jewish suffering to those who play the system is an affront to those who were refugees.

I have been a refugee, and my parents didn’t have money to buy food, much less pay a smuggler. That is not to say that the rich should not be given asylum, but it is morally wrong to give them preferrence over poor refugees who have waited for decades for resettlement.

The Jews in my DP camp in Germany didn’t know when or where they could go. They organised schools, a synagogue and a local police force. They did not burn down buildings because processing was too slow. My sister and I, as children, could walk around without fear of being raped by people who emerged from the camps, the ghettoes and the forests. The Jews the Brits put behind barbed wire on Cyprus didn’t rape or riot. When Jews were resettled they rebuilt their lives without asking for special help or privileges.

The economic invaders of our country are not nice people. The Hazara seem to be the best of the lot, but why don’t they seek asylum in Iran which champions Sunni “Palestinians” over co-religionists reject them. They could also go to Shi’i Azerbaijan. And as a member of the Northern Alliance which overthrew the Talibaan [sic], they are not helpless as were the European Jews. And why don’t the Tamils seek refuge in Tamil Nadu, the Indian state from which they and the funds for their revolt came?

Compassion is a Jewish imperative. It must not be diluted to let it flow over the undeserving. A Talmudic observation that to be kind to the cruel is to be cruel to the kind can be extended to this crop of pretend refugees."

I reckon no one could express the nub of the matter more eloquently than that.

Online, Pro-Israel Stars Come Out Down Under

Image from here, where it's intended as an antisemitic comment on Australia's support for Israel

As many readers of my blog will already be aware, there's a new Jewish online magazine Down Under, and already it's making waves.

Proudly pro-Israel (as is to be expected, since the stupendous Shirlee Finn, no stranger to my regular readers, is the driving force behind its establishment), it says of itself:

 'This is somewhere you can air your views and ask hard questions in the Jewish Community without being silenced and cut down. There is a huge need for this. We need to make our voices heard. As it stands now there is nowhere to do it without being silenced, cut down or bullied by others.

If at times we hit a few raw nerves by speaking up and speaking the truth, so be it. You know what? There’s an old tried and tested saying “The truth hurts”.

Hopefully we can give balance to the inaccuracies by those who print and/or speak about Israel and Jews in the media or elsewhere, with complete disregard for the truth. We can address difficult issues facing our community that need a forum for genuine debate.

In general we hope to set the record straight, to facilitate open and genuine dialogue on issues that are important to Australian Jews, both within Australia and Israel.

We hope you enjoy our online magazine full of interesting topics and look forward to your participation as a reader, writer, and commenter.'

In the short time that it's been up and running, "News and Views from Jews Down Under" has posted a variety of fine items and accumulated a healthy readership.

One of the articles that I, personally, like a great deal is this thought-provoking one with many comments,  concerning the recent atrocious antisemitic remarks by pro-Arab, pro-Palestinian Tim Fischer, ex-leader of the National Party (I quote from the Australian Jewish News as follows):

'Former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer has attacked “the Jewish lobby” for unfairly attacking Pope Pius XII.

Pius XII has been widely accused of not interceding to try to stop the Nazi slaughter of European Jewry, but Fischer said in his new book, Holy See, Unholy Me: 1000 days in Rome, that the attacks are misguided.

“The American Jewish lobby is run by hardliners who get their daily feed from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and will cut no slack in terms of Israel’s policies in the West Bank,” Fischer, who was the deputy prime minister from 1996-99 and Australia’s ambassador to Holy See from 2008-12, says in the book.

He claims that the attacks on Pius XII, who is being ­considered for canonisation, continue today.

“The moment any suggestion is made to consider Pius XII for beatification and sainthood, they hit out at close to full power and use all media avenues to stamp it out.”

Of the Pope’s wartime record, Fischer writes that he “instructed Catholics to help Jews, hiding hundreds in convents, monasteries and the Vatican”.'

Fischer well-deserved his excoriation (see, for instance, here) but did Pope Pius?

The prominent left-leaning Australian-born London lawyer Geoffrey Robinson has no doubt that Pius did:

But Rabbi David Dalin, author of The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis, plainly does not.

As the uploader of the following hour-long video observes:

'[Dalin] writes that Pope Pius XII was not complicit with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, as some historians contend. Rabbi Dalin examines the actions of Pope Pius XII and also traces the actions of the Catholic Church during the late 1930s and through World War II. The author writes that Pope Pius XII was not an anti-Semite and that the Catholic Church did more than any other religion to save the lives of European Jews during the Holocaust. At the same time the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, became Hitler's staunch ally and a promoter of the Holocaust, with a legacy that feeds radical Islam today. After his presentation, Rabbi Dalin answered questions from members of the audience.'

I guess that until the all the relevant Vatican documents are made available for scrutiny "the experts" will continue to disagree.

Yes, Virginia, There Are Jews In Oz (videos)

And here's a brand new video from the Sydney Morning Herald showing an historic event that's just taken place at the East Melbourne shul. (I think the reporter should learn not to talk of a "church" in this context, though, nor to use "temple" as a substitute term for an Orthodox synagogue.)

Jews arrived in Australia on the very first day of European settlement - 26 January 1788, when the First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay with between six and fourteen Jews among the convicts being transported from England to the new penal colony on the other side of the world.  One of them, Esther Abrahams, transported for stealing a small quantity of black lace from a London draper's shop, married George Johnstone, a Royal Marine officer she met en voyage.  He ultimately became Governor of New South Wales, and so Esther the convict lass would up as First Lady of the colony.  Although her children with Johnstone were brought up as Christians, her descendents were not entirely lost to Judaism - some years ago, a woman who traced her descent to Esther entirely through the female line, and is thus Jewish according to Halakhah, reconnected with Judaism.

Esther was by no means the only Jewish convict who made good.  Many became successful in both mercantile and public life. During the nineteenth century, especially after "free" (as opposed to convict) immigration began in earnest in the 1820s, there were many Jews in country towns in Australia.  A number of Jews, not only from England but from continental Europe too, kept hotels and acted as storekeepers during the gold rushes of the 1850s.  Unless their descendents moved to one of the big cities, where Jewish communal life was more viable and there were more prospective marriage partners, the rural Jewish families tended to become totally assimilated, with the result that around 250,000 Aussies today can claim a Jewish ancestor.

During the inter-war period, when, incidentally, Australia had a Jewish Governor-General, Sir Isaac Isaacs, as well as an iconic Jewish military hero, Sir John Monash, the Australian Jewish community seemed on the verge of disappearance owing to the inroads of apathy and assimilation.  The arrival of thousands of Jews from Eastern Europe both immediately prior to and after the Second World War changed all that, and today Australian Jewry remains one of the most flourishing in the Diaspora.  It is strongly committed to Israel.

Below is a comparable video of Jews in New Zealand, which, by the way, was never a penal settlement: