The Cambridge Union has voted that Israel is "a rogue state": ayes 51 per cent; noes 19 per cent; abstentions 30 per cent. Ben White, the ubiquitous anti-Israel campaigner who spoke in favour of the motion along with Ghada Karmi and Norman Finkelstein, has his triumphant take on the sordid matter
here.
Miriam Margolyes, coincidentally herself a Cambridge graduate, the "star of stage and screen" known to young audiences as "Professor Sprout" of Harry Potter fame, but whose longest-running, not to say infamous, role seems to be that of an "Ashamed Jew" (see Ray Cook's unforgettable review
here) has been up to
her old tricks.
And as a result of her demonisation of Israel an the ABC's Q&A show (Australia's answer to the BBC's "Question Time") the veteran leftist has been enjoying rather too much of the limelight in the Australian press this past week or so, especially from its Israel-bashing elements.
She's attracted attention not only because she repeated her despicable mantra
that Israel is responsible for the rise of antisemitism worldwide, but because she described prime minister Tony Abbott as "a tit".
Liberal Party minister Josh Frydenberg, assistant treasurer in Abbott's team, did his best to refute her ignorant views, in a courteous manner.
Pity another visiting Brit (actually, Margolyes now has dual Aussie/British citizenship) Melanie Phillips was not on the panel to show her up.
Or the alter ego of Dame Edna Everage, who
rather splendidly dealt with Margolyes on a previous Q&A when she spouted similar invective against the Jewish State.
As Ted Lapkin, a former adviser to the Abbott government,
has observed in
The Australian newspaper:
'The moment actress Miriam Margolyes opened her mouth to opine on anti-Semitism during the ABC’s Q&A this week, the moral rot at the heart of 21st-century leftist thought came on full display. Responding to an audience question on the issue of Jew-hatred, the ever-so-progressive Margolyes indulged in a nauseating exhibition of “blame the victim” pathology. The reason “people don’t like Jews”, she didactically intoned, “is because of the actions of the state of Israel”.
Margolyes declared during a BBC interview in 2010 that she “totally understood” Palestinian anti-Jewish hostility because Israel “foments it”. Using Margolyes’s line of reasoning as a guide, the slaughter of Jews in Paris and Copenhagen should not be blamed on the jihadi fascists who actually pulled the triggers. The true culprits responsible for the shedding of Jewish blood in France and Denmark are instead those dastardly Zionists whose actions incite justifiable Islamic resentment.
.... Through her uncritical pro-Palestinian activism she provides political aid and polemical comfort to one of the most noxious theofascist movements in the world today.
.... Margolyes is Jewish, a fact that marks her for death in the Hamas covenant that explicitly invokes a genocidal campaign to kill every Jew on earth. She is also openly gay, another capital offence in the Hamas playbook. And she’s a woman, and thus consigned to second-class citizenship under the strictures of sharia law.
.... [J]ust as the Islamic Middle East is consumed by civil war and genocide, Margolyes seeks the downfall of the sole democracy in that tortured region. Margolyes’s ethical disorientation is a symptom of a greater malady. She’s a microcosm of the “long march through the institutions of power” advocated in the late 1960s by Marxist student radical Rudi “the Red” Dutschke.
Across the past half-century much of our media and many centres of cultural authority have devolved into leftist monocultures of self-flagellation that preach moral relativism, the evils of free-market capitalism and the black-armband narrative of Western history.
As a result we’ve become so timidly PC that many of us are incapable of recognising the obvious fact that Westminster democracy is superior to Wahhabi theocracy.'
But enough of the objectionable (some say the "Jewish anti-semite") Margolyes.
"If I can speak on behalf of the community tonight I would like to express my appreciation to the prime minister, Tony Abbott, who has been a staunch friend of both the Australian Jewish community and Israel"
So proclaimed
Australian Jewish News publisher Robert Magid at the launch in Sydney of a book celebrating 120 years of his newspaper.
'....[T]here are dark clouds on the horizon.
Only yesterday it was revealed that at a rally in Sydney demonstrators chanted: "Khaibar ya yahud, jaish Muhammad saya'ud" – Look out Jews the armies of Mohammad are coming."
While the chanting is seen on the streets of Sydney, the problem starts with the world's media.
Hamas is a terrorist organisation that rules Gaza with an iron fist, tortures Palestinians, throws people from the roofs of buildings and executes citizens without due process. It diverts humanitarian aid to build rockets and terror tunnels. Its schools teach children to kill Jews.
Its aim is the extermination of the State of Israel. Yet none of this is reported by the media for fear of retribution by Hamas.
On the other hand, Israel is a free society. One can write the most mendacious reports about Israel with impunity and the international media takes full advantage. There is group-think among international journalists based in Israel which has contributed to the demonisation of Israel.
Many of the appalling features which are prevalent in Palestinian society are perversely attributed to Israel in a complete inversion.
Most of us in this room know about Israel's amazing technological advances, its flourishing culture and the fact that it sends rescue teams to natural disasters throughout the world.
But you will not see the media reporting this because they are focusing rather on settlements, conflicts, the lack of progress in negotiations for which Israel is purportedly solely to blame.
Non-Jewish Australian businessmen who visited Israel last year during the war with Hamas said that media reporting of Israel in Australia did not reflect the reality they experienced.
In a recent British poll asking which country people most abhor, Israel came second only to North Korea.
Every murderous, totalitarian regime which kills gay people, treats women as chattels, practises apartheid, arrests dissidents without charge, tortures prisoners, executes for misdemeanours and where no freedom exists is preferred to Israel.
The Boycott Israel movement is spreading around the world.
So should we boycott Israel?
Only if we use the same yardstick for Israel as for every other country, such as China, Russia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, all Arab, African and Latin American countries. The result would be total isolation.
.... The campaign to boycott Israel is an antisemitic policy. Why would you boycott the only liberal democracy in the Middle East?
There is only one answer: because you have an irrational hatred of Jews.
.... While the majority of Muslims in the West might be repulsed by the behaviour of jihadis in their midst, their distorted understanding of the Israeli Palestinian conflict contributes to their widespread anger and hatred toward Israel, which morphs into hatred of Jews.
As a result, the main threats to the Jewish communities come mainly from hotheads in the Muslim community....
Our immigration policies have been a success because immigrants have been free to express their values insofar as they are consistent with Australian values, values such as sexual equality, tolerance of their fellow citizen's beliefs, freedom of expression and the rule of law.
But this isn't the case for all communities.
There is a small but vocal section of the Muslim community that has not accepted Australian values. The onus is on the leaders of the Muslim community to purge imams, teachers and other members of their community who promote violence and hate speech and refuse to embrace the moral foundations of Australian society....
We should support an immigration policy which blocks entry to anyone who is likely to destabilise Australian society....' {Emphasis added]
As Australian Jewish News publisher Robert Magid writes in the course of a long and penetrating op-ed in the current issue of that newspaper: 
