Letters (July 9, 2010)
AGE OLD PROBLEM OF MEDIA DOUBLE STANDARDS AROUND 42 people were slaughtered in a Pakistani mosque on July 2.
AGE OLD PROBLEM OF MEDIA DOUBLE STANDARDS
AROUND 42 people were slaughtered in a Pakistani mosque on July 2. The news item was reported in one paragraph buried in the middle of The Age. Surely such a substantial loss of life should have made the front page of The Age. No such luck as the massacre did not involve Israel.
Double standards yet again from the media.
Janet Rudnianski
Caulfield North, Vic
SINCE WHEN IS SUPPORTING ISRAEL A CRIME
IT started with a letter in The Sydney Morning Herald from a former Australian ambassador to Israel, Ross Burns, accusing Julia Gillard of being too close to Tel Aviv and questioning why Ms Gillard’s partner, Tim Mathieson, took a job with an Israel lobbyist, Albert Dadon
The Age, of course, could not resist putting on its front page a story about a letter that tarnishes Israel’s supporters. It even brought Labor MP Michael Danby into the conspiracy as being a great mate of Dadon.
It so happened that all was above board and Danby’s relationship with Dadon is as with any other member of the Jewish community.
What The Age sought to do was make it unpalatable for an Australian prime minister to have a good relationship with Israel and lobbying for the Jewish State a crime.
So how does one get their letter onto the front page of The Age? Write that support for Israel is a really bad thing.
Henry Herzog
St Kilda East, Vic
ERUV REPORTING GOES BEYOND THE BOUNDARY
I AM not an observant Jew so have no use myself for an eruv, but I was nevertheless shocked when I watched the report on the proposed North Shore eruv on Channel Nine’s A Current Affair.
From the moment the doleful Jewish melody started playing in the background, anyone watching would have been left with the impression that local Jews were trying to turn St Ives into a ghetto or a shtetl. They may as well have shown a scene from Fiddler on the Roof of dilapidated shacks, chickens running around the streets and Tevye pulling his milk cart, and said this is what the Jewish community is planning to turn the neighbourhood into.
The music, though, was not the only problem. As I understand it the boundary is marked off by a virtually imperceptible wire several metres from the ground. But the reporter demonstrated the boundary with a bright yellow rope at body level. Even when he introduced an Orthodox mother, he started by saying “a houseful of screaming kids”, as if to suggest that huge noisy Jewish families were taking over. In fact, there were just three children in the shot, one of whom happened to be crying.
It is one thing for there to be a debate over the erection of poles — and locals are entitled to protest if they consider them unsightly, but this is far from what the report suggested was at the centre of the row, fuelling a fire of concern and misunderstanding that needn’t exist.
Leanne Gold
South Yarra, Vic
CRITICISM OF A CRITICAL APPROACH TO ISRAEL
JULIE Szego writes in her opinion piece that the Diaspora ought to be critical of Israel. (AJN 02/07)
If we were to take her advice, we should start criticising Israel for opening its arms to Holocaust survivors in the 1940s, Sephardi Jews in the ’50s and ’60s, Soviet Jewry in the ’70s and ’80s, and Ethiopians in the ’90s. We should criticise them for providing food, shelter, health and a right of return for any Jew in need.
We should criticise them for upholding the only democracy in the Middle East. We should join forces with all the other critics like Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, the Arab League and the UN to condemn Israel unapologetically. We should condemn them with all our heart, with all our souls, and with all our resources. We should teach this thoroughly to our children, when we sit in our home, when we walk on the way, when we retire, and when we arise.
If we Jews don’t criticise Israel, then who will?
Mark Kessel
Caulfield North, Vic
DON’T PUT TOO MUCH FAITH IN SURVEY RESULTS
POLLS are too much a product of the questions asked, even when produced by B’nai B’rith International. I looked at the questions presented by Tom Wolkenberg (AJN 02/07) and found I had no idea what “systematic support of Israeli government policies” meant. Had the question referred to “uncritical support” there would have been a large consensus that support should indeed not be uncritical, which I do understand.
I also doubt that a similar survey held among Australian Jews would be very different. Having lived in both countries, I find Australia and Israel differ very little in important things, like attitudes and sense of justice. The major difference is one of circumstance, and were Australia subject to Israel’s circumstances, we would react in much the same way. Now there’s an appropriate question you’ll never see in a survey. “Should circumstances be ignored when judging Israel?” … as so very many do.
Perhaps the loosest question, and the one that best illustrates my point, is that of Zionism. Sitting on the blogs I have seen a hundred¬†different definitions, none accurate, and none incorporating Israel’s basic right of self-determination. If so many ridiculously define Zionism as “totalitarian” or “apartheid” is it any wonder then that they define themselves as anti-Zionist?
Morry Sztainbok
Bentleigh, Vic
For all this week’s letters, buy your copy of The Australian Jewish News
comments