Do your homework

WITH the polls swinging wildly like a wind chime during a winter storm, the one thing that appears stable this election is the feeling of disillusionment with the available options.

Criticism of the media’s relentless focus on ginger hair, marital status and budgie smugglers have abounded, and gaffes by candidates have been replayed ad nauseam. This has been a lightweight campaign.

But in defence of the media, there is not that much to talk about. Both parties have been sparing with big-ticket promises and when they have dipped their hands into Treasury’s coffers, it has mostly been to buy votes in the marginal electorates. Press conferences also illustrate a desperate attempt to drive discussion away from the serious issues.

For these reasons and more — including the failure of both major parties to present comprehensive climate change policies — The Greens may well ¬†become the next single party to hold the balance of power in the Senate.

This will give Bob Brown’s mob more power than ever before; the passage of every piece of legislation will rely on the support of this team of senators.

A lot of Jewish voters, many of them younger, are seriously looking at voting Greens for the first time. That is why The AJN felt a responsibility to present a serious look at Greens policy.

As we explained in the first week of the campaign, we are not going to tell our readers who to vote for. But we will alert you to the fact that many high profile Greens have been outspoken against Israel and the right of the Jewish people to have a home in its Biblical lands. There are examples of Greens supporting the boycott against Israeli-made products and the senate candidate for NSW Lee Rhiannon has condemned Israel from the same platform as one of Australia’s most controversial Muslim clerics, Sheikh Tajeddin al-Hilaly.

We will also remind you that The Greens hold very strong anti-private school principles. Their stated aims are to redistribute funding away from independent schools, including those that service religious communities, stripping families of their choices when these schools have to raise their already high fees to cover the gap.

Nevertheless, the vote is yours, The AJN just asks you to do your homework before using it.

Questioning the inquiries

DURING a week when some of Israel’s top leaders were compelled to testify before a commission of inquiry, it is important to pause and clarify what is taking place.

The Turkel Commission, which was formed to independently investigate the circumstances surrounding the May 31 Israeli naval raid on a Turkish flotilla to Gaza that ended in bloodshed, is seeking answers — not scapegoats.

The Israeli inquiry is not a trial and there is no assumption of wrongdoing on Israel’s part, only a desire to review and examine the internal decision-making process every step of the way.

And a long and circuitous way that is — from the inception of the blockade of the Gaza Strip several years ago under a previous government, to the political and military decisions that led to the fateful insertion of commandos into an ambush on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara and the orders to allow soldiers to defend themselves with their backup sidearms. There is a lot for the panel to consider.

Adding to the potential for confusion is the fact that the Turkel Commission is not the only investigation underway. Concurrently with Israel’s own probe, the United Nations Human Rights Council has begun a review, while Turkey proceeds with its own accounting of the events.

Like the Japanese classic movie Rashomon, it is entirely likely that each inquiry will come up with its own rendering of the incident, based upon the agendas of the investigators and the sponsoring parties themselves.

While it would be rash to predict how each inquiry will end, Israel’s unprecedented willingness to expose its internal governing processes to intense independent scrutiny deserves acknowledgement.

It is also hard to disagree with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s contention during his marathon five hours of testimony on Monday, that his full cooperation was itself a refutation to those who said that Israel cannot investigate itself. Indeed, the UN refusal to validate the impartiality of the Turkel Commission by withdrawing its own inquiry raises a few questions of its own.

Most crucially, if the Turkel Commission — whose powers include the questioning of a prime minister, defence minister and IDF chief of staff for hours and includes international supervision — is deemed unworthy in the eyes of the United Nations, it needs to be asked: is there anything that Israel could do to put the outstanding matters of Gaza to rest in the eyes of the world?