Editorial (July 10, 2009)

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The honour of the IDF

LAST Saturday marked the 33rd anniversary of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) rescue of more than 100 hostages from the hands of Palestinian and German hijackers at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

Originally named Operation Thunderball, the heroic action was later renamed Operation Yonatan for the fallen leader of the liberation team, Yonatan Netanyahu.

While Israel copped criticism in the UN for the operation, for many of us who remember it, Entebbe marked perhaps the last time Israel would enjoy unqualified support from so much of the world.

Departing from nostalgia, we address the recent spate of reports released by various non-government organisations (NGOs) in response to Israel’s war in Gaza earlier this year.

Fighting an enemy that uses civilians as human shields is not an easy mission for any defence force, and the IDF is first to admit when mistakes occur. It is not perfect, but as a collective organisation it holds its soldiers to the highest moral and ethical standards.

Like the “usual suspects” rounded up by Captain Renault in Casablanca, these NGOs -— Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as a few others -— are predictable.

They can be relied upon to produce biased, inaccurate and myopic analyses that mimic the Palestinian position on just about any aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Many believe the current United Nations inquiry, led by Richard Goldstone, will produce more of the same.

For supporters of Israel, it has come to the point where it is often painful to open some newspapers these days when so many untruths are printed, even unwittingly.

Even the strong among us may be tempted to temper our pro-Israel voices until the storm passes.

Yet this week, several wounded IDF soldiers were in Australia as guests of our community. Can we look them in the eye and remain silent in the face of those who would call them war criminals?

They are heroes and protectors no less than the fighters at Entebbe — wearing the same “Tzahal” uniform, upholding the code and honour of Yonatan and those who came before him. They are our brothers. For them, we will not be silent and we will not let them down.

The truth is on their side, and on ours.

Victor Smorgon’s legacy

THE community this week bids farewell to a giant. Victor Smorgon, 96, died last Friday and was buried at the Springvale’s Chevra Kadisha Cemetery in Melbourne, completing an extraordinary life.

For decades, Mr Smorgon was a rock of the community. He was an immigrant who repaid Australia many times over for the open door and goodwill it provided to him when he arrived here as a 14-year-old with his family from the pogroms and turmoil of the Ukraine during the last vestiges of Tzarism.

In business and industry he was a visionary, turning the profits of a small butcher shop in Melbourne’s Carlton into a manufacturing empire in food, paper, packaging and steel production, to name just a few.

Asked once whether the company was up to the challenge of mixing it with the doyens of steel-making, Mr Smorgon famously quipped: “It’s like making sausages.”

Away from the production line and the bottom line, Mr Smorgon was a husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, and a mensch of the first degree. He followed in the footsteps of his father Norman and raised a family instilled with a sense of communal responsibility.

He set the example himself, making the Smorgon name a byword for philanthropy, not only in the Jewish community, with projects such as the Smorgon Family Primary School at Mount Scopus Memorial College, the Victor and Loti Smorgon Centre at Jewish Care and the Victor Smorgon High Care Unit at Emmy Monash Aged Care, but across the wider Australian community.

The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre are among the medical centres that can testify to Mr Smorgon’s vision of leaving some on the table — an estimated $100 million to a plethora of causes.

The Smorgons were active in the arts world and together with Loti, his wife of 72 years, they supported the Victorian Arts Centre and Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, while the Victor Smorgon Charitable Fund helped the National Gallery of Victoria.

Mr Smorgon and his generation, often described as “the greatest generation”, leave an awesome responsibility on the shoulders of their children to keep up their good work, but also a legacy of fortitude, and as we heard in the eulogies at his funeral on Monday, much valuable, homespun advice.