Editorial (March 26, 2010)
Exercising the prerogative
ISRAELI Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu made the best of a difficult situation in his speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) this week.
The most important part of his 3000-word address could be distilled down to two simple sentences: Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital.
Netanyahu’s defence of Israel’s policy regarding Jerusalem drove home another point: the US government may have changed its Jerusalem policy in the past year, and that’s its prerogative. But it cannot expect the Jewish State to abandon its own 40-year policies simply on Washington’s say-so.
Israel is a sovereign power and a democracy, and its government is beholden to the will of the Israeli people. Before Netanyahu left for Washington, he was presented with a letter calling upon him to continue to build in Jewish neighbourhoods in all parts of Jerusalem.
The letter, signed or supported by 78 Knesset members from almost all Zionist factions except Meretz, was initiated by MK Otniel Schneller from the Opposition Kadima party — a fact which in itself says volumes.
Meanwhile, at the same time in America, President Barack Obama’s government, using its party’s majority in the US bicameral legislature of Congress and Senate, passed a controversial health care bill that many polls said at the time of its passage was opposed by more Americans than supported it.
Whether the health care bill was in the best interests of the nation or whether every such poll was entirely accurate or not is beside the point. The Obama Administration, some claimed, appeared prepared to ignore any poll and act against the will of the majority in order to force through what it felt was a major piece of legislation. That was its prerogative.
However, on an issue as important to Israelis and the Jewish people as Jerusalem, Netanyahu cannot be faulted for listening to the overwhelming sentiment of Israelis and their elected representatives and holding the line on four decades of Israeli policy on the matter.
The United States now has to decide whether it is wise to continue to try to force the hand of Israel’s democratically elected government on Jerusalem and allow this intractable issue, which had been left for final-status talks for good reason, to delay the peace process further.
Bad sports?
GROUCHO Marx famously declared: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” And when one club offered to waive its “no Jews” rule for Marx provided he abstained from using the swimming pool, he remarked, “My daughter’s only half-Jewish, can she wade in up to her knees?”
Being barred from blue-blooded sporting clubs was a concept so familiar to Jews of a certain generation that it became the stuff of self-deprecation, dark humour and stand-up comedy.
Despite his identification as a non-joiner, Marx became a member of Hillcrest, a Jewish golf club in Los Angeles that was formed so that Hollywood’s Jews, kept at bay by local golf clubs, could have a convivial place to play and socialise. Australia’s own Cranbourne Golf Club was founded to meet similar needs for Melbourne’s Jews.
But restricted sporting and social clubs are a phenomenon that last held sway around the middle of the 20th century. If Jews made jokes about clubs that refused them entry in 1950, in multicultural Australia in 2010, such organisations are a laughing stock.
So it is deeply disturbing to hear rumours circulating that an unnamed Jewish businessman was barred from membership at the Kingston Heath Golf Club in south-eastern Melbourne on the grounds of his faith.
As The AJN reports this week, the accusation has been vehemently denied by the club’s general manager, who stated that the individual’s membership had been delayed simply because he did not have the number of referees the club rules require. That said, he admitted Kingston Heath “looks pretty white, Anglo-Saxon” and would probably not change for a long time, perhaps¬† “another 100 years”. We could reasonably ask why will it take so long?
But while it’s vital to be on our guard against anti-Semitism, we must also be wary of pointing accusatory fingers on the basis of mere rumour.
Either way, Groucho Marx may have been able to joke about it 60 years ago, but ultimately, when prejudice does present itself in this day and age, it’s no laughing matter.
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