Letters, July 23, 2010

Lack of balance from Greens on Israel

TO their credit, both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are on record as being strongly supportive of Israel, but if anybody is thinking of voting for the Greens in the upcoming federal election I suggest they take a look at the party’s policy document on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Greens espouse some warm and fuzzy platitudes that reject violence by all people and support the rights of everyone to live in peace, but the document takes a decidedly anti-Israel stance by describing at length a sweeping range of actions Israel must take in order to live happily ever after with the Palestinians.

Just one example is the Greens’ demand for compensation for refugees unable to return to their country of origin, be it Israel or Palestine. However, they totally ignore the equally valid situation regarding the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab lands. The Greens should also check their history books, as there has never been a country called Palestine, only a region. This makes a big difference under international law.

Yet nowhere does the document address the decades of violence and terror that Israelis have endured, the genocidal statements contained in the charters of Hamas and Hezbollah, or the demonisation and de-legitimisation of Israel that is the very cornerstone of the Arab media.

The Greens’ absence of support for Israel in this climate of Islamist led international vilification seriously calls into question their claimed neutrality on the Middle East conflict.

Alan Freedman

St Kilda East, Vic

Ruling reveals problems of mixed marriages

I HAVE read Rabbi Kennard’s balanced and thoughtful reply to the AJN’s article “Judge denies bar mitzvah” (AJN 09/07).

Unfortunately, I must reiterate it is the responsibility of parents not to tear children apart. If two people marry and they have different religious convictions, they need to work out what religious path they will take, before they have children.

It is so radically unfair to children to have to deal with two different religions. It is also madness to say, “We are going to raise them observing Pesach, Easter, Christmas, Chanukah and they can have two New Years and they will be lucky little vegemites because they will have two religious perspectives on life and God. They will be even more confused than their parents and one party or both usually get hurt.

Better to know who and what you are, and that means one partner takes on the religion of the other and then the marriage has a better chance of survival. I cannot think of one marriage I know of, where parents practise different faiths and it survives as a successful partnership.

Ilana Leeds

Caulfield North, Vic

Economic solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict

ON the UK’s Radio 4 Today program, they announced the results of a Mori poll of 4000 British Jews regarding their attitude to Israel

I was pleased to hear that more than 80 per cent showed their support for Israel, but they also believed that Israel should give up land for peace, that the only solution was the two-state solution and Israel should talk with Hamas to achieve it.

This is the same old tired policy which has been around for the last 30 years and has not achieved a peaceful solution.

Ariel Sharon’s disengagement from Gaza proved the policy of land for peace would never work.

I would urge British Jews to read the new book Solving the Palestinian Problem by

Ben G de Bono, available from Firstbookpublisher.com, which comes up with a new practical solution that could transform the whole economy of the Middle East.

The core of the solution is the building of the much needed Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal. This development would provide jobs to the thousands of unemployed Palestinians in the area, would transform barren land into agricultural land and provide homes in what is now desert. As a by-product, a huge hydro-electric power station could be created by the natural fall of water from a height of 1600 feet into the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth.

The Negev and the Jordanian land adjoining the canal would now have a water supply transformed by reverse osmosis from sea water to drinking water.

This economic solution would bring a permanent peace to the area as all the Palestinians would now have a new home in Jordan which before 1920 was regarded as part of Palestine.

Howard Sherrington

Manchester, UK

The real controversy over Korman’s Auschwitz video

I THINK the silent majority is perhaps most offended by this woman’s hideous taste in music.

Gabriel Sassoon

New York, USA

Dancing on the graves of Holocaust victims

JANE Korman’s video may have received 400,000 hits from around the world, but I consider the film ugly and insensitive and making a mockery out of Auschwitz — the death factory. To affront the memory of our loved ones, is like murdering them again.

I wonder what qualifications Ms Korman has to “teach the younger generation”. (AJN 16/07)

All that they will learn from her video is that it is okay to dance on the graves of their grandparents, and just stay happy because they are alive. If Mr Kohn is so overjoyed that he survived the horrors of the Holocaust, he is entitled to dance every night to disco music, but only in the privacy of his own backyard — definitely not under the gates of Auschwitz.

We have no graves, no tombstones to commemorate the memory of our families. Every cemetery is sacred. But the site of Auschwitz is six million times more sacred.

Our “Affirmation of Life” must take place in Israel. And only in Israel.

Helen Leperere

Elsternwick, Vic

Comparing Israel with the Nazis

ANTONY Loewenstein lost all credibility displaying that terrible poster on his website depicting Jews as Nazis and our Prime Minister as Hitler (AJN 16/07). What an insult to the Holocaust and to our soldiers killed in World War II to say that Muslims and terrorists are now in the same boat they were in when there is simply no comparison between them at all.

Then again the publishing of nonsense like this poster and the deliberate blind eye turned towards Islamic terrorists is all too typical of many hardline leftist Israel-bashers. They have no shame in calling themselves experts in an area they know nothing about. While we who support Israel and democracy are interested in promoting the facts, they are interested in promoting falsehoods. What’s even worse is that Loewenstein only admitted the poster was “inappropriate” when he was caught out. He should have never posted it in the beginning.

Josh Bartak

St Kilda East, Vic

Yiddish exists beyond our ivory towers

I WAS pleased to read The AJN’s Yiddish feature (09/07), which highlighted many important aspects of our lively local Yiddish community. However, I am concerned that some of my words may have been misunderstood or appeared out of context, thus misrepresenting what I believe.

As a Yiddish educator and doctoral candidate, I do not regard academia as “a trapping”. On the contrary, I feel immensely privileged to be able to devote my time to studying and teaching Yiddish.

I strongly disagree that Yiddish now resides solely in academia. Rather, academia plays a significant role in a continuum of Yiddish experience, expression and education. Yiddish is still spoken in many homes, including my own, where my children are fluent Yiddish speakers. The Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation (ACJC) includes ­students whose native language is Yiddish, students who heard Yiddish spoken as a secret language between their parents, and students from the former Soviet Union for whom speaking Yiddish was forbidden.

ACJC excels in blending “gown and town”. The Yiddish program applies academic rigour in the study of our language, literature and culture, and connects students with Melbourne’s vibrant Yiddish community, such as through sponsoring students to attend Yiddish sof-vokh [weekend], Australia’s annual Yiddish immersion retreat.

Hearing my students interact entirely in Yiddish at sof-vokh; reading articulate, scholarly essays written in Yiddish by students who only began studying the language two years ago and watching stunning Yiddish performances of Sholem Aleichem College students and graduates all signify that the mamaloshen does indeed have a bright future.

Hinde Ena Burstin

Lecturer in Yiddish Studies, ACJC,

Monash University

A third option for mamaloshen

LAST week’s online poll by The AJN ¬†(16/07) should have offered three alternative answers — yes, no and klotz-kashe.

Doodie Ringelblum

Caulfield South, Vic

For all the letters from this week’s issue, purchase a copy of¬†The AJN. If you would like to submit a letter, email lettersjewishnews.net.au