North Shore eruv plans ignite anti-Semitism
A PROPOSAL to erect an eruv in Sydney's North Shore has led to anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic outbursts from members of the local community.
A PROPOSAL to erect an eruv in Sydney’s North Shore has led to anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic outbursts from members of the local community.
The Northern Eruv committee has submitted its plans to put up 27 poles, which are needed to complete the circuit of wires, to Ku-ring-gai Council.
The proposal, which would include erecting poles on private land, was first put to council in 2008 but was rejected because the land-owners had yet to give permission. That has since been resolved.
However, when local newspaper North Shore Times reported last week that the council would be considering a “proposal to create a religious zone ringing the suburb [of St Ives]”, discussions spiralled out of control on the paper’s website.
An eruv, which often simply consists of a single wire between existing power poles, is already in place in the Eastern Suburbs and has no impact on the general population.
But that’s not how some North Shore residents saw it. “The ‘enclosure’ is being proposed by the same types of people who have committed a Holocaust against their neighbours in the Middle East and who practise genocide and apartheid behaviour on an ongoing basis to this day. Do we want this in our neighbourhood and our country — NO,” one reader posted on the newspaper’s website.
Another reader’s post seemed to imply that St Ives would be turned into a Jewish homeland: “We all know how Israel was started, it was started by people buying land and building an ‘enclosure’, now Israel has nuclear weapons.”
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff contacted the North Shore Times, which agreed to remove some of the posts.
“It is both shocking and disappointing that some of the responses to the eruv have moved so quickly from a justifiable lack of understanding to blatant bigotry,” he said.
Alhadeff said the Jewish community is not attempting to turn the area into a Jewish enclave and that the eruv would have “zero impact” on the wider community.
The head of the Northern Eruv committee, David Guth, said if people understood what it was, then most of their concerns would not exist. “A lot could be to do with a preconceived idea,” he said. “It really is a non-issue for the general community, 85 per cent of it is already existing.”
For this reason, the committee has sent letters to St Ives residents explaining their proposal.
Ku-ring-gai councillor for the St Ives ward Tony Hall claimed the community is just ill-informed. “There is a total lack of understanding about the situation with people talking about walls around St Ives,” he said. “I believe in religious tolerance and I totally support the application.”
Mayor Ian Cross added some of the community response was disappointing. “If people disagree with how the Jewish nation is handling the Palestinian people that is one thing, but this is a theological thing,” he said. “This is not about Israel.”
Submissions close on July 7 and the council is expected to make a decision by the end of August.
JOSHUA LEVI
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