What is, objectively, the greatest threat to Israel’s right to exist?
If you answered Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, Syria, Iran, Tanya Plibersek, Julia Irwin or Trotskyist students, you are wrong. According to Israel Jewish environmentalists and scientists, the correct answer is global warming.
Recognition of this reality casts an interesting light on a report in the latest edition of the Bulletin quoting prominent figures in Australia’s Jewish community expressing concern at supposed anti-Israel sentiment in the Federal ALP and heaping praise on the Federal Coalition government.
We are told that:
Australia ’s 100,000-plus Jews have enjoyed what many describe as a “golden age� under John Howard and his “dream team� of Peter Costello and Alexander Downer – a triumvirate that most Jewish leaders say eclipses their previous affinity with Bob Hawke.
and
As one senior Jewish official put it: “With the Liberals, we’ve got a dream team; with Labor, there are still some ratbags on the notoriously anti-Israel backbench.�
According to Joe Gersh:
“We’ve never had a government with whom we’re more closely aligned and from whom we’ve had so much sympathy.�
and Rabbi Joseph Gutnick believes the PM’s principles have:
“equated with the ideals Israel and the Jewish people stand for�.
Although Philip Mendes makes excellent good sense (as usual) in the online discussion of the article:
Dan Goldberg is correct in identifying Israel as a key political issue for the Jewish community. However, some of his sources wrongly imply fundamental differences on Israel between the current Coalition Government and the ALP Opposition. In fact, all the evidence suggests that a Rudd Government would also be highly sympathetic to Israel, and that views to the contrary may be skewed by an anti-ALP bias. It should also be noted that Israel is not the only issue for Jews. Jews are also concerned with the same issues as the Australian public generally such as the economy, education, health, climate change, and social issues such as the welfare state, multiculturalism and refugees, abortion, gay rights and illicit drugs. Many of these issues are likely to be just as significant as the Middle East in electorates such as Wentworth and Melbourne Ports where Jews constitute a sizeable voting bloc. Dr Philip Mendes Co-editor Jews and Australian Politics.
Let me conclude by stating the obvious. The two national governments which are contributing most to global warming - both by running unreconstructed carbon-intensive economies, and by obstructing global action to address the problem - are the Bush administration and its Australian claque under Howard. Politically, the main drivers of the existential threat to Israel posed by global warming are the Bush and Howard governments and the climate-vicious corporate interests with which they are allied. From the standpoint of the long-run interests of Israel and its peoples in averting this threat, the best possible outcome in the coming Federal election will be a change of government together with a Senate in which Labor and the Greens combined have a majority. That Israel’s government may, just possibly, no longer be able to rely on uncritical Australian support for its own, and the USA’s, security and foreign policies would, I respectfully suggest, be an overhead cost well worth paying.
In the longer term, global warming is a problem for many countries and peoples…
In the nearer term, cross-border attacks by Palestinians…. and having to keep an eye on neighbouring States which seem to harbour nuclear-weapons ambitions. See for example today’s “Australian” - sorry, GG.
As far back as 1981, Israel attacked Saddam’s nascent nuclear weapons facilities. Did Israel assist with a South African Bomb under apartheid, or was it an Israeli nuclear weapon that was tested off the Soth African coast all those years ago?
Not, IMHO, that I feel it is relevant to the above, but I: am not Jewish, am not a Zionist, am not a running dog of the US imperialist Bush, do not hate Palestinians; nor do I hate Arabs, nor do I support Palestinian dispossession; but I detest Nazi extermination, abhor suicide bombers wherever they go; and above all abhor nuclear weapons, WHOMSOEVER owns, uses, or threatens to use them.
cheerio,
salaam,
shalom
the Bush administration and its Australian claque under Howard.
Clique, claque, front and back!
Well, I’ll be. It actually is a word:
claque
// (say klak)
noun 1. a set of hired applauders in a theatre.
As do I. As, I am certain, do Labor figures such as Tanya Plibersek, Julia Irwin and Anthony Albanese who have been traduced and their positions caricatured over the Israel/Palestine situation.
” According to Joe Gersh:
“We’ve never had a government with whom we’re more closely aligned and from whom we’ve had so much sympathy.â€? ”
Gersh is an old mate of Costello’s from Monash University, and 10 years ago received from Costello the plumb appointment onto the Payment Systems Board in the Reserve Bank, an appointment which persists to this today.
Well, golly gee, the Right of the Australian Jewish community supports the Liberals.
My guess is that the Left of the Australian Jewish community supports Labor.
As for thr global warmimg link, Paul, you neglected the obvious. Israeli companies are leading the charge to install desalination plants all over our wide brown (and getting browner) land.
Re claque -of course its a word. At least two of us on LP have used it. Do you think we;’re idjits?
Re the thread. I don’t care if people are Jewish, Arab, Aborigine, Hindu, Catholic, Mason, Calathumpian or members of the Illuminati. If they’re for John Howard, I’m against them.
Israeli companies are leading the charge to install desalination plants all over our wide brown (and getting browner) land.
Could we have some info/evidence of that? And Spiro, why is that significant in this context?
Good connection. Water has helped define the political and economic options in the Middle East since the time of its first cities. If rainfall keeps declining I guess river access and water rights will become even bigger issues. Bad news for everyone but probably worse for the Palestinians.
Suz, it’s been all over the media, as a google search will tell you.
It was Paul who introduced global warming to the thread about local Jewish political preferences. If you’re thinking the connection is nebulous, I agree, but argue with him, not me.
The smear that any criticism of Israel and its policies=anti semitism is getting a run here in good old Oz. It has worked a treat in the US, where the Democratic Party is particularly susceptible to this kind of pressure owing no doubt to the traditional (and honourable) links between the jewish community in the US and the Dems.
It is therefore important to recall, that conservatives bitterly opposed both the establishment of Israel, and prior to the war, immigration of jews seeking asylum from the extermination policies of the European extreme Right. Opposition to ‘asylum seekers’ on the grounds of their supposed method of entry and incompatibility with Australian values, has a long and dishonourable history in this country, and it is a pity that conservatives in this country are not reminded, again and again, of their appalling history in this regard, a history moreover, that includes the participation of conservative forces within the ALP at the time, who also bitterly opposed campaigns to permit jewish refugees to settle in this country. One honourable exception of course, was the late Syd Einfeld, whose untiring work in this regard has by now almost been forgotten, as has the opposition of many conservative members of the jewish community of the time, to his campaign to rescue eastern European jewry from their fate.
How depressing then, that the smear of ‘anti semitism’ is now being launched against any person or organization that seeks to apply to the Palestinians, the same standards that were applied by progressives over 70 years ago to the struggle of jews to escape their fate at the hands of the criminal establishment in much of Europe, and to their struggle, aided and abetted as it was by terrorism, to the establishment of the state of Israel. Truly, history returns as farce.
amused: good points
Thanks for referring to “the criminal establishment in much of Europe”, which I take to refer to the German Nazi government and whatever groups supported it? It may be that “criminal establishment” is a more useful term to apply to that regime than, for instance
“far right grouplet”,
“lunatic fringe psychopaths who seized control of a nation”,
“anti-democratic thugs”
etc
What I’ve gained from your phrase is a feeling that in some instances, a group or government steps so far outside “politics”, allies itself to such a large extent with criminals, and behaves in such a murderous fashion, that the usual categories and concepts of ‘political discourse’ no longer really apply.
Perhaps, instead of puzzling over how a political movement becomes an institutionalised psychopatholarchy, we could instead approach from the direction of criminology, and consider how criminal groups can SEIZE the polity?
You have undertsood my point precisely Ambigulous. Once the usual means for maintaining order seem inadequate to the task, ‘direct action’ and ruthless disregard for the bourgeois niceties assert themselves. The ads paid for by business that suggest workers elect criminals thugs and s-xual predators to represent them in the workplace, is a nice touch of projection here, as the type shown in the ads are regularly employed by business to keep their workplaces ‘free’ of the annoying distraction of third parties like unions. There is a long and dishonourable history, even in the sunny uplands of of workers paradise Oz of the criminal underworld being utilised to maintain control in situations where it appears the proper deference is wanting. In the US such criminal violence, including murder has been, and continues to be, a necessary weapon in the struggle to retain a ‘free market’ in labour. Just like the gangs hired to run what was left of the Eastern European empires, after the ruling class trashed the place in the name of the Great Patriotic War, the types and their purposes are precisely the same.
amused,
Can you please clarify - do you accept criminal violence, up to and including murder, as being “necessary” or do you simply regard this as a tactic of your presumed ideological opponents?
From my reading of your comment you are being ambiguous.
.
Your comment on “The Great Patriotic War” was also interesting, since it was started as part of a treaty between National Socialist and Communist governments, with the governments of capitalist nations doing everything possible to avoid it.
Nice try Andrew, but no go I am afraid.
No, I do not support violence as either a tactic or a strategy in liberal democracies, but I am not an idiot, and I have seen up close, the charming flotsam and jetsam regularly employed in the US to ensure ‘freedom of contract’, and the same type utilised here, in sunny friendly, democratic Oz, in cases of ‘emergency’ in the workplace. They can be found running labour hire companies, in between gigs.
As for the term the Great Patriotic War, I mean of course, WW1. I know the term is used to describe WW2, but I disagree with the term and the sentiments behind it, being applied to WW2, since it was a term used by Stalin to garner the support of what was left of the Russian working class, for the defence of the soviet union. Like that regime, it is reactionary, and designed to obscure what was really at stake between 1939 and 1945. The term is more usefully applied as a way of describing the way WW1 was sold for the benefit of those whose support for hundreds of thousands of sacrifices a month, was so important.
And finally, don’t worry about my presumed enemies. Ask your mates why they hired a a convicted s-xual predator and a convicted thug and standover merchant, to enact a piece of phony and disgraceful defamation against people, who leading businesses in this country apparently believe, should not have rights that up to one year and six months ago, they had, and are so determined to prosecute their case, that slander typical of criminal regimes of every ideological persuasion, has been unleashed against every person who is either elected to represent people, and/or the people who elect them, at the workplace. The Australian business class, or at least that section who were persuaded to underwrite the slander, have demonstrated they are either clueless, reckless or both. Any Australian who describes themself as a small ‘l’ liberal who supports this little caper, merely demosntrates how ‘thin’ the reality of Australian liberlism really has become. Cheers
The irony is that the federal parliamentarian most consistently identified as pro-Israel is Michael Danby, the ALP member for Melbourne Ports.
Que?
I thought you meant Australian Clacker.
I like the way Australia’s Jewish community is discussed as if it is a homogenous mass of people with similar interests and common values. A golden age …?
Well said Paul,
Last year I was asked to talk on a panel co-ordinated by Philip Mendes on the topic “The Jews and the Left, can we be friends again”. I expected that everyone would be saying the same thing (quite wrongly as it turned out, the diversity of approaches was remarkable) and spent weeks struggling for a new angle.
My main point was the one you’ve made - that the environmentalist part of the left are actually Israel’s best friends, even though it is seldom recognised, because only the environment movement can save Israel from devastation. However, it occurred to me that there is also something of a balancing argument from the other side - Israel is a world leader in some of the technologies, particularly solar power, that are going to be essential to fighting global warming.
Israel needs the Green movement and, to a lesser extent, the Green movement needs Israel. But you’d never know it from the statements of the people who claim to represent the Jewish community in Australia.
I have no idea what is meant by this. Was this convicted thug, “s-xual predator”, and standover merchant, also standing on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas in 1963?
Then you should keep up with the news a bit more. Two of the the three persons used to illustrate the ads run by a section of business, which suggested that union representation equalled standover tactics and tacit violence, were in fact, convicted crims, and were engaged on the basis that they looked exactly what they were. Naturally, business had already decided to ‘pull’ the ads once this little morsel hit the airwaves. Nice.
because they were too close to the reality of the CFMEU and ETU
Oh, and if you don’t believe it, give Tim Kucera a call at Slater & Gordon in Perth and ask him if he left the CFMEU as In house Counsel because he was punched in the head in a fist-fight in Kevin Reynold’s Office or if that punch was not material in his decision to leave the union.
Spiros, the desalination plant up this way is being built by Veolia and John Holland. I could have sworn they are French and Australian.
In the case of Veolia it’s not their only gig in Australia although it may be their only desalination project.
A brilliant and highly OZ-relevant concept was proved in Israel in the early 80s, super-saturated saline ponds.
This raises an important corollary of the quote from Philip Mendes which I highlighted, which is that on several of the numerous non-ME issues which he cited Jews are as likely as any other ethno-religious group to have diverse interests and values, and to go their separate ways accordingly on election day. After all, Ian Cohen and John Kaye don’t exactly form a tightly disciplined “Jewish bloc” with Eric Roozendaal in the NSW Upper House.
This discussion also brings to mind a series of articles in Quadrant in 1979-80 by Bill Rubinstein in which he argued that Jewish voting patterns in Australia, the US and the UK were undergoing a long-run shift away from left of centre parties to right of centre parties, partly on the basis of the changing socio-economic class composition (and hence class interest) of Jewish communities in those countries.