Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Sidney Bloch returns to South Africa with his teenage son, full of personal guilt for not having done more to resist the racist apartheid regime. He emigrated immediately after completing his medical studies in Cape Town and lived with a guilty feeling of not having done more to resist apartheid and help even his few fellow coloured students in his year.
I saw the film at its world premiere at ACMI and want to cmpliment everyone involved for it.The film is beautifully shot and well edited. I also wanted to comment afterwards when the discussion and question time was organised but I did not get the chance to do so.
Having participated in one of the first international conventions in Johannesburg after Nelson Mandela was freed, but before the ANC was elected in 1991, I commented to one of our hosts at the time that I could not live in such an affluent environment while being surrounded by such massive poverty,- black or white! Her response was: "who are you to talk -is Australia better towards your natives? Are your Aborigines well off in the Centre while you live in comfort in the coastal cities? You live in a democracy. You can do something about it. We lived until recently under a virtual dictatorship,- you will see that we will change. Will you?"
I think that this film is a personal account of one man's conscience at work. I don't believe it can be extrapolated to a general educational viewpoint about being a 'bystander' versus an activist, which is its intention! All systems which are antidemocratic, be it communism, nazism, racism/apartheid, even theocracies, involve rule by force to make the population submit. The individual needs far more courage to desist and resist than we who live in democracies.
We need to protect each others' individual and minorities' human rights,- because we can do so without fear of reprisals,- at least in theory!So what excuse do we as Australians have for the terrible conditions still existing today in the aboriginal communities up North? The film Samson & Delilah portrays it most vividly (& was shown on SBS also tonight).
South Africans can look after themselves now,- I don't think the film really explores the connection to Australia at all and may not be the educational tool which it was intended to be.
As for comparing Sth. African apartheid with any other country,- as some would with Israel, which is so far removed from the truth as to be pure antisemitic and Arab propaganda,- it is only akin to the American segregation of a past era. Nor can it be compared with the Nazi Holocaust of us Jews,- the deliberate program of obliteration of a whole people!
I shall be returning for the next International Council of Jewish Women's Convention in Cape Town, next May, 2010. I am looking forward to see the changes which were portrayed in the film, but as one of the individuals in the film categorically stated,- racism is in all of us! Personally I don't see it as only racism,- I see it as humans tending to 'like the alike'!There is what may be called "snobbishness", e.g. in the level of personal wealth,or there is the "intellectual snobbishness" in the educational field,- every group will have the "in crowd" and those who will be outside it. Dr. Bloch rejected the Afrikaaners outright as being racists & pro-Nazis, until he met his old coleague who accused the Jewish groups at the University of "sticking to themselves",- a common accusation made towards us Jews!
The reality is that we all tend to "stick together" and label others in groups! It is human nature and nurture,- plus experiences!We tend to treat others the way they treat us,- or we avoid those whom we don't understand. Violence begets violence,- at present, violence throughout the world, be it criminal due to 3rd-world poverty,or anti-democratic or terrorist due to religious fanaticism,or sectarian rivalries, etc. this I am afraid is the greatest threat to democracy and the 'rule of law' in our Western world, (including Israel of course, as it is part of the Western democratic system). This is when governments enact more and more draconian laws which impinge on all our personal freedoms,- until we may wake up one day and find ourselves under a totalitarian regime! Then it may be too late to cry 'help'!
We Jews are usually the first to sense the dangers.
N.B. Dr.Bloch fled to Israel first.
There he met his wife to be, an Australian, so he ended up here!
(MM)
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
DANIEL PIPES ON FORT HOOD MASSACRE, JIHADISM, ME
Dr. Daniel Pipes PhD spoke to the Zionist community in Melbourne.
November 11, 2009.
Pipes is a Ph.D. in ME history, author of many books, articles and commentator on news media.
He is adamant that no one in history ever won against ideologues by appeasements and discussions. WW2 was fought against Fascism,- it took years and tens of millions dead and plenty of hardware to squash it. Communism was dismantled after the Cold War. Islamism needs a similar will and war-to-win.iSRAEL BNEEDS TO HAVE A TACTIC TO WIN AND CONQUER, NOT TO APPEASE. It hasn't worked for them since their unilateral withdrawals. The USA talks about winning the war against terrorism,- no one talks about Israel winning the war against those who want to annihilate it.
He is convinced that the Palestinians have no intention of being satisfied with a State alongside Israel, only one instead of Israel. Therefore he feels that the Israeli Government has lost its way in strategic-deterrence thinking and has erred in unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza. These are signs of weakness against the intransigent ideological enemy.
Israel tries too hard to appear sensitive to public opinion and the saving of enemy lives to the detriment of its own people and soldiers, but to no avail. Public opinion is now stacked against it anyway. What is the point? One may as well be blamed for something real. Let the punishment fit the crime and act as a deterrent to its enemies until it says 'enough is enough.If we can't destroy them, let's join them!'
Islamism has become very cunning and subtle,- e.g. in Turkey, while in Iran, there are positive signs that the resistance is strong enough to one day overthrow the terrible regime of the Ayatollahs. If and when this will happen, it will help the rest of the Islamic world to escape from its yoke of Jihadism.
Re the Zionist Christians of America,- Pipes feels it is only second to the IDF in the war against the Jihadists on Israel’s side. Too many Jewish groups however steer clear of them,- he feels that’s a pity.
He spoke about the enemies within the USA as happened in Texas (below). Time to call a spade a spade, by calling it what it is,- not something it isn’t. It’s Jihad and Jihadism,- whether one likes it or not. The murderer called out Al Akhbar,- what more is needed to prove what it was?
MM
Daniel Pipes November 9, 2009-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sudden Jihad or "Inordinate Stress" at Ft. Hood?
by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
November 9, 2009
http://www.danielpipes.org/7737/sudden-jihad-inordinate-stress-ft-hood
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Ft. Hood jihadi, in a picture from 2000.
When a Muslim in the West for no apparent reason violently attacks non-Muslims, a predictable argument ensues about motives.
The establishment – law enforcement, politicians, the media, and the academy – stands on one side of this debate, insisting that some kind of oppression caused Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, to kill 13 and wound 38 at Ft. Hood on Nov. 5. It disagrees on the specifics, however, presenting Hasan as the victim alternatively of "racism," "harassment he had received as a Muslim," a sense of not belonging," "pre-traumatic stress disorder," "mental problems," "emotional problems," "an inordinate amount of stress," or being deployed to Afghanistan as his "worst nightmare." Accordingly, a typical newspaper headline reads "Mindset of Rogue Major a Mystery.".
Instances of Muslim-on-unbeliever violence inspire the victim school to dig up new and imaginative excuses. Colorful examples (drawing on my article and weblog entry about denying Islamist terrorism) include:
• 1990: "A prescription drug for … depression" (to explain the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane)
• 1991: "A robbery gone wrong" (the murder of Makin Morcos in Sydney)
• 1994: "Road rage" (the killing of a random Jew on the Brooklyn Bridge)
• 1997: "Many, many enemies in his mind" (the shooting murder atop the Empire State Building)
• 2000: A traffic incident (the attack on a bus of Jewish schoolchildren near Paris)
• 2002: "A work dispute" (the double murder at LAX)
• 2002: A "stormy [family] relationship" (the Beltway snipers)
• 2003: An "attitude problem" (Hasan Karim Akbar's attack on fellow soldiers, killing two)
• 2003: Mental illness (the mutilation murder of Sebastian Sellam)
• 2004: "Loneliness and depression" (an explosion in Brescia, Italy outside a McDonald's restaurant)
• 2005: "A disagreement between the suspect and another staff member" (a rampage at a retirement center in Virginia)
• 2006: "An animus toward women" (a murderous rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle)
• 2006: "His recent, arranged marriage may have made him stressed" (killing with an SUV in northern California)
Sgt. Hasan Karim Akbar, convicted of the 2003 murder of two fellow soldiers.
Additionally, when a Osama bin Laden-admiring Arab-American crashed a plane into a Tampa high-rise, blame fell on the acne drug Accutane.
As a charter member of the jihad school of interpretation, I reject these explanations as weak, obfuscatory, and apologetic. The jihadi school, still in the minority, perceives Hasan's attack as one of many Muslim efforts to vanquish infidels and impose Islamic law. We recall a prior episode of sudden jihad syndrome in the U.S. military, as well as the numerous cases of non-lethal Pentagon jihadi plots and the history of Muslim violence on American soil.
Far from being mystified by Hasan, we see overwhelming evidence of his jihadi intentions. He handed out Korans to neighbors just before going on his rampage and yelled "Allahu Akbar," the jihadi's cry, as he fired off over 100 rounds from two pistols. His superiors reportedly put him on probation for inappropriately proselytizing about Islam.
We note what former associates say about him: one, Val Finnell, quotes Hasan saying, "I'm a Muslim first and an American second" and recalls Hasan justifying suicide terrorism; another, Col Terry Lee, recalls that Hasan "claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans"; the third, a psychiatrist who worked very closely with Hasan, described him as "almost belligerent about being Muslim."
Finally, the jihad school of thought attributes importance to the Islamic authorities' urging American Muslim soldiers to refuse to fight their co-religionists, thereby providing a basis for sudden jihad. In 2001, for example, responding to the U.S. attack on the Taliban, the mufti of Egypt, Ali Gum'a, issued a fatwa stating that "The Muslim soldier in the American army must refrain [from participating] in this war." Hasan himself, echoing that message, advised a young Muslim disciple, Duane Reasoner Jr., not to join the U.S. army because "Muslims shouldn't kill Muslims."
If the jihad explanation is overwhelmingly more persuasive than the victim one, it's also far more awkward to articulate. Everyone finds blaming road rage, Accutane, or an arranged marriage easier than discussing Islamic doctrines. And so, a prediction: what Ralph Peters calls the army's "unforgivable political correctness" will officially ascribe Hasan's assault to his victimization and will leave jihad unmentioned.
And thus will the army blind itself and not prepare for its next jihadi attack.
Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
Related Topics: Muslims in the United States, Radical Islam, Terrorism To subscribe to this list, go to http://www.danielpipes.org/list_subscribe.php
(Daniel Pipes sends out a mailing of his writings 1-2 times a week.)
Sign up for related (but non-duplicating) e-mail services:
Middle East Forum (media alerts, event reports, MEQ articles)
Campus Watch (research, news items, press releases)
at http://www.danielpipes.org/list_subscribe.phpYou may post or forward this text, but on condition that you send it as an integral whole, along with complete information about its author, date, publication, and original URL.
DanielPipes.org
November 11, 2009.
Pipes is a Ph.D. in ME history, author of many books, articles and commentator on news media.
He is adamant that no one in history ever won against ideologues by appeasements and discussions. WW2 was fought against Fascism,- it took years and tens of millions dead and plenty of hardware to squash it. Communism was dismantled after the Cold War. Islamism needs a similar will and war-to-win.iSRAEL BNEEDS TO HAVE A TACTIC TO WIN AND CONQUER, NOT TO APPEASE. It hasn't worked for them since their unilateral withdrawals. The USA talks about winning the war against terrorism,- no one talks about Israel winning the war against those who want to annihilate it.
He is convinced that the Palestinians have no intention of being satisfied with a State alongside Israel, only one instead of Israel. Therefore he feels that the Israeli Government has lost its way in strategic-deterrence thinking and has erred in unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza. These are signs of weakness against the intransigent ideological enemy.
Israel tries too hard to appear sensitive to public opinion and the saving of enemy lives to the detriment of its own people and soldiers, but to no avail. Public opinion is now stacked against it anyway. What is the point? One may as well be blamed for something real. Let the punishment fit the crime and act as a deterrent to its enemies until it says 'enough is enough.If we can't destroy them, let's join them!'
Islamism has become very cunning and subtle,- e.g. in Turkey, while in Iran, there are positive signs that the resistance is strong enough to one day overthrow the terrible regime of the Ayatollahs. If and when this will happen, it will help the rest of the Islamic world to escape from its yoke of Jihadism.
Re the Zionist Christians of America,- Pipes feels it is only second to the IDF in the war against the Jihadists on Israel’s side. Too many Jewish groups however steer clear of them,- he feels that’s a pity.
He spoke about the enemies within the USA as happened in Texas (below). Time to call a spade a spade, by calling it what it is,- not something it isn’t. It’s Jihad and Jihadism,- whether one likes it or not. The murderer called out Al Akhbar,- what more is needed to prove what it was?
MM
Daniel Pipes November 9, 2009-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sudden Jihad or "Inordinate Stress" at Ft. Hood?
by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
November 9, 2009
http://www.danielpipes.org/7737/sudden-jihad-inordinate-stress-ft-hood
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Ft. Hood jihadi, in a picture from 2000.
When a Muslim in the West for no apparent reason violently attacks non-Muslims, a predictable argument ensues about motives.
The establishment – law enforcement, politicians, the media, and the academy – stands on one side of this debate, insisting that some kind of oppression caused Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, to kill 13 and wound 38 at Ft. Hood on Nov. 5. It disagrees on the specifics, however, presenting Hasan as the victim alternatively of "racism," "harassment he had received as a Muslim," a sense of not belonging," "pre-traumatic stress disorder," "mental problems," "emotional problems," "an inordinate amount of stress," or being deployed to Afghanistan as his "worst nightmare." Accordingly, a typical newspaper headline reads "Mindset of Rogue Major a Mystery.".
Instances of Muslim-on-unbeliever violence inspire the victim school to dig up new and imaginative excuses. Colorful examples (drawing on my article and weblog entry about denying Islamist terrorism) include:
• 1990: "A prescription drug for … depression" (to explain the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane)
• 1991: "A robbery gone wrong" (the murder of Makin Morcos in Sydney)
• 1994: "Road rage" (the killing of a random Jew on the Brooklyn Bridge)
• 1997: "Many, many enemies in his mind" (the shooting murder atop the Empire State Building)
• 2000: A traffic incident (the attack on a bus of Jewish schoolchildren near Paris)
• 2002: "A work dispute" (the double murder at LAX)
• 2002: A "stormy [family] relationship" (the Beltway snipers)
• 2003: An "attitude problem" (Hasan Karim Akbar's attack on fellow soldiers, killing two)
• 2003: Mental illness (the mutilation murder of Sebastian Sellam)
• 2004: "Loneliness and depression" (an explosion in Brescia, Italy outside a McDonald's restaurant)
• 2005: "A disagreement between the suspect and another staff member" (a rampage at a retirement center in Virginia)
• 2006: "An animus toward women" (a murderous rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle)
• 2006: "His recent, arranged marriage may have made him stressed" (killing with an SUV in northern California)
Sgt. Hasan Karim Akbar, convicted of the 2003 murder of two fellow soldiers.
Additionally, when a Osama bin Laden-admiring Arab-American crashed a plane into a Tampa high-rise, blame fell on the acne drug Accutane.
As a charter member of the jihad school of interpretation, I reject these explanations as weak, obfuscatory, and apologetic. The jihadi school, still in the minority, perceives Hasan's attack as one of many Muslim efforts to vanquish infidels and impose Islamic law. We recall a prior episode of sudden jihad syndrome in the U.S. military, as well as the numerous cases of non-lethal Pentagon jihadi plots and the history of Muslim violence on American soil.
Far from being mystified by Hasan, we see overwhelming evidence of his jihadi intentions. He handed out Korans to neighbors just before going on his rampage and yelled "Allahu Akbar," the jihadi's cry, as he fired off over 100 rounds from two pistols. His superiors reportedly put him on probation for inappropriately proselytizing about Islam.
We note what former associates say about him: one, Val Finnell, quotes Hasan saying, "I'm a Muslim first and an American second" and recalls Hasan justifying suicide terrorism; another, Col Terry Lee, recalls that Hasan "claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans"; the third, a psychiatrist who worked very closely with Hasan, described him as "almost belligerent about being Muslim."
Finally, the jihad school of thought attributes importance to the Islamic authorities' urging American Muslim soldiers to refuse to fight their co-religionists, thereby providing a basis for sudden jihad. In 2001, for example, responding to the U.S. attack on the Taliban, the mufti of Egypt, Ali Gum'a, issued a fatwa stating that "The Muslim soldier in the American army must refrain [from participating] in this war." Hasan himself, echoing that message, advised a young Muslim disciple, Duane Reasoner Jr., not to join the U.S. army because "Muslims shouldn't kill Muslims."
If the jihad explanation is overwhelmingly more persuasive than the victim one, it's also far more awkward to articulate. Everyone finds blaming road rage, Accutane, or an arranged marriage easier than discussing Islamic doctrines. And so, a prediction: what Ralph Peters calls the army's "unforgivable political correctness" will officially ascribe Hasan's assault to his victimization and will leave jihad unmentioned.
And thus will the army blind itself and not prepare for its next jihadi attack.
Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
Related Topics: Muslims in the United States, Radical Islam, Terrorism To subscribe to this list, go to http://www.danielpipes.org/list_subscribe.php
(Daniel Pipes sends out a mailing of his writings 1-2 times a week.)
Sign up for related (but non-duplicating) e-mail services:
Middle East Forum (media alerts, event reports, MEQ articles)
Campus Watch (research, news items, press releases)
at http://www.danielpipes.org/list_subscribe.phpYou may post or forward this text, but on condition that you send it as an integral whole, along with complete information about its author, date, publication, and original URL.
DanielPipes.org
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
DR. FELIX ZANDMAN- Bio.: AN INSPIRATION
Felix Zandman Biography
[N.B.I WAS FORTUNATE TO SEE A DVD DEPICTING THE LIFE STORY OF THIS REMARKABLE MAN.
The following is extracted from thousands of references about him available on the internet.]
Survivor Triumphant: Felix Zandman's life story is a saga of success in the face of some of this century's greatest evil. Jew. Survivor. Physicist. Entrepreneur. Industrial magnate.
Felix Zandman's life story grows like a blossoming tree from gnarled roots in Grodno, Poland.
There he was raised in a comfortable home, and from an early age given Jewish, Zionist and secular educations.
At 15, with the Nazi extermination campaign in full swing, he had the good fortune to be able to hide for 17 months in a tiny pit dug under the floorboards of a house of righteous Gentiles in the Polish countryside, along with four other Jews.(This is reproduced in a Holocaust Museum in Florida).
Whilst hidden, his engineer uncle continually educated him in higher maths and physics and as he describes it in his DVD-life story, his brain absorbed it all like a sponge. After their harrowing escape from the grave-like hiding place, they eventually made their way to Paris after liberation where he was immediately able to continue his education at The Sorbonne, to Ph.D. level.
His ability to think ‘outside the square’ he attributes to his amazing problem-solving skills, such as inventing the tiny resistors and other scientific innovations now used in the aircraft industries, in every electronic device in the world.
Dr. Felix Zandman is Chairman and CEO of Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE: VSH). In 1962, Dr. Zandman, with the financial help of the late Alfred P. Slaner, founded Vishay to develop and manufacture Bulk Metal foil resistors. The Company was named after Dr. Zandman's and Mr. Slaner's ancestral village in Lithuania, in memory of family members who perished in the Holocaust.
Dr. Zandman holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Paris, Sorbonne. He has received numerous honors throughout his life, including the Musser Award for Excellence in Leadership, the Order of Merit for Research and Invention (France), the Distinguished Contribution Award from the American Society of Stress Analysis, the Franklin Institute Medal for Science, and the Legion of Honor (France).
Dr. Zandman speaks Russian, Polish, Yiddish, German, Hebrew, French, and English. He has also published three textbooks and holds 39 patents.
Dr. Zandman´s autobiography, Never the Last Journey, recounts his story from Holocaust victim to head of Vishay.
EXECUTIVE PROFILE*
Felix Zandman
Founder, Executive Chairman, Chief Technical & Business Development Officer and Chairman of Executive Committee, Vishay Intertechnology Inc.
Age 80.
This person is connected to 14 board members in 4 different organizations across 1 different industries.
BACKGROUND*
Felix Zandman founded Vishay Intertechnology Inc. and has been its Chief Technology Officer and Chief Business Development Officer since January 1, 2005. Dr. Zandman serves as Chief Technical and Business Development Officer of Vishay Israel Ltd. Dr. Zandman founded Vishay Semiconductor Gmbh and serves as its Chief Technical Officer. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Vishay Intertechnology Inc. since 1962 until January 1, 2005. He served as President of Vishay .
HONORARY DOCTORATE CITATION TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY>
At its session on the 2nd day of March, 2005
the Senate of Tel Aviv University resolved to honor
Felix Zandman
in recognition of his indomitable spirit and resourcefulness in transforming himself from Holocaust refugee tosuccessful industrialist, physicist, inventor and philanthropist; his remarkable entrepreneurial and leadership ability in building up his company, Vishay, into one of the world’s largest electronic
manufacturers; his creative scientific vision and numerous patents
and publications, for which he has won accolades worldwide; and
in special recognition of his pioneering contribution to the Israeli high-tech industry, which has also helped to advance the
absorption of immigrants and the strengthening of development towns in the country; his steadfast support of Tel Aviv University; and his establishment at the University of projects in Holocaust studies
as well as the Zandman Graduate School of Engineering,
by conferring upon him the degree of
Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa
• of Tel Aviv University.
[N.B.I WAS FORTUNATE TO SEE A DVD DEPICTING THE LIFE STORY OF THIS REMARKABLE MAN.
The following is extracted from thousands of references about him available on the internet.]
Survivor Triumphant: Felix Zandman's life story is a saga of success in the face of some of this century's greatest evil. Jew. Survivor. Physicist. Entrepreneur. Industrial magnate.
Felix Zandman's life story grows like a blossoming tree from gnarled roots in Grodno, Poland.
There he was raised in a comfortable home, and from an early age given Jewish, Zionist and secular educations.
At 15, with the Nazi extermination campaign in full swing, he had the good fortune to be able to hide for 17 months in a tiny pit dug under the floorboards of a house of righteous Gentiles in the Polish countryside, along with four other Jews.(This is reproduced in a Holocaust Museum in Florida).
Whilst hidden, his engineer uncle continually educated him in higher maths and physics and as he describes it in his DVD-life story, his brain absorbed it all like a sponge. After their harrowing escape from the grave-like hiding place, they eventually made their way to Paris after liberation where he was immediately able to continue his education at The Sorbonne, to Ph.D. level.
His ability to think ‘outside the square’ he attributes to his amazing problem-solving skills, such as inventing the tiny resistors and other scientific innovations now used in the aircraft industries, in every electronic device in the world.
Dr. Felix Zandman is Chairman and CEO of Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE: VSH). In 1962, Dr. Zandman, with the financial help of the late Alfred P. Slaner, founded Vishay to develop and manufacture Bulk Metal foil resistors. The Company was named after Dr. Zandman's and Mr. Slaner's ancestral village in Lithuania, in memory of family members who perished in the Holocaust.
Dr. Zandman holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Paris, Sorbonne. He has received numerous honors throughout his life, including the Musser Award for Excellence in Leadership, the Order of Merit for Research and Invention (France), the Distinguished Contribution Award from the American Society of Stress Analysis, the Franklin Institute Medal for Science, and the Legion of Honor (France).
Dr. Zandman speaks Russian, Polish, Yiddish, German, Hebrew, French, and English. He has also published three textbooks and holds 39 patents.
Dr. Zandman´s autobiography, Never the Last Journey, recounts his story from Holocaust victim to head of Vishay.
EXECUTIVE PROFILE*
Felix Zandman
Founder, Executive Chairman, Chief Technical & Business Development Officer and Chairman of Executive Committee, Vishay Intertechnology Inc.
Age 80.
This person is connected to 14 board members in 4 different organizations across 1 different industries.
BACKGROUND*
Felix Zandman founded Vishay Intertechnology Inc. and has been its Chief Technology Officer and Chief Business Development Officer since January 1, 2005. Dr. Zandman serves as Chief Technical and Business Development Officer of Vishay Israel Ltd. Dr. Zandman founded Vishay Semiconductor Gmbh and serves as its Chief Technical Officer. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Vishay Intertechnology Inc. since 1962 until January 1, 2005. He served as President of Vishay .
HONORARY DOCTORATE CITATION TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY>
At its session on the 2nd day of March, 2005
the Senate of Tel Aviv University resolved to honor
Felix Zandman
in recognition of his indomitable spirit and resourcefulness in transforming himself from Holocaust refugee tosuccessful industrialist, physicist, inventor and philanthropist; his remarkable entrepreneurial and leadership ability in building up his company, Vishay, into one of the world’s largest electronic
manufacturers; his creative scientific vision and numerous patents
and publications, for which he has won accolades worldwide; and
in special recognition of his pioneering contribution to the Israeli high-tech industry, which has also helped to advance the
absorption of immigrants and the strengthening of development towns in the country; his steadfast support of Tel Aviv University; and his establishment at the University of projects in Holocaust studies
as well as the Zandman Graduate School of Engineering,
by conferring upon him the degree of
Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa
• of Tel Aviv University.
The new boat-people invasion.
There are some 40 million people in the world who are classed as UNHCR refugees, asylum seekers, displaced persons or illegals of one kind or another. How many of those should or can Australia take in? The more Australia is seen as being a 'soft touch', the more will try to risk making their way directly to our shores, one way or another.
A country is supposed to grant refugee status to people coming across from their neighbouring borders. Australia is usually reached by people fleeing over many borders across continents like Asia. if genuine asylum seekers, why were they not granted asylum in any of those other countries? Did they even seek it anywhere else?
Comparing the current situation with our Jewish experience, the proportion of those who are actually fleeing persecution and extermination as when we European Jews tried to escape the Holocaust in the 30s, or other Europeans escaping from Communism after the war, is relatively small. Western European nations as well as the Anglo-world closed their doors in our faces before the war, while survivors after the war fared little better. There were also Jewish 'boat people' trying to reach pre-Israel Palestine, most ending in the British detention camps in Cyprus.Everyone knew who we were and why we were there,- unlike today.
Nowadays, all of us fair-minded Australians would like to help those who make the dangerous trek to our shores by sea, especially families with women and children. But most are single males looking for a better life, hoping to bring their families later while paying a lot of money to the traffickers in the meantime. If the latter would at least put them on to safe boats, one could even forgive them,- but they don't.
I think that the Government does have a responsibility to assess fairly whom to help first, whom and how many to give priority for the right to become Australians eventually, in order to ensure that we can sustain the fragile Australian environment and maintain the quality of life which is so eagerly sought by all these others.
There were few of these concerns necessary when we Jews were in that situation, but we know that they were still considered by the Governments of the day.America had a quota system for immigrants from each European country. Our turn arrived some 10years after we applied while in a DP camp in Italy. We had resettled in Australia by then of course and were no longer interested.
It is important to thoroughly vet who is allowed in these days given the variety of reasons for those leaving their native countries.Some are genuinely fleeing fot their lives and if they pay the people-smugglers, so be it. But then they should have their papers, showing who they are and from where they come,- not throw away their IDs as they are told to do by the traffickers! At least those who arrive by air and overstay their visas,do come with valid passports, visas and all kinds of IDs to support their claims when they are caught and have to be assessed.
How do we know who these boat people are then? After WW2, plenty of Nazis escaped even to Australia, while I heard a victim of Cambodian atrocities complaining that the torturers are living in their vicinity right here in Australia.How can the government assess whether among the arrivals there aren't straightforward criminals, let alone various war criminals and fanatics of all kinds trying to escape their own justice systems? Do we really want to attract them to Australia?
That is the dilemma PM Rudd is facing,- he knows that we, the people do worry about being flooded by too many extremists, as well as by many others who may not integrate easily into our Western way of life.
A country is supposed to grant refugee status to people coming across from their neighbouring borders. Australia is usually reached by people fleeing over many borders across continents like Asia. if genuine asylum seekers, why were they not granted asylum in any of those other countries? Did they even seek it anywhere else?
Comparing the current situation with our Jewish experience, the proportion of those who are actually fleeing persecution and extermination as when we European Jews tried to escape the Holocaust in the 30s, or other Europeans escaping from Communism after the war, is relatively small. Western European nations as well as the Anglo-world closed their doors in our faces before the war, while survivors after the war fared little better. There were also Jewish 'boat people' trying to reach pre-Israel Palestine, most ending in the British detention camps in Cyprus.Everyone knew who we were and why we were there,- unlike today.
Nowadays, all of us fair-minded Australians would like to help those who make the dangerous trek to our shores by sea, especially families with women and children. But most are single males looking for a better life, hoping to bring their families later while paying a lot of money to the traffickers in the meantime. If the latter would at least put them on to safe boats, one could even forgive them,- but they don't.
I think that the Government does have a responsibility to assess fairly whom to help first, whom and how many to give priority for the right to become Australians eventually, in order to ensure that we can sustain the fragile Australian environment and maintain the quality of life which is so eagerly sought by all these others.
There were few of these concerns necessary when we Jews were in that situation, but we know that they were still considered by the Governments of the day.America had a quota system for immigrants from each European country. Our turn arrived some 10years after we applied while in a DP camp in Italy. We had resettled in Australia by then of course and were no longer interested.
It is important to thoroughly vet who is allowed in these days given the variety of reasons for those leaving their native countries.Some are genuinely fleeing fot their lives and if they pay the people-smugglers, so be it. But then they should have their papers, showing who they are and from where they come,- not throw away their IDs as they are told to do by the traffickers! At least those who arrive by air and overstay their visas,do come with valid passports, visas and all kinds of IDs to support their claims when they are caught and have to be assessed.
How do we know who these boat people are then? After WW2, plenty of Nazis escaped even to Australia, while I heard a victim of Cambodian atrocities complaining that the torturers are living in their vicinity right here in Australia.How can the government assess whether among the arrivals there aren't straightforward criminals, let alone various war criminals and fanatics of all kinds trying to escape their own justice systems? Do we really want to attract them to Australia?
That is the dilemma PM Rudd is facing,- he knows that we, the people do worry about being flooded by too many extremists, as well as by many others who may not integrate easily into our Western way of life.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Jewish Internet Defense Force: Small Victory for the Good Guys: Pro-sharia law march cancelled in UK
Friday, October 30, 2009
On the Trail of our True Believers.
RE: The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia.
(Ed. James Jupp. Cambridge University Press.)
[The immigration debate in Australia is hotting up. Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor of The Australian published an article (29/10) "Uncontrolled Muslim influx a threat". The article is important, but the headline is alarmist and sounds racist.
James Jupp is much more specific about from where the immigrants originate being more important than their religion per se. It is true that devout Muslims will pursue their way of life wherever they are,- but like the Jewish religion and devout Jews, they will be accommodated within Australia's multicultural society, while the more secular Muslims will have and be no trouble at all. However, James Jupp does point out that there is a violent thread within the Islamic religion with which people from some parts of the Islamic world may identify. They are already in the UK and parts of Europe,where they are becoming far too strong and militant, having originated in some fundamentalist regions. They are a threat to the Judeo/Christian Western nations' way of life and to our democracies.
For intending immigrants from all parts of the world,legals, illegals, even visitors in case they decide to stay,- if they would be given an information booklet on the Australian laws regarding human rights, freedom of expression, status of women and family law,- then made to read and sign that they understand them,- perhaps many who prefer Sharia laws, would reconsider Australia as their chosen destination!
It was Lybia's President Ghaddafi who is reported to have said:'we don't have to fight in Europe. In a few decades they will be overtaken naturally by Islam.']
MM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26267903-25918,00.html
Jill Rowbotham |
October 28, 2009
Article from: The Australian. Higher Education.
JAMES Jupp survived the Blitz as a child living in south London. He remembers the fear and the danger, although his family emerged unscathed from their preferred refuge under the bed, and his father, an officer in the merchant navy, also made it through the war.
Perhaps that early shave with a world imperilled by war set the tone for the blunt realism of the editor of Cambridge University Press's The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia. So, when asked if concern about the potential for militant Islam in Australia is justified, he doesn't fudge or baulk.
"In my view Islam is an aggressive religion. When people say it is a religion of peace, I have serious doubts. Islam was spread in its original period, for two or 300 years, very largely by military conquest."
But, he adds, fears about militant Islam in Australia are out of proportion. There are only about 380,000 Muslims and the most are law-abiding peace lovers. Even so, he says, there is more risk in accepting some migrants as opposed to others. It is not just their country of birth that matters but their region of origin.
"Islamic fundamentalism varies a lot around the world and some countries like the UK drew a problematic lot, the Pakistanis from the rural areas. The core of the problem in Australia is among those who came from the Lebanon, which is a very disturbed society because of the civil war based on religious adherence, but it depends where the migrants come from in Lebanon and their background.
"As long as you have a religion that contains a violent element, that can be used and developed, but it is much more likely to be so among people who come from countries like Somalia because of its war-torn history."
Jupp, an adjunct professor in the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute at the Australian National University and director of the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies there, is a political scientist who has studied his adopted country and its immigrant populations in depth. At 77, he is quietly chuffed at bringing off the great feat of research, co-ordination, commissioning, editing and extensive writing the 700-page book required.
Jupp trained at the London School of Economics in the 1950s, and has taught at the universities of Melbourne, York, Waterloo (Canada) and Canberra. His scholarship in and service to immigration and multicultural studies was recognised with an Order of Australia in 2004.
He tackled the research for his latest project aided by a three-year Australian Research Council grant. The brief was to pursue the cultural, social, political, educational and welfare services dimensions of religion in Australia. The book roams widely, covering about 100 faiths and denominations, from mainstream Christianity to the Mandaeans and the Russian Old Believers.
"I think the majority of the articles have been written by members of or supporters of that particular religion and I'm the exception to that because I have written about a number of religions, some of which I regard as completely bizarre."
He has contributed many chapters, including those on religion, immigration and refugees, and fundamentalism in modern society. "It's not concerned with theology because that's the area I did not wish to get involved in.
"I am not a person of faith," he declares, but denies he is an atheist and won't wear the term agnostic. Educated at a Church of England school, he shrugged off Anglicanism when he discovered socialism in his teens. Pressed to name other allegiances, he offers: "I am a life member of the ALP in the ACT."
But Jupp is critical of academic neglect of religion, as opposed to theology, in Australia. "Obviously there is a big overlap between politics and religion. The idea that they are two separate spheres is mistaken and increasingly so in many ways. Very few political scientists have looked at religion except in terms of the Labor Party split. I think one reason I got the grant from the ARC is that hardly anyone puts in for that section."
Exponents and scholars of multiculturalism have also failed to recognise religion's relevance. "One of the things multiculturalism has overlooked in this country and many others is that it is not folk dancing and ethnic food only. Religion is an extremely important element that will outlast some of those other manifestations. In an immigrant culture it helps to maintain ethnic variety."
Virtually all religions in Australia were founded somewhere else except for the indigenous ones, he says, but generally, these days, Australians wear their religion lightly. "I think one of the things, not unique but fairly noticeable, is that it is not a deeply religious society. There is a substantial degree of scepticism and even indifference, but everyone, at some point in their life, has had contact with religion."
Part of the reason for that is the general affluence of the society makes an interest in an afterlife less intense.
"People think in terms of satisfying their material wants, which they can in Australia. The ones who are mostly dissatisfied are the youth, who are dissatisfied anyway because they don't know who they are or where they are going. Then they settle down."
His general view of religion's influence is cautiously favourable. "If you go through the whole book the general message is that religion in Australia is fairly benign. Most of the things the religions do here are socially desirable and relatively benign." But their social power, what he calls their "institutional force", particularly of the mainstream Catholic and Protestant denominations, is largely gone: "The dark ages ended in 1960s and 70s, that was the last stuttering of repressive religions in Australia." Most people feel free to believe or not, to practise a faith or not. And there is a rise in ecumenism he thinks will make the book useful in a practical as well as an historical way.
Before this encyclopedia, Jupp's most recent book was the edited collection Social Cohesion in Australia. "Australia is probably the most socially cohesive community in the world," he says. "Most of the discussion in Australia about social cohesion centres (on) Muslims, who are about 1.5 per cent of the population and most of them are practically hiding under the bed. They're the ones who have to apologise for their existence. The whole thing has been distorted.
"Most of the Muslims I know are university-educated and a lot of women come to conferences we have and are active participants in the discussions. Headscarves are common but it's very rare to see burkas."
So his unease about Australian society centres on other issues. Organised crime and drugs are a threat, including bikie gangs. Then there is what he calls "the youth problem", gangs that congregate at night, violent and very drunk.
"I'm not just saying this because I'm old," he adds. "The social tensions among the less educated, less skilled, working-class young in the outer suburbs, there is probably more threat from them than from the Muslims."
(Ed. James Jupp. Cambridge University Press.)
[The immigration debate in Australia is hotting up. Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor of The Australian published an article (29/10) "Uncontrolled Muslim influx a threat". The article is important, but the headline is alarmist and sounds racist.
James Jupp is much more specific about from where the immigrants originate being more important than their religion per se. It is true that devout Muslims will pursue their way of life wherever they are,- but like the Jewish religion and devout Jews, they will be accommodated within Australia's multicultural society, while the more secular Muslims will have and be no trouble at all. However, James Jupp does point out that there is a violent thread within the Islamic religion with which people from some parts of the Islamic world may identify. They are already in the UK and parts of Europe,where they are becoming far too strong and militant, having originated in some fundamentalist regions. They are a threat to the Judeo/Christian Western nations' way of life and to our democracies.
For intending immigrants from all parts of the world,legals, illegals, even visitors in case they decide to stay,- if they would be given an information booklet on the Australian laws regarding human rights, freedom of expression, status of women and family law,- then made to read and sign that they understand them,- perhaps many who prefer Sharia laws, would reconsider Australia as their chosen destination!
It was Lybia's President Ghaddafi who is reported to have said:'we don't have to fight in Europe. In a few decades they will be overtaken naturally by Islam.']
MM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26267903-25918,00.html
Jill Rowbotham |
October 28, 2009
Article from: The Australian. Higher Education.
JAMES Jupp survived the Blitz as a child living in south London. He remembers the fear and the danger, although his family emerged unscathed from their preferred refuge under the bed, and his father, an officer in the merchant navy, also made it through the war.
Perhaps that early shave with a world imperilled by war set the tone for the blunt realism of the editor of Cambridge University Press's The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia. So, when asked if concern about the potential for militant Islam in Australia is justified, he doesn't fudge or baulk.
"In my view Islam is an aggressive religion. When people say it is a religion of peace, I have serious doubts. Islam was spread in its original period, for two or 300 years, very largely by military conquest."
But, he adds, fears about militant Islam in Australia are out of proportion. There are only about 380,000 Muslims and the most are law-abiding peace lovers. Even so, he says, there is more risk in accepting some migrants as opposed to others. It is not just their country of birth that matters but their region of origin.
"Islamic fundamentalism varies a lot around the world and some countries like the UK drew a problematic lot, the Pakistanis from the rural areas. The core of the problem in Australia is among those who came from the Lebanon, which is a very disturbed society because of the civil war based on religious adherence, but it depends where the migrants come from in Lebanon and their background.
"As long as you have a religion that contains a violent element, that can be used and developed, but it is much more likely to be so among people who come from countries like Somalia because of its war-torn history."
Jupp, an adjunct professor in the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute at the Australian National University and director of the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies there, is a political scientist who has studied his adopted country and its immigrant populations in depth. At 77, he is quietly chuffed at bringing off the great feat of research, co-ordination, commissioning, editing and extensive writing the 700-page book required.
Jupp trained at the London School of Economics in the 1950s, and has taught at the universities of Melbourne, York, Waterloo (Canada) and Canberra. His scholarship in and service to immigration and multicultural studies was recognised with an Order of Australia in 2004.
He tackled the research for his latest project aided by a three-year Australian Research Council grant. The brief was to pursue the cultural, social, political, educational and welfare services dimensions of religion in Australia. The book roams widely, covering about 100 faiths and denominations, from mainstream Christianity to the Mandaeans and the Russian Old Believers.
"I think the majority of the articles have been written by members of or supporters of that particular religion and I'm the exception to that because I have written about a number of religions, some of which I regard as completely bizarre."
He has contributed many chapters, including those on religion, immigration and refugees, and fundamentalism in modern society. "It's not concerned with theology because that's the area I did not wish to get involved in.
"I am not a person of faith," he declares, but denies he is an atheist and won't wear the term agnostic. Educated at a Church of England school, he shrugged off Anglicanism when he discovered socialism in his teens. Pressed to name other allegiances, he offers: "I am a life member of the ALP in the ACT."
But Jupp is critical of academic neglect of religion, as opposed to theology, in Australia. "Obviously there is a big overlap between politics and religion. The idea that they are two separate spheres is mistaken and increasingly so in many ways. Very few political scientists have looked at religion except in terms of the Labor Party split. I think one reason I got the grant from the ARC is that hardly anyone puts in for that section."
Exponents and scholars of multiculturalism have also failed to recognise religion's relevance. "One of the things multiculturalism has overlooked in this country and many others is that it is not folk dancing and ethnic food only. Religion is an extremely important element that will outlast some of those other manifestations. In an immigrant culture it helps to maintain ethnic variety."
Virtually all religions in Australia were founded somewhere else except for the indigenous ones, he says, but generally, these days, Australians wear their religion lightly. "I think one of the things, not unique but fairly noticeable, is that it is not a deeply religious society. There is a substantial degree of scepticism and even indifference, but everyone, at some point in their life, has had contact with religion."
Part of the reason for that is the general affluence of the society makes an interest in an afterlife less intense.
"People think in terms of satisfying their material wants, which they can in Australia. The ones who are mostly dissatisfied are the youth, who are dissatisfied anyway because they don't know who they are or where they are going. Then they settle down."
His general view of religion's influence is cautiously favourable. "If you go through the whole book the general message is that religion in Australia is fairly benign. Most of the things the religions do here are socially desirable and relatively benign." But their social power, what he calls their "institutional force", particularly of the mainstream Catholic and Protestant denominations, is largely gone: "The dark ages ended in 1960s and 70s, that was the last stuttering of repressive religions in Australia." Most people feel free to believe or not, to practise a faith or not. And there is a rise in ecumenism he thinks will make the book useful in a practical as well as an historical way.
Before this encyclopedia, Jupp's most recent book was the edited collection Social Cohesion in Australia. "Australia is probably the most socially cohesive community in the world," he says. "Most of the discussion in Australia about social cohesion centres (on) Muslims, who are about 1.5 per cent of the population and most of them are practically hiding under the bed. They're the ones who have to apologise for their existence. The whole thing has been distorted.
"Most of the Muslims I know are university-educated and a lot of women come to conferences we have and are active participants in the discussions. Headscarves are common but it's very rare to see burkas."
So his unease about Australian society centres on other issues. Organised crime and drugs are a threat, including bikie gangs. Then there is what he calls "the youth problem", gangs that congregate at night, violent and very drunk.
"I'm not just saying this because I'm old," he adds. "The social tensions among the less educated, less skilled, working-class young in the outer suburbs, there is probably more threat from them than from the Muslims."
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
IS REAL PEACE POSSIBLE IN THE ME? Mark Regev.
MARK REGEV SPOKESPERSON FOR THE NETANYAHU GOVERNMENT IN ISRAEL, ADDRESSED THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN MELBOURNE, 13/10/09.
Mark Regev is an ex-Melbournian who was on a private visit to his family. This was his 3rd consecutive yearly visit and the only speaking engagement while in Australia. Held at the Kew Synagogue with a capacity audience I took some brief notes which are transcribed hereunder. MM.
“What will make a real peace?”
Mark started his topic on the prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians with a question:
"Is it possible,- is it probable,- that if Israel undid everything that happened after the ’67 war,- i.e. removed all West bank settlements, divided Jerusalem, returned borders, refugees, etc.,- that there would still not be peace?"
Given the historical decisions taken to date by the various Governments in order to obtain international legitimacy and in the hope of creating some momentum towards peace,- namely in Southern Lebanon and the Gaza strip, it is obvious that the answer is a resounding yes.
The questions that have to be asked, although it goes against the conventional wisdom of today, is:
concentrating on settlements,- why was there a ’67 war?
Refugees? Why was there a ’48 war?
Are the consequences of conflicts, the root causes of the conflict?
No. The root cause for the initial conflicts is still the cause for conflict today.
The Arabs lost the vote at the UN in ’48 for a two-State solution,- result, resorted to violence. They created their own refugee problem; then,- more violence created the ’67 war. They lost out again and the West Bank and Gaza were occupied and had to be settled to stop violence. Hezbollah in Lebanon created the Lebanon war,- all because of one irrefutable fact which is still the real stumbling block to any meaningful dialogue for peace:
Both sides need to accept the legitimacy of the other, but one side refuses to do so.
The Netanyahu government is prepared and has stated that it is ready to accept a Palestinian State alongside Israel, but not for conflict,- for peace. Given past experience,- it has tried once,- failed; tried a second time,- failed. No one is prepared to make the same mistake a third time. Israel must be accepted as the homeland for the Jewish people first and foremost. All other issues can then be negotiated on an even playing field.
Issues of security. These cannot be dismissed. The West Bank must be demilitarized, not in principle, not by resolutions on paper, but in fact. It is not happening now,- too many arms getting through to Gaza and the West Bank, as well as to Hezbollah in Lebanon, irrespective of Un resolutions and paper agreements.
Economic issues. A prosperous Palestinian society is in Israel’s interest as well as in the Palestinians’ interest. Their economy on the West Bank is set by the IMF to grow by 7%, in spite of the world’s economic crisis. Tourism is up; dozens of minor road-blocks have been taken down for ease of movement of the population and of goods and because their security is better and because of the Israeli security fence.
Re US President Obama. In his speech in Cairo he told his Arab audiences in the middle of the Arab world that the US –Israel linkage will remain unbroken. He is looking for a regional peace, but the Arab nations are just spectators, not players in the region.
There are no new settlements,- there is no ‘settlement growth’,- this is just an excuse for Abu Mazen/Abass to find an excuse not to pursue any peace talks. The closer they get to peace, the more reasons they find to widen the gap. Israel has not set pre-conditions for starting peace- talks, but suddenly the Palestinians have set their own.
This is why the only hope is for their people to want to make peace and then for them to find the leaders who can and want to make real peace. If the Palestinians could only get their act together and start building some proper infrastructures for statehood, perhaps their wish for a peaceful resolution of the conflict might finally result. A recent poll suggested that nearly 70% wished to live in peace with Israel. This is a hopeful sign.
RE ‘concessions’. They always want Israel to make concessions and when they get some,- former PM Olmert offered the most wide-reaching concessions they ever received,- they always turn away. The closer the Palestinians get to peace, the wider they claim the gap to be. Instead of having the guts to accept everything in principle and then get on with further negotiations as real-peace partners would do, they prefer to hang on,- to and for,- what?
RE “the West Bank settlements’. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, all Israel is ‘settlements’.
21 settlements dismantled in Gaza,- where did that get Israel? Severe limitations already on settlement growth, to the extent that the political Settler-Movement is daily demonstrating outside the Knesset and has refused to join the Netanyahu Government.
There is no expansion of the settlements outside their borders, the natural growth in infrastructures will continue inside those settlements,- but which ones will remain in Israel and which will not,- will be part of eventual peace negotiations, if and when they will arise.
RE the Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman: what is not well known outside Israel is the fact that his activities are very interesting. He travels to places where no Israeli FM has ventured since Golda Meir’s days,- in Africa, Latin America, this week to Vienna and Kazakhstan. He is developing some very good relations with many countries.
RE the supporters of a “one State solution”. No serious person supports this concept anywhere, except Ahmadinejad, Ghaddafi and their ilk. If you want to support them, then you can go down that path. One either supports the principle of a Jewish Homeland for Jewish people or one doesn’t. Palestinians are not going to be Israelis and Israelis won’t be Palestinians. Each can or could be citizens of the others’ countries, but nothing else.
Re Iran. The Iranian proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, are reasonably quiet since the fiasco with the false election results and the resulting protests. They are in defensive mode at present in case they get the same treatment from their own people.
However, if the Ahmadinejad forces succeed to make a nuclear-armed Iran a reality, then these extremists will be re-energized and then the whole ME will be in danger. The Europeans also know only too well what it means for them, because Israel is only the first in the line of fire.
Re “speaking to Hamas”. This is a ludicrous suggestion. Why not speak to Al Queda, Taliban or other terrorists who want to kill you? When the Austrians elected a Fascist Party to government, most Western Nations immediately recalled their Ambassadors from Vienna. One look at the Hamas Charter, their public pronouncements (in Arabic) to their people, or to their continued activities, shows you that there is no one to talk to. The European leaders or others don’t make these demands on Israel. (Only old Malcolm Fraser does!)
Re “Goldstone Report”. Why did Goldstone accept to undertake something that 3 others refused, including Mary Robinson,- no friend of Israel,- who refused to do so because the terms of reference were so one-sided? Why would anyone undertake anything for a misnamed group such as the UN-HRC, led by the likes of Nth. Korea, Lybia, Somalia, Syria & Iran, etc., etc.? They have an anti-Israel obsession as though the human rights in their countries are the best, only Israel’s are the worst. They passed 25 Resolutions, 20 about Israel.
Then Goldstone comes in, gets into Gaza and holds public meetings about the war. What sane person would dare to criticize Hamas publicly in Gaza? Who would dare not to criticize Israelis and the IDF there? Then he has the chutzpah to tell Israel not to charge those who spoke up against the IDF. Who spoke up?- Gilad Shalit’s father He thinks Israel will jail him?
The Israeli army has investigated 100 complaints about the war and 21 individuals are being investigated by the civil criminal justice system. One can just see this happening under Hamas. Where was the UN-HRC when Hamas rained their thousands of rockets over many years into Israel, in direct violation of signed armistice agreements?
The inevitability of war as a result, was obviously instigated by Hamas, yet Israel is not classed as a victim but an aggressor.
USA, Canada, UK, Australia and all the coalition anti-terrorist forces in Iraq and Afghanistan had better beware, because a Goldstone report can happen to all of them!
CONCLUSION:If the Gaza response is illegitimate, how can Israel ever take a risk for peace in the future?
Finally, to a questioner about Gilad Shalit, the answer was,-no comment, nothing to discuss!
Mark Regev is an ex-Melbournian who was on a private visit to his family. This was his 3rd consecutive yearly visit and the only speaking engagement while in Australia. Held at the Kew Synagogue with a capacity audience I took some brief notes which are transcribed hereunder. MM.
“What will make a real peace?”
Mark started his topic on the prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians with a question:
"Is it possible,- is it probable,- that if Israel undid everything that happened after the ’67 war,- i.e. removed all West bank settlements, divided Jerusalem, returned borders, refugees, etc.,- that there would still not be peace?"
Given the historical decisions taken to date by the various Governments in order to obtain international legitimacy and in the hope of creating some momentum towards peace,- namely in Southern Lebanon and the Gaza strip, it is obvious that the answer is a resounding yes.
The questions that have to be asked, although it goes against the conventional wisdom of today, is:
concentrating on settlements,- why was there a ’67 war?
Refugees? Why was there a ’48 war?
Are the consequences of conflicts, the root causes of the conflict?
No. The root cause for the initial conflicts is still the cause for conflict today.
The Arabs lost the vote at the UN in ’48 for a two-State solution,- result, resorted to violence. They created their own refugee problem; then,- more violence created the ’67 war. They lost out again and the West Bank and Gaza were occupied and had to be settled to stop violence. Hezbollah in Lebanon created the Lebanon war,- all because of one irrefutable fact which is still the real stumbling block to any meaningful dialogue for peace:
Both sides need to accept the legitimacy of the other, but one side refuses to do so.
The Netanyahu government is prepared and has stated that it is ready to accept a Palestinian State alongside Israel, but not for conflict,- for peace. Given past experience,- it has tried once,- failed; tried a second time,- failed. No one is prepared to make the same mistake a third time. Israel must be accepted as the homeland for the Jewish people first and foremost. All other issues can then be negotiated on an even playing field.
Issues of security. These cannot be dismissed. The West Bank must be demilitarized, not in principle, not by resolutions on paper, but in fact. It is not happening now,- too many arms getting through to Gaza and the West Bank, as well as to Hezbollah in Lebanon, irrespective of Un resolutions and paper agreements.
Economic issues. A prosperous Palestinian society is in Israel’s interest as well as in the Palestinians’ interest. Their economy on the West Bank is set by the IMF to grow by 7%, in spite of the world’s economic crisis. Tourism is up; dozens of minor road-blocks have been taken down for ease of movement of the population and of goods and because their security is better and because of the Israeli security fence.
Re US President Obama. In his speech in Cairo he told his Arab audiences in the middle of the Arab world that the US –Israel linkage will remain unbroken. He is looking for a regional peace, but the Arab nations are just spectators, not players in the region.
There are no new settlements,- there is no ‘settlement growth’,- this is just an excuse for Abu Mazen/Abass to find an excuse not to pursue any peace talks. The closer they get to peace, the more reasons they find to widen the gap. Israel has not set pre-conditions for starting peace- talks, but suddenly the Palestinians have set their own.
This is why the only hope is for their people to want to make peace and then for them to find the leaders who can and want to make real peace. If the Palestinians could only get their act together and start building some proper infrastructures for statehood, perhaps their wish for a peaceful resolution of the conflict might finally result. A recent poll suggested that nearly 70% wished to live in peace with Israel. This is a hopeful sign.
RE ‘concessions’. They always want Israel to make concessions and when they get some,- former PM Olmert offered the most wide-reaching concessions they ever received,- they always turn away. The closer the Palestinians get to peace, the wider they claim the gap to be. Instead of having the guts to accept everything in principle and then get on with further negotiations as real-peace partners would do, they prefer to hang on,- to and for,- what?
RE “the West Bank settlements’. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, all Israel is ‘settlements’.
21 settlements dismantled in Gaza,- where did that get Israel? Severe limitations already on settlement growth, to the extent that the political Settler-Movement is daily demonstrating outside the Knesset and has refused to join the Netanyahu Government.
There is no expansion of the settlements outside their borders, the natural growth in infrastructures will continue inside those settlements,- but which ones will remain in Israel and which will not,- will be part of eventual peace negotiations, if and when they will arise.
RE the Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman: what is not well known outside Israel is the fact that his activities are very interesting. He travels to places where no Israeli FM has ventured since Golda Meir’s days,- in Africa, Latin America, this week to Vienna and Kazakhstan. He is developing some very good relations with many countries.
RE the supporters of a “one State solution”. No serious person supports this concept anywhere, except Ahmadinejad, Ghaddafi and their ilk. If you want to support them, then you can go down that path. One either supports the principle of a Jewish Homeland for Jewish people or one doesn’t. Palestinians are not going to be Israelis and Israelis won’t be Palestinians. Each can or could be citizens of the others’ countries, but nothing else.
Re Iran. The Iranian proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, are reasonably quiet since the fiasco with the false election results and the resulting protests. They are in defensive mode at present in case they get the same treatment from their own people.
However, if the Ahmadinejad forces succeed to make a nuclear-armed Iran a reality, then these extremists will be re-energized and then the whole ME will be in danger. The Europeans also know only too well what it means for them, because Israel is only the first in the line of fire.
Re “speaking to Hamas”. This is a ludicrous suggestion. Why not speak to Al Queda, Taliban or other terrorists who want to kill you? When the Austrians elected a Fascist Party to government, most Western Nations immediately recalled their Ambassadors from Vienna. One look at the Hamas Charter, their public pronouncements (in Arabic) to their people, or to their continued activities, shows you that there is no one to talk to. The European leaders or others don’t make these demands on Israel. (Only old Malcolm Fraser does!)
Re “Goldstone Report”. Why did Goldstone accept to undertake something that 3 others refused, including Mary Robinson,- no friend of Israel,- who refused to do so because the terms of reference were so one-sided? Why would anyone undertake anything for a misnamed group such as the UN-HRC, led by the likes of Nth. Korea, Lybia, Somalia, Syria & Iran, etc., etc.? They have an anti-Israel obsession as though the human rights in their countries are the best, only Israel’s are the worst. They passed 25 Resolutions, 20 about Israel.
Then Goldstone comes in, gets into Gaza and holds public meetings about the war. What sane person would dare to criticize Hamas publicly in Gaza? Who would dare not to criticize Israelis and the IDF there? Then he has the chutzpah to tell Israel not to charge those who spoke up against the IDF. Who spoke up?- Gilad Shalit’s father He thinks Israel will jail him?
The Israeli army has investigated 100 complaints about the war and 21 individuals are being investigated by the civil criminal justice system. One can just see this happening under Hamas. Where was the UN-HRC when Hamas rained their thousands of rockets over many years into Israel, in direct violation of signed armistice agreements?
The inevitability of war as a result, was obviously instigated by Hamas, yet Israel is not classed as a victim but an aggressor.
USA, Canada, UK, Australia and all the coalition anti-terrorist forces in Iraq and Afghanistan had better beware, because a Goldstone report can happen to all of them!
CONCLUSION:If the Gaza response is illegitimate, how can Israel ever take a risk for peace in the future?
Finally, to a questioner about Gilad Shalit, the answer was,-no comment, nothing to discuss!
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Anti-Semitic Boycotters can be Academic Jews too.
GALUS AUSTRALIS 6 October 2009
Academic boycotts of Israel are part of the problem not the solution
by Philip Mendes
The last few weeks have seen a revival of the previously dormant Australian campaign for an academic boycott of Israel.
Jake Lynch, a former UK journalist recently appointed Director of the Sydney University Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS), convened a meeting at Sydney University on 15 September to propose an end to institutional ties between the University and two Israeli universities, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Technion in Haifa.
His initiative was supported by 22 signatures from other academics including most prominently Stuart Rees, Director of CPACS; Kenneth McNab, President of CPACS, and retired academic John Docker. Lynch invited Antony Loewenstein and Docker, two anti-Zionist fundamentalists of Jewish origin, to address the meeting in favour of an academic boycott.
Suzanne Rutland, the Head of Jewish Studies at Sydney University, was given a few minutes in question time to speak against the proposed boycott. She was supported by other academics and students. By all accounts it was a fiery and polarized meeting. Lynch later said he would continue to try to persuade Sydney Uni and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) to endorse a boycott.
He is unlikely to succeed on either count. The Vice-Chancellor of Sydney University, Michael Spence, has stated publicly that “The University does not consider it appropriate to boycott academic institutions in a country with which Australia has diplomatic relations”. The NTEU previously stated in November 2002 that they would not be endorsing any boycott proposal.
The key principles against an academic boycott were recently discussed by Nick Dyrenfurth and myself in The Australian (“Racism risk in calls for Israeli boycott”, 19 September) and will only be rehashed briefly here.
Firstly, an academic boycott of Israelis alone is discriminatory given that it is based on an ethnic stereotyping of all Israelis as exceptionally evil, and is implicitly if not explicitly racist. This was acknowledged by the UK University and College Union in September 2007 when they withdrew their boycott campaign on legal advice that it was an infringement of anti-discrimination legislation. It is only fascists and xenophobes who classify whole peoples as inherently bad or inferior.
Secondly, the UK experience confirms that a boycott campaign will inevitably lead to a demonization of all those who support Israel’s right to exist whatever their political perspective on the West Bank settlements. In practice, this means a boycott of the overwhelming majority of Jews. As the leading left-wing UK philosopher and convenor of the anti-boycott Engage group David Hirsh has noted (here):
The Campaign to exclude Israelis from our campuses brings with it a toxic atmosphere. People who oppose the boycott are portrayed as pro-imperialist, pro-Zionist, pro-apartheid, uncaring of Palestinian suffering…And most of the people thus accused are Jews. With the campaign to exclude Israelis comes a campaign to libel Jewish academics and Jewish union members; Jewish students too.
Thirdly, the key boycotters are not internationalist advocates of Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation. They are rather unconditional supporters of Palestinian nationalism. They favour the dissolution of the existing State of Israel and its replacement with an exclusivist ethno-religious Arab/Islamic state of Greater Palestine.
The key agenda of this paper, however, is not to provide a philosophical criticism of the boycott proposal. Rather, it is concerned with exposing how the boycotters use their one-sided pro-Palestinian bias to misrepresent the reality of the Middle East. For the simplistic construction by the boycotters of all Israelis as evil oppressors (to be blamed and punished) and all Palestinians as innocent victims (to be patronisingly protected from any critical analysis) is completely out of touch with the real events of the last ten years.
Until mid 2000, most of the Israeli Left and the Jewish Left worldwide including myself assumed that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and associated settlements were the key barriers to the implementation of a peaceful two state solution. We might call this the “root causes” of the conflict theory. But that theory was undermined by the following seminal events:
1.The Palestinian Authority’s rejection of the two state proposals introduced at Camp David in July 2000, and subsequently improved on in various forms by US President Clinton culminating in the unsuccessful Taba negotiations of January 2001, and later the rejection of Prime Minister Olmert’s similar proposal in September 2008;
2.Palestinian demands during and subsequent to these negotiations for a return of 1948 refugees not to the proposed Palestinian State, but rather to Green Line Israel, a demand completely incompatible with any commitment to a two-state solution;
3.The outbreak of the violent intifada in September 2000 which was really an undeclared war against the Israeli Green Line civilian population including the long parade of suicide bombings. These bombings reached their apex in March 2002. During that horrible month, there were eight separate suicide attacks resulting in the deaths of 63 people and many hundreds injured. The final straw was the attack on the Passover seder in Netanya’s Park Hotel which killed 30 people and injured 140. This attack provoked the Israeli invasion of the leading West Bank cities in an attempt to destroy the terror networks, and stop the carnage. Yet the first Australian boycott petition was ironically initated by Ghassan Hage and John Docker immediately after this invasion in May 2002. Their clear purpose was to blame the Israeli victims of terror, and defend the Palestinian perpetrators;
4.The ongoing rocket attacks on the Israeli border town of Sderot which only increased in intensity after the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
In short, I now believe that the absolutist nature of Palestinian political culture is as significant, if not more significant than the Israeli West Bank settlements, in precluding a compromise deal. And hardly anybody today
believes that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is likely in lieu of commensurate radical changes in attitude on the Palestinian side to bring peace. To be sure, I still believe that the Israelis should withdraw and eventually will withdraw from most of the West Bank to facilitate a lasting two-state solution, but this will only happen as part of an internationally supported peace package that addresses violence, extremism, and national and religious prejudice on both sides.
Today, the Israelis and Palestinians are sadly engaged in a process of mutual destruction.
The Israelis fear that any political or territorial concessions will only be used by the Palestinians to initiate further violence. They associate the suicide bombings with the Oslo peace process, and link the rocket attacks to the withdrawal from Gaza. Consequently, they have elected a government which is ideologically opposed to real compromise and implicitly acts as the political arm of the settlers movement.
The Palestinians are desperate in that they have gained little from years of political and ideological struggle, and believe that the Israelis plan to take over what is left of their national inheritance. Consequently, they have turned to Hamas and other violent groups which favour terror as the first rather than last resort, and oppose any co-existence with Israel.
In this context, the last thing we need are boycotters who demonise one side of the conflict as if they are Collingwood supporters barracking against Carlton or vica versa. Their infantile slogans will only perpetuate the conflict. Rather, we need dispassionate mediators who can build new bridges between the currently irreconcilable Israeli and Palestinian narratives to find a compromise solution.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Philip Mendes is an advisory editor of Engage, the left-wing academic group which campaigned successfully against academic boycott proposals in the UK. He is also a long-time member of the NTEU
Academic boycotts of Israel are part of the problem not the solution
by Philip Mendes
The last few weeks have seen a revival of the previously dormant Australian campaign for an academic boycott of Israel.
Jake Lynch, a former UK journalist recently appointed Director of the Sydney University Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS), convened a meeting at Sydney University on 15 September to propose an end to institutional ties between the University and two Israeli universities, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Technion in Haifa.
His initiative was supported by 22 signatures from other academics including most prominently Stuart Rees, Director of CPACS; Kenneth McNab, President of CPACS, and retired academic John Docker. Lynch invited Antony Loewenstein and Docker, two anti-Zionist fundamentalists of Jewish origin, to address the meeting in favour of an academic boycott.
Suzanne Rutland, the Head of Jewish Studies at Sydney University, was given a few minutes in question time to speak against the proposed boycott. She was supported by other academics and students. By all accounts it was a fiery and polarized meeting. Lynch later said he would continue to try to persuade Sydney Uni and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) to endorse a boycott.
He is unlikely to succeed on either count. The Vice-Chancellor of Sydney University, Michael Spence, has stated publicly that “The University does not consider it appropriate to boycott academic institutions in a country with which Australia has diplomatic relations”. The NTEU previously stated in November 2002 that they would not be endorsing any boycott proposal.
The key principles against an academic boycott were recently discussed by Nick Dyrenfurth and myself in The Australian (“Racism risk in calls for Israeli boycott”, 19 September) and will only be rehashed briefly here.
Firstly, an academic boycott of Israelis alone is discriminatory given that it is based on an ethnic stereotyping of all Israelis as exceptionally evil, and is implicitly if not explicitly racist. This was acknowledged by the UK University and College Union in September 2007 when they withdrew their boycott campaign on legal advice that it was an infringement of anti-discrimination legislation. It is only fascists and xenophobes who classify whole peoples as inherently bad or inferior.
Secondly, the UK experience confirms that a boycott campaign will inevitably lead to a demonization of all those who support Israel’s right to exist whatever their political perspective on the West Bank settlements. In practice, this means a boycott of the overwhelming majority of Jews. As the leading left-wing UK philosopher and convenor of the anti-boycott Engage group David Hirsh has noted (here):
The Campaign to exclude Israelis from our campuses brings with it a toxic atmosphere. People who oppose the boycott are portrayed as pro-imperialist, pro-Zionist, pro-apartheid, uncaring of Palestinian suffering…And most of the people thus accused are Jews. With the campaign to exclude Israelis comes a campaign to libel Jewish academics and Jewish union members; Jewish students too.
Thirdly, the key boycotters are not internationalist advocates of Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation. They are rather unconditional supporters of Palestinian nationalism. They favour the dissolution of the existing State of Israel and its replacement with an exclusivist ethno-religious Arab/Islamic state of Greater Palestine.
The key agenda of this paper, however, is not to provide a philosophical criticism of the boycott proposal. Rather, it is concerned with exposing how the boycotters use their one-sided pro-Palestinian bias to misrepresent the reality of the Middle East. For the simplistic construction by the boycotters of all Israelis as evil oppressors (to be blamed and punished) and all Palestinians as innocent victims (to be patronisingly protected from any critical analysis) is completely out of touch with the real events of the last ten years.
Until mid 2000, most of the Israeli Left and the Jewish Left worldwide including myself assumed that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and associated settlements were the key barriers to the implementation of a peaceful two state solution. We might call this the “root causes” of the conflict theory. But that theory was undermined by the following seminal events:
1.The Palestinian Authority’s rejection of the two state proposals introduced at Camp David in July 2000, and subsequently improved on in various forms by US President Clinton culminating in the unsuccessful Taba negotiations of January 2001, and later the rejection of Prime Minister Olmert’s similar proposal in September 2008;
2.Palestinian demands during and subsequent to these negotiations for a return of 1948 refugees not to the proposed Palestinian State, but rather to Green Line Israel, a demand completely incompatible with any commitment to a two-state solution;
3.The outbreak of the violent intifada in September 2000 which was really an undeclared war against the Israeli Green Line civilian population including the long parade of suicide bombings. These bombings reached their apex in March 2002. During that horrible month, there were eight separate suicide attacks resulting in the deaths of 63 people and many hundreds injured. The final straw was the attack on the Passover seder in Netanya’s Park Hotel which killed 30 people and injured 140. This attack provoked the Israeli invasion of the leading West Bank cities in an attempt to destroy the terror networks, and stop the carnage. Yet the first Australian boycott petition was ironically initated by Ghassan Hage and John Docker immediately after this invasion in May 2002. Their clear purpose was to blame the Israeli victims of terror, and defend the Palestinian perpetrators;
4.The ongoing rocket attacks on the Israeli border town of Sderot which only increased in intensity after the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
In short, I now believe that the absolutist nature of Palestinian political culture is as significant, if not more significant than the Israeli West Bank settlements, in precluding a compromise deal. And hardly anybody today
believes that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is likely in lieu of commensurate radical changes in attitude on the Palestinian side to bring peace. To be sure, I still believe that the Israelis should withdraw and eventually will withdraw from most of the West Bank to facilitate a lasting two-state solution, but this will only happen as part of an internationally supported peace package that addresses violence, extremism, and national and religious prejudice on both sides.
Today, the Israelis and Palestinians are sadly engaged in a process of mutual destruction.
The Israelis fear that any political or territorial concessions will only be used by the Palestinians to initiate further violence. They associate the suicide bombings with the Oslo peace process, and link the rocket attacks to the withdrawal from Gaza. Consequently, they have elected a government which is ideologically opposed to real compromise and implicitly acts as the political arm of the settlers movement.
The Palestinians are desperate in that they have gained little from years of political and ideological struggle, and believe that the Israelis plan to take over what is left of their national inheritance. Consequently, they have turned to Hamas and other violent groups which favour terror as the first rather than last resort, and oppose any co-existence with Israel.
In this context, the last thing we need are boycotters who demonise one side of the conflict as if they are Collingwood supporters barracking against Carlton or vica versa. Their infantile slogans will only perpetuate the conflict. Rather, we need dispassionate mediators who can build new bridges between the currently irreconcilable Israeli and Palestinian narratives to find a compromise solution.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Philip Mendes is an advisory editor of Engage, the left-wing academic group which campaigned successfully against academic boycott proposals in the UK. He is also a long-time member of the NTEU
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