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
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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."

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!

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.
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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