Sticking to your guns, literally, pays off.

Sticking to your guns, literally, pays off.

Original Thinking by Barry Shaw.

Just look at Iran as one example. Despite six United Nations Security Council resolutions to the contrary, Iran stubbornly stuck to the mantra that they have rights to enrich uranium and, ignoring all the fears that this is the road to a nuclear weapon, it eventually paid off with the new deal it struck with the appeasing Europeans, America, and a smiling Russia.

The lesson to be learned from this is it is possible to overturn international law if you are the forceful partner and loudly repeat your case.

Look at another example. International law professor, Eugene Kantorovich, has written that the European Union is in default of its own ruling on occupation by fostering and funding the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. He reminds us that the EU provisionally approved a fisheries agreement in November that extends into territory that Morocco is occupying in breach of international law. Furthermore, Kantorovich has exposed the glaring fact that the EU is actually paying Morocco for access to resources in the Western Sahara.

That’s pretty amazing stuff when compared to the European punishing stance over Israel’s building, and offering employment to Arab and Jew in Judea and Samaria. Unless the EU retracts its resolutions, Israel is due to be clobbered with European sanctions come January 1^st 2014.

How is it possible to come to terms with this level of hypocrisy and double standards? Perhaps Israel should adopt the stance of the Iranians and Moroccans?  Both aggressively pursued their “rights” even when they had none under international law, and the international community folded.

Compared with them, Israel’s rights are considerably more legitimate in international law, no matter how much President Obama, John Kerry, and the European Union wiggle.

Israel has far more legitimacy to the “disputed” territories of Judea and Samaria. Instead of capitulating weakly to the false charges of “occupied Palestinian land” it should boldly, affirmatively, and repeatedly declare that Israel has full legitimate rights to the territories written large in international law.

If Israeli politicians are weak on the justice of our cause, they should allow international law experts, such as Professor Eugene Kantorovich, champion the case.

As he said at a lecture, which is freely available online, it doesn’t matter in international law if you are pro or anti Israel or the Palestinians. It matters what has been approved and sanctioned in internationally binding treaties. On this score, Israel can firmly claim legitimacy over the territories dating back to the League of Nations Mandate of 1922 that was further enshrined in Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, as well as other rulings. These still stand today.

This need not cancel out the necessity of solving the problem of Palestinian Arabs, but it does prove title, the absence of which leaves a cloud of uncertainty over the issue of whose land it is.

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.’ www.israelnarrative.com

He is also the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College. 

Iran after Geneva, and the implications for Israel.

Iran after Geneva, and the implications for Israel.

Original Thinking from Barry Shaw.

When you give the most dangerous regime in the world the right to enrich uranium you give them the most significant step in obtaining the most dangerous weapon in the world, namely a nuclear bomb.

This was done despite 6 UN Security Council resolutions depriving Iran from any right to enrich uranium. As for the argument that they need to enrich uranium for civil use of nuclear energy this is a flat lie. You don’t need enriched uranium or to spin 18,000 centrifuges to provide civilian-use energy. You only need it to make weapon grade fissile material.

They say that they had to cobble together this deal because the Iranians refused to give up enriched uranium.

The West and Russia, led by America, have said “ignore the laws and the resolutions, despite the enormous dangers and risks to the world, we will break the law and grant untrustworthy Iran the right to enrich uranium because they demanded this condition, and we will ease sanctions.” How wrong-headed can they be?

This is like saying that magistrates allow a thief to continue stealing in smaller quantities because he refuses to give up stealing. It’s ridiculous. It’s absurd!

Kerry said, in a press conference that the agreement does not say that the Iranians have the right to enrich uranium. He was being disingenuous, to put it mildly, and he knows it.

Today, Iran has 19,462 centrifuges inside two uranium enrichment plants. These machines could be used to make fuel for nuclear power stations – or the core of a nuclear weapon. In comparison, Pakistan which is reputed to already have 100 nuclear bombs only has 6000 centrifuges. Iran today has three times more than Pakistan.

Let me be detail specific. Most of the centrifuges are the new IE-2m type. These are considered to be between 3 to 5 times more efficient than the recent IR-1 type. Therefore, it needs far fewer centrifuges than before to spin low grade uranium up to weapon grade uranium needed to produce bombs.  

The deal says Iran must stop using 9500. This leaves 10,000 spinning. That means Kerry is wrong in what he said.

The deal says Iran will stop enriching uranium to the 20 per cent purity that is close to weapons grade. Its existing stockpile of this material will be converted into harmless oxide. There is nothing to stop Iran from reversing the process of converting oxide back into enriched uranium.

The deal that was struck does not roll back Iran’s nuclear weapon program. In places, it freezes it temporarily, such as stopping construction of the heavy water plant in Arak. However, inspectors can only visit some of the Iranian nuclear facilities and are prevented from visiting others, including the secret plants where the world does not know what is going on there. Remember that Iran is a lying, cheating, regime that has gotten deception and deceit down to a fine art.

The only other roll-back is President Obama rolling back President Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ as applied to Iran. It is an integral part of Obama fundamentally changing the world. He is so determined to reshape the world in his image that he is prepared to gift the mad mullahs of Tehran the right to enrich uranium despite the protests of America’s allies in the region. If he is wrong, as we believe he is, this will be the biggest mistake in world history. The disaster of Obamacare will be dwarfed in comparison to a nuclear-armed Iran. 

I have another take on Obama. It is well known in Washington and the British Foreign Service circles that certain influential diplomats have been educated as and prefer to be Arabists.

They seek to gain influence and base their careers in the Arab world. That’s where the wealth is. 

Obama, on the other hand, has a strong tendency to be an Islamist.  I am not saying that he is a Muslim. I am saying that his foreign policy tends to favor Islamist regimes.

He gave his support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Syrian rebels against Assad, the strong Islamist trend of Turkey, forgiving Palestinian crimes and terrorists, but being tough on Israel, and now Iran, are prime examples.

Israel fully expects the world, one day, to hear Obama make yet another apology and say, “Everything would have been all right if Iran hasn’t lied to me,” to paraphrase Neville Chamberlain after Hitler marched into Poland.

That is at the heart of the friction between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the West led by America. We know the real face of Iran. The West is far too naïve. They have been taken for suckers, according to our perspective. That is why this deal is a good deal for Iran and an awful deal for the world. The centrifuges keep spinning. The only thing that is really being rolled back is the sanctions. Iran gets economic relief as they continue to enrich. Maybe they will not spin to 20% uranium as stipulated in the agreement, but maybe they will. Can we be sure the inspectors get to visit every facility? Certainly not. Iran is moments away from being a nuclear threshold state. This means it will enable it to be weeks away from rushing to become a full nuclear state. Is that what we really want from a messianic theology that predicts the End of Days with the destruction of Israel to bring about the arrival of the Mahdi, their holy messiah?

When they say that sanctions relief will only be in the region of $7 Billion, they are lying. They have suspended sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical exports, gold, and other precious metals. Iran’s efforts to sell crude oil will not be impeded. They can sell auto parts. They can install and supply aircraft parts.  Major international companies will again start trading with Iran as Europe and America will turn a blind eye to their dealings. 

When the deal says that Iran cannot enrich to above 5% means they have given Iran the right to enrich.   What these negotiators have done is made it impossible to reverse this ruling, but also made it impossible to prevent any other regime from enriching uranium. You cannot say it’s OK for Iran to enrich but Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, cannot. Obama has given the green light for nuclear proliferation, a nuclear power race, and that is deadly dangerous.

Let me give you another perspective that is troubling to Israel. 

Israel says it has the right, under international law, to build houses in Judea & Samaria, but what do the same Europeans led by Catherine Ashton and America’s Obama and Kerry say? “Over our dead body! Never! Don’t you dare to do it otherwise we will impose heavy sanctions, isolate you, and encourage the Palestinians to commit terror against you.”  Do you see the immoral equivalence of the two scenarios? It’s OK for Iran  to keep its nuclear facilities in place, but Israel is guilty of heinous international crimes if it builds in Jewish towns like Ariel and Maale Adumim, or gives employment to Arabs and Jews.

The Obama Administration, which failed in everything it turned its hand to, and the EU under Catherine Ashton, think they know what is good for Israel both with Iran and the Palestinians. In both cases, they close their eyes to the facts and the reality of what both regimes stand for. Both continue to call for “Death to Israel.” Both employ terror and incitement against the Jewish state. Both hate America, despite their diplomatic smiles.

Had America been tough with Iran, Israel may have gambled on American pressure to surrender its rights to the Palestinians in the current peace talks knowing it had the assertive backing of America. Should the Palestinians prove themselves to be as deceptive and untrustworthy as the Iranians. Let’s be honest, there is nothing stopping a future Palestinian state to be any less a rogue state as Iran and not keep its commitments.  But now, Israel would be foolish to trust American commitments after witnessing their performance in Geneva, and in the recent past. 

At this moment in time, Syria still retains its chemical weapons despite its promises. Iran retains its infrastructure to develop a nuclear weapon. The Palestinians retain the desire and the weapons to launch massive terror against Israel. So does Hezbollah in Lebanon. All this against the backdrop of a weakening America in the Middle East. Israel will not be willing to put its security and faith in an American Administration that is gambling Israel’s fate.

I want to make this clear. Iran is already a nuclear threshold state. It reached this position due to the inept and slow attitude of the international diplomatic community to respond to the warnings of Israel for more than a decade.

Before this Geneva agreement, Iran was a nuclear threshold state with leper status in the world. After this deal, Iran is now a nuclear threshold state with international legitimacy.

The world, under America’s leadership, has let this rogue regime off the ropes.

Israel cannot forget that, while the negotiators were talking in Geneva, Iran’s Supreme leader, Khameni, was telling his people that Israel is a rabid dog that is doomed to collapse, while the crowd was chanting “Death to America!”

There is Jewish saying, born of bitter experience. “Always believe the threats of your enemy more than the promises of your friends.”

Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.’  www.israelnarrative.com

A FOURTH KIND OF ANTI-SEMITISM.

A FOURTH KIND OF ANTISEMITISM.

 

ORIGINAL THINKING FROM BARRY SHAW.

Roger Cukierman, the president of the French Jewish community organization, CRIF, in his article “Fighting three kinds of AntiSemitism,” (Jerusalem Post, October 20, 2013) spoke of three types of Anti-Semitism - the far Right, BDS campaigns, European Muslim immigrants, but there is a fourth kind.  It is Christian anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism exemplified by a recent British Methodist Church/BDS Movement’s anti-Israel boycott survey, and by statements by church leaders in countries like South Africa.

Why is the Methodist-led boycott an act of Anti-Semitism? Anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish behavior in all its forms.  Their one-sided boycott campaign attempting to inflict damage on Israel applied exclusively and discriminatorily against the Jewish state, is a clear act of anti-Jewish behavior.

See how far the Methodist Church has strayed from its founding ethics. Based on the teachings of John and Charles Wesley, Methodism is grounded in biblical scriptures that believe in the ingathering of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Read one of Charles Wesley’s hymns;

“O that the chosen band might now their brethren bring

And gathered out of every land present to Zion’s King.

Of all the ancient race not one be left behind

But each impelled by secret grace his way to Canaan find!

We know it must be done for God hath spoke the word

All Israel shall their Saviour own to their first state restored.

Rebuilt by His command, Jerusalem shall rise

Her Temple on Moriah stand again, and touch the skies.”

The Methodist Church today, and other churches, have turned away from Zion’s King and adopted the Kairos Palestine Document.

The United Methodist Kairos Response, adopted at the UMC General Conference of 2012, is a long screed of sympathy and support for the Palestinian cause. It fails to give one word of understanding or support to Jewish and Israeli suffering at the hands of Palestinian violence, terror, and rejectionism. The Methodists boycott Zionism and replace it with Palestinian land. They have sold their birthright for no gain and no glory. It says less about Israel and more about the fatal drift of the Methodist Church from their founding faith into the arms of those calling for Israel’s destruction. 

Other European Christian bodies isolating Israel for their wrath including the Swedish Lutheran Church, the Catholic Sacred Heart College in Belgium, the Irish Catholic Troicaire, the Church of Scotland, the Dutch Interchurch Organization, Christian Aid, the Quakers, and increasingly the Church of Sweden. In South Africa, the Council of Churches has been dogmatically anti-Israel.

In “Demonizing Israel and the Jews,” Manfred Gerstenfeld wrote “Christian anti-Semitism is far from dead. The current external appearance of that anti-Semitism is mainly that of anti-Israelism. You can call it recycled and redirected Christian anti-Semitism.”

The Kairos Document,authored by Anglican cleric Naim Ateek through his Sabeel Centre in Jerusalem, demonizes Israel using ancient anti-Semitic imagery.

Ateek wrote, “Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him.” He envisioned “hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified”.

The Kairos Palestine Document calls for boycotts against Israel, and denies the Jewish historical connection to Israel. As such it is inconsistent with efforts to reach a two-state solution.  It was adopted by the World Council of Churches, the Presbyterian Church of the United States, and the United Methodist Church, and the South African Council of Churches.

Replacement theologists found salvation in the Kairos Palestine Document which removes biblical references to Jewish rights in the Holy Land, including Old Testament references to the Jewish people and the land, replacing Jewish Israel with Arab Palestine.

As Reverend Malcolm Hedding of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem wrote “Replacement theology rests chiefly on the idea that the whole or part of the Abrahamic Covenant has been abolished, for it is this Covenant that promises to Israel eternal ownership of the land of Canaan.” For some Christians, “Replacement theology removes from Israel a national destiny in the land of Canaan because of her rejection of Jesus’ Messianic credentials. “

“Kairos” is a Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment. It enables Anti-Semitic Christians to find their way out of the shame and guilt of the Holocaust to, once again, openly espouse their anti-Jewish dogma in anti-Zionist terms.

In his book “Our Hands are Stained With Blood,” Dr. Michael Brown states that replacement theology was among the primary theological and ideological foundations of the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews during the crusades and, ultimately, the Holocaust.  Brown pivots the Spanish Inquisition as the Catholic replacement theology Holocaust of the Jews in the Middle Ages with the Nazi Holocaust which granted replacement theologists further ‘proof’ that G-d had abandoned the Jews as His Chosen People.

Theologian researcher, Kendall Soulen, commenting on the events of the Holocaust and the establishment of the Jewish state, writes, “Under the new conditions created by these events, Christian churches have begun to consider anew their relation to the God of Israel and the Israel of God in the light of the Scriptures and the gospel about Jesus.” Some saw the resurrection of Israel out of the ashes of the Holocaust as a vision of biblical promise, while others sought an opposite interpretation which was given to them in the Kairos Document.

The Simon Weisenthal Center called the document “a revisionist document of hatred for Israel and contempt of Jews.”

Reverend Todd Baker argues against the Christian anti-Semitic interpretation of Matthew 27:25 that view the Jewish People as permanently guilty and condemned in the eyes of G-d. “His blood shall be upon us and on our children.” Misinterpretation, he claims, has helped spawn Christian anti-Semitism via the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and recent Replacement Theology.

The World Council of Churches, the Lutheran Church in America call the Kairos Palestine Document as “the word of truth.” Had they studied this “truth” they would see that it calls for the return of Palestinian refugees to all of Palestine, including Israel.

They support the Palestinian BDS National Committee which continues to reject the UN Partition Plan of 1948, calls for the return of Palestinian Arabs “to their original home, does not forget the Nakba,” and states “this land is our land and it is incumbent upon us to defend it and reclaim it.”

People like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the South African Council of Churches have a black liberation theology in which they falsely position Palestinian Arabs as ‘black’ and Israeli Jews as ‘white.’ Nothing can be further from the truth. Anyone who visits Israel, or knows anything about Israel, appreciates it as the Rainbow Nation of the Middle East, but grievous South African policy decisions and damaging official statements are based on this form of replacement theology.

The Palestinian Authority calls for a future state that will be “Judenrein” and refuse to acknowledge Israel as the national home of the Jewish People. In parallel, Hamas refuses to recognize Israel in any form, and its Charter calls to kill Jews. The Kairos supporters apparently have no problem with this, certainly not to the point of publicly objecting to it, or calling for sanctions against Palestinians until they adopt a language of compromise.  Replacement theologists need to believe Palestinian lies and tales of victimhood. It locks into their dogmatic belief system.

Simply put, they deny the Jews their biblical heritage yet champion Palestinian rights to the land. 

When concern for Palestinian rights comes with denial of Israel’s rights by any religious body, this is the fourth kind of Anti-Semitism.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, allying with Hitler for the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem in the Middle East, or Christian groups allying with the BDS Movement or Israel Apartheid Week desiring the elimination of Israel by non-violent delegitimization, they add up to the same thing – Anti-Semitism.

Anti-Zionism and secondary anti-Semitism often overlap when comparisons are made between Nazis and Israeli politics or between Holocaust victims and the Palestinians.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, in his new book, “Demonizing Israel and the Jews,” refers to “humanitarian racists” describing people or groups who criticize Israel “but remain silent about the Islamofacist character of Hamas who call for killing Jews, and the glorification of murderers of Israelis by the Palestinian Authority. Christian anti-Semitism is far from dead. The current external appearance of that anti-Semitism is mainly that of anti-Israelism. You can call it recycled."

Unquestionably the Spanish Inquisition was one of the greatest acts of Christian anti-Semitism. It began with the Catholic Church expelling the Jews of Spain and Portugal. It quickly led to two centuries of persecution and slaughter. The Spanish Inquisition was greater in its global reach, and much longer in its timeframe, than the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany.

Replacement theology reflects a Christian thinking that includes malignant anti-Jewish hatred. This has been the case throughout the history of the church.

In “An Analysis of Neo-Replacement Theology,” Michael J. Vlach writes, “ Replacement Theology have been seriously affected by two twentieth-century developments—the Holocaust and the establishment of the modern state of Israel. According to Irvin J. Borowsky, ‘Within Christendom since the time of Hitler, there has existed a widespread reaction of shock and soul-searching concerning the Holocaust.’”

Vlach asks what Christian replacement theologists make of the persistence of the Jewish people? What of Israel’s land and state?  The existence of Israel becomes a bone of contention in a theological sense. Do the misery and suffering of Israel in the past and present prove that God’s doom has rested and will rest upon her, as has been alleged time and again in so-called Christian theology? Or is Israel’s resurrection and existence God’s finger in history, that Israel is the object of His special providence and the proof Israel’s future that was foretold by Israel’s ancient prophets and the Bible?

A seismic rift has taken place within Christianity between those that acknowledge biblical teachings and those who dogmatically hold firm to replacement theology.

Whether by murder, expulsion, or conversion, the Christian denial of Jewish rights and Jewish existence, has been the constant threat to the Jewish people. It continues today in the name of anti-Zionism.

Barry Shaw is the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College.

He is the author of “Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.” www.israelnarrative.com

Australia's unstinting support for Israel.

Australia’s Unstinting Support for Israel.

Original Thinking from Barry Shaw.

                                                           

Three men, one aged 23, the other two aged 17, were arrested as part of a gang that viciously attacked five Jews in the Bondi district of Sydney on October 25, 2013.

Although this was a rare anti-Semitic violent attack in Australia, statistics show there are over five hundred anti-Jewish incidents a year in Australia.

Jews have been an integral part of Australia since its inception as in no other nation.

The first Jews to arrive in Australia, like so many of its pioneers, were prisoners shipped there by the British who looked on Australia as a penal colony. Today, the Jewish population numbers 120,000, making it the ninth biggest Jewish community in the world.

Sydney’s Jewish life developed with the help of Joseph Barrow Montefiore, a cousin of Sir Moses Montefiore. It built the first synagogue in Australia in 1844. This was quickly followed by Hobart on the island of Tasmania, Launceston, Melbourne, and Adelaide.

Australia remains the only nation, apart from Israel, whose founding fathers included Jews.  As a result, Jews were treated as equal citizens from the beginning. Jews were free to participate in cultural, economic, and political life of Australia without restriction. Already in the nineteenth century Jews had reached high positions such as speaker of Parliament, speaker of the house of Representatives, Premier of the State of South Australia, and the mayor of Melbourne.

The Jewish population was boosted at the turn of the century by refugees fleeing the pogroms of Russia and Poland.  The Second World War added a further injection of Jewish immigration to Australia with some seven thousand entering the country on visas before the outbreak of the war. As an outcome of the infamous Evian Conference of 1938, Australia generously agreed to accept the greatest number of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. This was followed by a further flow of refugees in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Surprisingly, Australia has the highest percentage of Holocaust survivors of any diaspora community. Further influx came in 1989 from South African Jews and later from Jews released from the former Soviet Union.

Jews have participated and contributed to the pioneering settlement and development of Australia. Isaac Nathan is considered to be the father of Australian music. Sir Isaac Isaacs was the first Australian Governor-General. Sir John Monash led Australian forces in World War One. He was the first Major-General in the Australian Army, followed by Paul Cullen and, in 2009, neuro-surgeon Jeffrey Rosenfeld, a cousin of Monash, was promoted to that rank.

Israel Smith became the first Jew to win the Victoria Cross for bravery in battle. Smith had emigrated to Australia from Manchester, England, but returned to Britain to join the Manchester Regiment at the outbreak of the First World War. He was wounded five times and returned to Australia after the war.

Australia has a place in local history in Israel. On October 31, 1917, the 4^th Australian Light Horse Brigade captured Beer Sheba from the Turks paving the way to the liberation of Jerusalem by General Allenby.

On September 25, 1918, the Australian Light Horse made the last cavalry charge of World War One by the banks of the Sea of Galilee at Tsemach and captured the railway station in the Jezreel valley. A memorial can be seen to this exploit in the gardens of college of Tsemach.

It is interesting to note that the famous Israeli general, Moshe Dayan, lost his eye fighting alongside Australian troops against the Vichy French in Lebanon in 1941. He was awarded an Australian military honor for his action.

Australia has come a long way from its days as a penal colony. Today, it has a strict immigration policy based on merit and identity with the cultural and national norms of the country. It has taken a strong position on illegal migrants. As such, it shares a meeting of minds with Israel.

The Australian Jewish community is very supportive of Israel and have been active is Jews in distress around the world, including past campaigns on behalf of Soviet and Ethiopian Jewry. There are a number of active Zionist organizations.

Australia’s government has always been a staunch ally and supporter of Israel. They perceive shared values and problems. Unlike many countries, leading Australian politicians have publicly acted and declared their firm opposition to the boycott movement in their country. In July, 2011, Australia’s then Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, joined Labour Parliamentarian and Chairman of Australia’s Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Committee, Michael Danby, inside the Max Brenner chocolate shop in Melbourne in a public act of solidarity with the store that was being picketed by pro-Palestinian activists. Rudd said at the time, “I don’t think in 21st-century Australia there is a place for the attempted boycott of a Jewish business. I thought we had learned that from history.”

In July, 2012, several prominent Labour Party members in New South Wales successfully blocked a move by the Green party in favor of an anti-Israel boycott resolution.

In April, 2013, Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, denounced pro-Palestinian activists as their protests against the opening of a Max Brenner shop was marred by anti-Jewish and Holocaust-denying statements and material, saying that Australia had always had firm opposition to the BDS Movement. Liberal Party deputy leader, Julie Bishop, promised to cut off federal grants to any individual and institution that supports the BDS campaign. If only European governments would follow Australia’s example.

As in most countries, the nest of anti-Israel radicalism can be found in Australia in the universities. Israeli legal action organization, Shurat HaDin, has filed a class action complaint, under the Australian Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 against a Sydney professor’s participation and public support for an academic boycott against Israeli universities.

In his letter, Shurat HaDin Australian lawyer, Alexander Hamilton, pointed out that it was unlawful for anyone “to do any act involving a distinction, exclusion, or preference based on race, national, or ethnic origin which has the purpose…of nullifying or impairing…fundamental freedom in the…economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”

It was felt that staunch support for Israel was wavering under a Rudd leadership, but the new Conservative government of Tony Abbott, in coalition with Julie Bishop, is expected to continue Australia’s firm support of Israel and to maintain the denial of funding to any anti-Israel boycott attempt. In a pre-election statement, Abbott said, “we are firmly committed to restoring the Australia- Israeli friendship to the strength it enjoyed under the [John] Howard government.”

As the headline in “The Australian” national newspaper on September 26, 2013, proudly heralded, “Unstinting Support for Israel Back in Place.”

Barry Shaw is the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center, Netanya Academic College.

He is also the author of the book “Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.” www.israelnarrative.com