Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

Also includes: more on Iran's nuclear program and the possibility of an Israeli strike, Holocaust graves rediscovered, an anti-Israel "journalist" exposed and a man in Melbourne who flys the Swastika.

January 27 marks the day that Auschwitz-Birkenau - the largest Nazi death camp was liberated. In November 2005, the United Nations passed a resolution to designate January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD) to honour the victims of the Holocaust - the genocide that resulted in the

On October 22, the Age and Sydney Morning Herald "Good Weekend" magazine ran a profile written by Jane Wheatley of prominent American linguistics expert, radical author and political activist Noam Chomsky. It is not available online, but was almost wholly complimentary to its subject - so much so th

Mansour Al-Hadj, a Saudi journalist, reveals in an article (Oct. 24) on the reformist website 'Aafaq', the dark truth about the teaching of the Holocaust in the Saudi education system, which is being projected around the world through Saudi institutions abroad. Al-Hadj writes about the distorted rep

Alvin Rosenfeld is a brave man, and his new work is courageous. The book is called The End of the Holocaust, and it is not reluctant to take on the unexamined pieties that have grown up around the slaughter, and the sentimentalisation that threatens to smother it in meretricious uplift.

If the hiding place of recently deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is found, there is always the question of where, how and even if he will be brought to trial. Lawyer/activist Geoffrey Robertson has written an op-ed in today's Sydney Morning Herald, calling for Gaddafi to be handed-over to the I

Hannah Rosenthal, the US State Department's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism, has just completed a visit to Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in a bid to reduce the antisemitic content of their education syllabuses. As she told JTA, the State Department has found the textbooks produc

This blog has been closely following the inexplicable failure of the Western World to apply proper scrutiny to Iran, as well as the internal strife that is currently gripping the Islamic Republic. A very poignant editorial in today's Jerusalem Post argues that the UN, too, has failed to apply a

In bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, I sometimes encounter a certain amount of scepticism. I divide these sceptics into two groups. The smaller group is ideologically opposed to prosecuting Nazis. The larger group wonders whether, so many years after the war, the effort to hold to account th

AIJAC Executive Director Dr. Colin Rubenstein has appeared on ABC-TV's Lateline, responding to the use of Nazi and Holocaust analogy in Australia's climate change debate.

Associated Press writers Matti Friedman, Aron Heller and Michelle Faul have given this bleak reminder of the once proud Jewish community of Libya, who were driven-out over several decades and currently live in exile as a diaspora - mostly in Israel. The article outlines the current feelings of

Jeremy Jones, Director of International and Community Affairs for the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, was in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo for a series of high-level discussions last week. The visit, organised as a result of Jones hosting leading Bosnian religious and political figu

Dr. Colin Rubenstein, Executive Director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council said today, "AIJAC welcomes the decision by the Commonwealth Government to appeal the Federal Court's decision in the matter of the extradition of alleged murderer Charles Zentai to Hungary.

After 30 years devoted to identifying, hunting down, and lobbying foreign governments to prosecute suspected war criminals, comes a long-awaited memoir by Efraim Zuroff, historian and current Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem. Despite the passage of time, decline in health and adv

After more than a decade of activity, the ITF still generates energy, enthusiasm and creativity. It serves as a facilitator of co-operation and the exchange of ideas designed to bring about "best practise" in combating the malevolent ideas which lay at the basis of Nazism and acts as a counterweight

Islamist antisemitism is thoroughly soaked in many of the most inflammatory themes that initially made possible the atrocities of Crystal Night and its horrific aftermath during the Holocaust.

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council Executive Director Dr Colin Rubenstein today welcomed the decision of Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor to allow the extradition of suspected Nazi war criminal Charles Zentai.

The Pope's condemnations of antisemitism in general and Holocaust denial in particular were forthright and consistent.

Pope Benedict XVI's five-day "pastoral pilgrimage of prayer and unity" for peace and reconciliation in Israel and the Palestinian territories in May passed without serious hitches - though his unusual speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial aroused controversy in Israel.

The papacy of Pius XII represented a low point in the history of Catholic-Jewish relations, but several years after it ended, a theological rapprochement between Catholicism and Judaism ensued, eventually producing a political honeymoon between the Holy See and the Jewish state.