Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

NORWEGIAN professor Johan Galtung, an "off-site lecturer" at the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, recently exposed himself as one who irrationally criticises Jews.

Galtung's previous commentary on Israel was indistinguishable from the general line followed by CPACS and other academics in the dubious "peace and conflict studies" discipline that he is credited with founding.

Prof. Shlomo Avineri... has just written a fascinating little piece about how, in 1976, he used a 1854 quote from Karl Marx to counter a Soviet-led effort at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to condemn and expel Israel for the alleged crime of "Judaising" Jerusalem - a claim which is still raised frequently today...

But there is another point in this quote from Marx which Avineri does not call attention to - and it relates to the treatment of Jews in Arab lands...

I have known Cardinal George Pell for a number of years, discussed Middle East politics over a kosher meal he arranged for me in his home, worked with him on a range of matters of Catholic-Jewish concern and had any disagreements treated respectfully and graciously. In that light, watching him on ABC television's Monday "Infotainment" program, "Q & A", was not a comfortable experience.

The Iranian nuclear question, Yom Hashoah and the controversy surrounding a recent poem by Gunter Grass, were the backdrop for a recent long interview Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu gave to the German newspaper Welt am Sontag.

In the interview, published on April 22, Netanyahu explained to the German audience what offended Israel most about Grass' poem "What Must be Said" - which depicted Israel as a potentially genocidal aggressor against Iran. Under questioning, the Prime Minister also defended his positions on the risks of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Later in the interview, he rebuffed claims that the continued existence of West Bank settlements are harming the prospects of peace with the Palestinians...

Yesterday, the Jewish world was commemorating the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Ha'Shoah). Iran, however, decided to mark the day a little differently.

The Iranian regime is notorious for its persistent denial of the Holocaust -- for example, a huge controversy erupted in Germany last month when an interview with the Iranian President was aired on public television in which he denied the Holocaust. (For more on Iran's efforts to sponsor Holocaust denial internationally, see...

Far-right political parties appear to be making a comeback in Europe, especially in Hungary and in Greece.

In Hungary, the radical nationalist party commonly known as Jobbik - (‘The Movement for a Better Hungary'), has been growing in power and popularity and is considered by many scholars to be fascist and antisemitic.

These concerns were reinforced when on April 3, Deputy leader of Jobbik, Zsolt Barath made a speech in Budapest Parliament that revisited the Tiszaszlar Blood Libel Claim.

The recent controversy over a house in the West Bank city of Hebron is having severe consequences for one unfortunate Palestinian. There was an outcry when Israeli settlers purchased and moved into a house in the "Arab" section of Hebron, ending with their eviction in a controversial move by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak. While the evicted settlers are unhappy about the result, the man who sold them the house is facing a far worse outcome.

[Muhammad Abu] Shahala  reportedly was sentenced to death for his part in selling what has become known as the Machpela House to a group of Jews. He reportedly confessed to the sale after...

Welcome to Incitement Watch, a new feature on "FreshAIR" which collects and highlights the worst examples of antisemitism and incitement to violence from the Middle Eastern media.

An annual Palestinian day of protest commonly known as Land Day has been rebranded this year as the Palestinian camp seeks to maximize international exposure to their agenda with a "Global March to Jerusalem", scheduled for later today, March 30.

What groups are behind it? There is growing evidence that Iran has a significant role behind the event, as GLORIA Centre analyst Jonathan Spyer wrote for PJ Media this week...

When is a hate crime not a hate crime? Apparently, when a self-proclaimed "Islamic warrior" seeks out an obscure Jewish school, and shoots dead a teacher and three small children simply for being Jews - at least according to some reactions to the massacre that occurred in Toulouse, France on 19 March.

Following the tragic shootings in Toulouse last week that resulted in the deaths of a Rabbi, three children and three soldiers by a Frenchman of Algerian dissent Mohammed Merah, many in the media have been quick to paint Merah as a ‘lone wolf' and his actions as an isolated incident, the actions of one crazed individual, with no wider implications.

There has also been little media discussion/reflection on the dangers of antisemitism and the growth of jidhadi networks operating in the West including the indoctrination that can occur in prisons - where petty criminal Merah reportedly converted to radical Islamic beliefs.

In this post last month, I argued that the Jewish community in Australia does have the unfortunate need for security at Jewish schools, which remain a target for terrorists, a statement that I later affirmed after the Toulouse attacks. This was to rebut statements made by former Australian Jewish News editor Dan Goldberg, reported in The Age in January - well before the attack in Toulouse - suggesting that the money could be better spent elsewhere:

[Former AJN editor Dan] Goldberg suggested the rising costs of security were helping push up education fees so that ever more money would be spent on protecting ever fewer children...

With the self-confessed murderer, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origins named Mohamed Merah, now having been killed by French police, this Update looks at the aftermath of the horrific shootings of three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, earlier this week. (Some chilling details of the murderers actions at the Ozer HaTorah school, as revealed on security camera footage, are here.)

The Sydney Morning Herald editorialised this morning on the possible identity of the Toulouse shooter and pondered what group he may have been affiliated to. Curiously, these questions seem to have been answered just three pages earlier.

...As to whether he [the shooter] is a deranged loner or a fanatical terrorist acting for some group is unclear.  While this week's school attack was an atrocity against Jews, anti-Semitism alone does not seem to account for last week's murders in which the paratrooper victims were dark-skinned, hailing from either Muslim North Africa or the West Indies. One notion is that the gunman thought he was striking a blow for the Palestinian cause - French paratroops have served in Afghanistan...

Last month, I wrote in defence of the security concerns of Australia's Jewish community. With a heavy heart, I must note that these concerns have been unfortunately vindicated once again. Last night, a shooting attack outside Ozar Hatorah, a Jewish school in Toulouse, killed much-loved schoolteacher Yonatan Sandler, as well as his two sons -- Aryeh, age five, and Gavriel, age four -- as well as Miriam Monsonego, age seven. Another boy was injured.

According to the chilling AFP report, a masked gunman dismounted from a Yamaha scooter and began shooting, hitting Sandler as he tried in vain to sheild his sons. The shooter then chased after Miriam as she ran into the school, grabbing her and killing her at close range...

What's wrong with being religious in Israel? Nothing at all - though there is of course much controversy in Israel at the moment over the exemption from the draft for most ultra-Orthodox young men following a Supreme Court ruling last week, and other issues, including views on women's rights.

But these controversies, and the debates surrounding them, have led to the size and influence of Israel's ultra-Orthodox population sometimes being exaggerated in the media in order to make spurious comparisons between Israeli society and dogmatic Islamic states such as Iran or Saudi Arabia. So some firm facts are needed.

The Middle East Media Research Institute or MEMRI is an organisation that combs the media in the Middle East and translates interesting items into English. Unfortunately, MEMRI's research consistently exposes the extreme hatred that is fed to peoples throughout the Middle East through their state-controlled media outlets.

For example, MEMRI released a translation of an article responding to Western reports on Saudi textbooks late last year. An example of these reports comes from the UK's Daily Mail:

Barbaric textbooks handed out in Saudi Arabian schools teach children how to cut off a thief's hands and feet under Sharia law, it has emerged.

The shocking books, paid for and printed by the Saudi government, also tell teenagers that Jews...

Two recent blog posts by bloggers of Arab descent bravely tackle the internally- taboo issue of antisemitism in the Arab world, both claiming that it is a well entrenched belief system which undermines the development of pluralistic, democratic societies in the Middle East, as the Arab Spring revolutions enter their second year.

Iran's policies now lie at the centre of world politics. Far too little attention, however, is being paid to the unique ideological atmosphere that makes the Iranian nuclear weapons program so dangerous.

Holocaust denial is certainly the cruellest aspect of this ideology, for whoever denies the Holocaust kills the victims a second time. The denial of the Holocaust is also its most bewildering aspect - no other crime in history is better documented.

Greece has been repeatedly in the headlines in recent months for one simple reason - because of that small country's massive debt crisis and the huge implications it has for the wider European Union. But there's another reason that the world should be paying attention to Greece.  In Greece, antisemitism seems increasingly to be entering into the mainstream. Some speculate that the recent resurgence is linked to the Greek debt crisis that began in 2009.

AIJAC has previously written a blog post on the far right LAOS political party, which has an antisemitic track record and last year secured ministerial positions in the unity coalition.  Now two senior members of LAOS, Makis Voridis and Adonis Georgiadis are joining Greece's mainstream conservative party ‘New Democracy', which is ahead in the polls in the lead up to parliamentary elections scheduled for April...

The Maldives is an island paradise in the Indian Ocean with an overwhelmingly Muslim population. Last week, the country experienced a coup, where, reportedly with a gun to his head, the democratically-elected President Mohamed Nasheed resigned, paving the way for his replacement by Vice-President Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik.

The politics of the coup are complex and unclear, and part of the story appears to be that many of the coup plotters are associated with former President / Dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who Nasheed succeeded following elections in 2008. However it does seem clear that caught up in the mix is the growing influence of very extreme Salafist Islamist influences and factions in the Maldives. Moreover, these factions have been promoting bizarre anti-Israel conspiracy theories as part of their efforts to undermine Nasheed...

Today: The Merchant of Venice, Kuwaiti elections, Jordanian Palestinians and civil wars in Yemen and Syria.

Also today: a bizarre Egyptian consipracy, some Nazi Marines, terrorist diet tips, and a British MP with questionable ties.

The Australian Financial Review today ran an article from last month's Atlantic by Robert Kaplan, which was originally published under the headling 'Why John J. Mearsheimer Is Right (About Some Things)' but republished as 'Great Power Politics'. As revealed by the headline, the piece largely praises University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer, focusing on his self-dubbed "offensive realist" take on China. Mearsheimer, however, is a rather dubious acadamic, particularly for his record of fomenting antisemitism in mainstream discourse, but also for his generally biased and factually questionable material.

Kaplan does acknowledge Mearsheimer's most notorious work, the much maligned 2006 essay and 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy that he co-authored with Harvard professor Steven Walt, as well as his recent endorsement of the abhorrent Gil Atzmon. Kaplan, however, glosses-over these controversies as "tragedies" that threaten to "obscure" his otherwise important work...

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.

Daily summary of news stories that readers may have missed otherwise.

Venezuelan Supremo Hugo Chavez often accuses Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians.

And so voluminous is the Chavez definition of the term that it is a surprise he has failed to notice that half of his own country's 200-year-old Jewish community has disappeared since he assumed power in 1998. But then the evaporation of this patriotic, productive, and loyal group is largely a consequence of Chavez's hostile policies and rhetoric...

In yesterday's Age, Barney Zwartz has reported on a former editor of the Australian Jewish News questioning the amount that the community spends each year on security.

Goldberg is undoubtedly correct in one regard: the community could benefit from extra funding for education. That said, the unfortunate reality is that the money spent every year on security for the Jewish community goes to countering a very real threat.

For starters...

On August 1, 2011, al-Jazeera English (AJE) began broadcasting to two million cable subscribers in New York - the third major US city to carry the station. AJE's gutsy, driven reporting - one commentator aptly commended its "hustle" - has won it friends in high places: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lauded the channel as "real news," and US Senator John McCain (Republican, Ariz.) said he was "very proud" of its handling of the so-called Arab Spring.

In the editorial in the current January edition of the Australia/Israel Review, Colin Rubenstein takes on the false belief that antisemitism in the Middle East comes almost solely from the conflict with Israel and will disappear if there is an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal

In the course of the editorial, Colin noted:

It is true that, in medieval times, Jews in Muslim societies tended on the whole to be better off than in Christian Europe, but this is hardly to suggest that their human rights were fully respected.

Now, some material has come to light which illustrates this point brilliantly.

There is good reason for being sceptical of reports suggesting Hamas is shifting from armed resistance to non-violent resistance and will settle for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders.

The US Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, addressing a conference on antisemitism on November 30, controversially insisted that Muslim "hatred and indeed sometimes... violence directed at Jews generally [is] a result of the continuing tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territories" and should therefore not be seen as the same thing as "real" antisemitism. He went on to insist that a Mideast peace deal would see a "huge reduction of this form of labeled ‘antisemitism'."

Sydney is a vibrant multicultural metropolis, built by people from many nationalities, ethnicities, cultures and religions.

In the main street of Lakemba, for example, South, West and East Asian, and Anglo-Celtic sounds and sights are part of the rich communal tapestry.

Amongst restaurants, gift shops, welfare agencies, banks and newsagencies, are bookshops which serve Muslims and those interested in Islam and Muslims' opinions.

The US ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, has shown breathtaking ignorance, insensitivity and naivety by blaming Israel for Arab and Muslim antisemitism in Europe.

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, expressions of explicit anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish sentiments are beginning to surge. In Middle East politics, it has long beem traditional to point a finger at Israel, "the Zionists" and "the Jews", who were blamed for all the problems of the Muslim and Arab worlds. "The Jews" were used by the regimes as a convenient distraction from their own peoples' misery and hardship, and its causes. Many had hoped that the Arab spring indicated a turn for the better and an end to this racist and counter-productive tradition, since intitially, Israel was hardly even mentioned as a cause for the fate of Arab societies. For once, the finger of blame was rightly being pointing at their own dictatorial regimes. Sadly, as prominent American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg has noted,

Now in Cairo, and across the Arab Middle East, Israel and the Jews are serving once again as universal boogeymen. Once dictators used anti-Semitism to divert their citizens' attention away from their own problems. Now expressions of the most ridiculous conspiracy theories seem to rise up organically.

This truth doesn't conform to the generally accepted narrative of the Arab Spring, but ignoring it won't make it disappear.

Following on from this post concerning an accusation of Israel supposedly "pinkwashing" its public image by spruiking its record on gay rights to hide alleged injustices, a number of gay writers have penned scathing responses in the Jewish and international media.

Writing in the Forward, Jay Michaelson gives a critique of the piece by Sarah Schulman in the New York Times that began the whole kerfuffle...

Between 1 October 1989 and 30 September 2011, I have logged incidents of "racist violence" against Jewish Australians and Jewish Australian institutions, including 566 of physical assaults or property damage, and 1,180 incidents of direct harassment and intimidation (mainly of families walking to or from synagogue).

Also recorded were: 679 incidents of telephone abuse and threats; 1,290 individual mailings of anti-Jewish material; 877 incidents of anti-Jewish graffiti; 3,168 examples of unique emails with anti-Jewish content and/or threats; and 664 incidents of other types, including faxes, leaflets, stickers, text messages and posters.

In Libya people have long speculated about Gaddafi's ancestry. While Gaddafi claimed to have been born in a tent in Sirte to the son of a poor Bedouin sheepherder and his wife, this story has been in doubt.

Now that Gaddafi has fallen, many feel that they are finally able to talk freely about Gaddafi. And what many of them are now saying is that he was a Jew.

In March, NBC's Richard Engel reported from Libya that one in five rebels was fighting Gaddafi because of the belief the Libyan dictator was Jewish.

More recently, Middle East analyst Andrew Engel reported from Libya in the New York Forward that throughout Libya he saw Graffiti depicting Gadaffi as a Jew and that many people he met were eager to tell him that Gaddafi was Jewish.

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The old saying to "never waste a good crisis" takes on a worrying meaning in Greece as the LàOS party with an antisemitic track record wins a major breakthrough for the far right by securing ministerial positions in the new unity coalition.

And with everyone focussing on the potential implications of the Greek debt crisis for Europe and the world economy, no one seems to have noticed.

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 that it completely re-wrote the history of one of the most controversial aspects of Chomsky's long career in public controversy, his 1979 defence of French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson...

I penned a letter to "Good Weekend" setting this matter straight.

Critical discussion of Israel may be one thing, but increasingly ‘academic' discussion of Israel can cross a red line into blatant antisemitism.

Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born Jazz musician living in Britain who has declared himself a "proud self hating Jew." He is known not merely for being critical of Israel but for his antisemitic writings in which he encourages belief in a global Jewish conspiracy of world domination, casts doubt on the Holocaust and blames Jewish persecution - including by the Nazis - on Jews themselves.

Therefore, it is alarming that Atzmon's latest book The Wandering Who?, which reprises many of Atzmon's antisemitic themes has been endorsed by ‘respected' academics including John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Richard Falk of Princeton.

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 representation of the Holocaust he was exposed to in Saudi Arabia, especially due to the school curricula which failed to present this event as an atrocity, or even as a crime. Instead, according to his experiences, it encouraged eternal enmity against the Jews and other non-Muslims, sympathy towards Hitler's plan and taught that Muslims were destined to carry out a similar program of extermination of Jews in future.

On a different scale, but in some ways belonging to the same brand of journalism, was a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald: "A sex guide from Malaysia's Obedient Wives".
The article delivered, as one expert on Malaysia put it, "some richly deserved ridicule" - reporting the "Obedient Wives Club's sex guide" (which it did not name but simply termed "the book") was about "ways a Muslim man can have sex with all of his wives at the same time. Under strict Islamic tradition a man can have up to four wives if he can provide for them all."

Malaysian Insider Online, however, had no hesitation in publishing the book's full title: "Islamic Sex - Fighting Jews to Return Islamic Sex to the World".

As readers will note from the accompanying media release, AIJAC is very relieved and pleased that Ilan Grapel, a bright young Israeli-American student, has now been released after more than four months of detention in Egypt. Ilan served a 2009 stint in AIJAC's Melbourne's office as a visiting Goldman Fellow, part of a program run by our American partner, the American Jewish Committee...

In honour of the occasion of his release, it seems worth recalling some of the work Ilan did for AIJAC back in 2009...

Meanwhile, there has been some interesting discussion internationally about the motivations for Grapel's arrest and detention by Egypt's interim government, and what it says about where Egypt is going...

According to AP reports, the Palestinian Authority (PA) envoy to Canada, Linda Sobeh Ali, was recalled yesterday after she tweeted a link to a Youtube video calling upon "millions" to "destroy the Jews".

Of course, the Canadian Authorities were very hostile towards the video and pressured the PA into recalling Ali. The PA, however, not only made excuses for the poem but went on to blame the "Jewish Lobby" for having to bring their envoy home.

Joseph Lavoie, a spokesman for Canada's foreign affairs minister, said Monday it was a serious enough matter for the Palestinian Authority that they recalled Sobeh Ali...

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It would appear that there is no room for Jews in the Arab Spring.

Last year, before the Arab Spring, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas caused outrage when she recommended that Israeli Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else."

As an American of Lebanese descent, the 89-year-old Thomas should have known that the Arab Middle East was home to approximately 850,000 Jews known as Mizrahi (Eastern) Jews for thousands of years.

On Sunday, 9 October, many federal parliamentarians - reportedly all of them - were emailed a copy of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion' ("The Protocols").

The Protocols is a fraudulent antisemitic text that purports to be the minutes of a late 19th century meeting of Jewish leaders discussing their plan for global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903 and was used to blame Jews for the Russian Revolution... and virtually all subsequent wars, conflicts or other negative events. Since that time it has been translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the twentieth century.

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Reading Matthew Collins' Hate: My Life in the British Far Right, I am glad that I live in Australia and didn't have dealings with the UK far right...

Through this autobiographical work, a reader is given an intensive view of the violent personalities who inhabit the British far right, with as much detail and astute observation as could be packed into its 335 pages.

This year's Durban III Conference also known as "World Conference Against Racism" held on 22 September in New York has lived up to expectations by promoting antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

The participants at the conference voted on a political statement affirming the declarations of the original Durban forum, in which Palestinians were labelled as "victims of racism".

In addition, a key speaker was Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, who spoke about the "human rights violations perpetrated by the Zionist regime" against the Palestinians.

Durban III was boycotted by major democracies for its antisemitic and anti-Zionist agenda including: Australia, Israel, the USA, Canada, Holland, the Czech Republic, Italy, New Zealand, Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Britain, France and Poland.

As readers are aware, the UN General Assembly session for 2011 has begun in New York amidst considerable drama of various sorts. While the media focus has mainly been on the status of the Palestinian bid to gain UN recognition as a state, there's a great deal more going on. This Update focuses on the various dramas occurring.

On a dry, hot day in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, Australians attending the United Nations' World Conference Against Racism started planting a ''sea of hands'' to stimulate discussion on the many challenges facing indigenous Australians.

I was one of the people delegated to give ''hands'' to passers-by and encourage them to help build the display, with an overwhelmingly positive response from people from many nationalities who enjoyed the break from the intense and often nasty politicking taking place in the sessions. However, a group of about 10 men and women, with badges identifying them as predominantly coming from ''Palestine'', made audible, contemptuous comments at the fact a ''Jew'' (me) was part of the project and went to advise anyone who would listen to dissociate from the event.

There is little doubt that the phenomenon of WikiLeaks has lost the excitement and positive glow it once sparked among journalists, pundits and activists. Infighting in the organisation, the lack of anything terribly surprising in most of the more recent releases of information and the loss of novelty partly explain this change. But the recent "accidental" release of the entire unredacted database of US diplomatic cables not only led to widespread condemnation, but helped put the final nails in the coffin of WikiLeaks as the global "cause celebre" it once was among many, including in Australia.

Now Nick Cohen of the Guardian has written a piece suggesting the possibility that the unredacted cable leak could well have been an intentional act by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange...

New Zealand has decided to withdraw from the Durban III conference to be held on 22 September in New York. The previous two Durban "anti-racism" conferences are known to have been hijacked by antisemitism and anti-zionism, and as noted in a previous blog post, the document released for this conference make it clear that this one is unlikely to be an improvement.

New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully stated:

"We remain concerned that the commemoration of the 2001 Durban Declaration could re-open the offensive and anti-Semitic debates which undermined the original World Conference. For these reasons, we have decided not to participate".

In addition, Poland is also attempting to distance itself form from Durban III, as it has been reported that Poland does not plan to send an official delegation to participate in Durban III.

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According to a report by Oren Dorell in USA Today, the Palestinian emissary to the US has told a press conference that no Jews would be permitted to live in the planned Palestinian state.

"After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated," Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador, said during a meeting with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.

The territory to which Areikat refers would include places like the ancient city of Hebron. As Jeffrey Goldberg notes, Hebron is not just any city, but is the second holiest site in the Jewish faith...

For the third time in three months, on September 13, the Senate debated the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. In a fiery debate, the Coalition criticised the Greens for failing to condemn BDS in Parliament.

Senator Ron Boswell, (Queensland, Nationals), moved that Senate:

a) Condemns the intensification of the Global Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions campaign being conducted against Max Brenner chocolate cafes;

b) Rejects this tactic as a way of promoting Palestinian rights; and

c) Agrees with the New South Wales Greens MP Mr Jeremy Buckingham's assertion ‘that the tone and the public perception of the Max Brenner protests may be counterproductive to the cause of peace and human rights in the Middle East'.

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The Jewish Chronicle reported on September 14, that the UK will not participate in upcoming UN sponsored Durban III anti-racism conference to be held on September 22 because it did not want to engage in an event with antisemitic association. The Durban conferences are known to have been hijacked by antisemitism and anti-zionism. British Prime Minister David Cameron stated that the Durban conferences saw "open displays" of "deplorable anti- Semitism," and said it would be "wrong" to engage in such events.

The UK is now the tenth UN member state to have pulled out of Duban III, and it joins the company of Israel, Germany, the US, Canada, Italy, Austria, Australia, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands who have already withdrawn from the Durban conference.

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Following the 2001 9/11 attacks, it was widely reported that, in the Middle East, conspiracy theories were rampant that the attacks were actually plots by the American government, the Israelis, or both. Ten years down the track, there is less reporting of such beliefs, but have they faded away through the passage of time and the give and take of debate?

Sadly, as recent polls make clear, the reality is very much the opposite...

The phenomenon of ‘Temple Denial' is a campaign led by Palestinian political leaders, religious figures, academics and journalists to delegitimise the Jewish historical connection with the area of Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem - which according to Jewish tradition is Judaism's most holy sites.

It also attempts to increase the importance of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and even the Western Wall in Islam as part of the effort to make Jerusalem a Muslim city under Arab governance - and to deny the need for any Palestinian compromise on Jerusalem with Jewish religious and national rights. This trend even includes the removal of archaeological material from the Temple Mount without archaeological supervision (see blog post by Allon Lee).

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It was late evening in Sydney.

Not many hours earlier, I had arrived home from South Africa, having participated in the World Conference Against Racism ("Durban I") and the NGO Forum which had preceded it.

The Jewish community in Sydney had asked me to provide a first hand account of the events, given the reports which they had heard of antisemitism, anti-Israel extremism, bullying and thuggery.

So I found myself giving what I had thought was a dry, unemotional recounting of the lows and highs of my previous two weeks.

The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council today welcomed the announcement last night that Australia would refrain from participating in the UN's tainted Durban III "anti-racism" conference in New York next month.

From the Epic Revisionist Handbook 2011, comes the kind of story that the West and pro-Palestinian apologists prefer to gloss over, a documentary on official Palestinian Authority TV reveals a bright glorious future.... without Jewish people in Jerusalem.

Broadcast on August 10, the documentary apparently labels Jewish worship as "sin and filth" and that "Jews will disappear from the picture". The show conjures up a nightmarish future, promising that the Western Wall Plaza - the most holy place for prayer in the world for Jews - will disappear and be replaced by an Arab residential suburb.

An Egyptian religious TV channel has broadcast a mock trial of former leader Hosni Mubarak, who appears as a puppet, and is accused by child prosecutors, of being, essentially, a puppet of Israel.

The clip on al Hekma TV, includes a number of anti-Israel slurs that feed into the recurring motif of Israel and Jews as spoilers and poisoners of Egyptian society.

Is it too much of a stretch to wonder if the Palestinian campaign to have the UN declare its support for a state on the 1967 borders on September 20 will spill over into the "Third Durban Conference" which starts two days later?

In other words, will Durban III, being held to mark the 10th anniversary of the first, descend into the abject anti-Israel and antisemitic hate fest that marred the original and overshadowed the second?

And will the debate about UN recognition of Palestinian statehood be used to stoke the fires?

The internet, and especially social media, have been galvanising political action and allowing dissenters in dictatorial regimes to connect with each other in ways that were never before possible. However, one unfortunate by-product of the absolute "anything goes" forum that is the internet is that those who would preach hate and violence now have a new place in which to do so anonymously and more effectively. For instance, this post on Wednesday exposed some rather confronting antisemitism on Youtube coming out of the London riots.

In a similar vein, it seems that a new antisemitic meme has "gone viral" in the Arab "Twittersphere" in response to the ongoing "tent protests" in Israel. As reported in Global Voices...

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Anyone naïve enough to divine any signs of Hamas moderation in its quest for Israel's elimination or that it will play nice for the Palestinian Authority's September UN statehood bid, needs the services of a top ophthalmologist (although preferably not Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad, who is a little busy at the moment anyhow).

According to an August 4 briefing paper from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, Hamas' top echelon repeated in different forums their opposition to Israel's existence or compromise in late July.

As violent riots spread throughout Britain, with hordes of young men robbing and looting everything in sight, an unexpected champion has emerged for Britain's aggrieved underclass. A call for Britain to restrain violence against their own people has come from none other than the Iranian Foreign Ministry. As reported by Iran's state-controlled Press TV:

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast urged the British government to order the police to stop their violent confrontation with the people, IRNA reported in the early hours of Tuesday...

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One of the most reliable indices of political heat in Malaysia is when the spectre of Jews or Israel is invoked to discredit domestic political enemies. That no instance seems too far-fetched is an interesting indicator of how Jews are perceived in a country with no Jewish population of its own - a fantasy notion of Jewish omnipotence, antisemitism or probably a combination of both.

A few days before this article was written, it is doubtful many, if any, readers were familiar with the name Anders Behring Breivik.

Perhaps some of my international colleagues who research and attempt to understand the various personalities that participate in the shadowy world of European extremism may have stumbled upon his rantings and rationalisations, but the dispassionate mass murderer had not been flagged as a person of any influence or likely impact, even though he had reportedly been on a Norwegian government watch list since March.

Now he is notorious - as a callous mass murderer.

Following on from Daniel's blog post about the tragic massacre in Norway where Anders Breivik killed 76 people, readers may be interested in some additional commentary and analysis on the attack beyond that in Australian media coverage.

This blog post looks at:

Dave Rich's blog post which examines Breivik's antisemitism;

Jonathan Kay's article which discusses the influence of the 'Unabomber' and 'The Turner Diaries' on Breivik's manifesto;

Alex Stern who criticises the way in which the Norway massacre has been used for political purposes to attack conservative theorists and Israel;

Barry Rubin's blog criticising an editorial in the New York Daily News, which minimises the threat of Islamic terrorism; and

Scott Stewart's article on the lessons that can be learnt from a lone wolf attaker.

Israel's leaders certainly know where Israel sits with regard to the horrific massacre that took place in Oslo over the weekend. Both President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu have expressed their sorrow over the tragic events and expressed Israel's empathy with the Norwegian people, given the terrorist attacks that Israel is all too used to facing. As The Jerusalem Post reports:

After sending a message of condolence to King Harald V of Norway on Saturday, President Shimon Peres on Sunday followed up with a phone call to the King to personally voice his own and the nation's condolences...

Over the weekend, the Czech Republic, Italy and Holland have all pulled out of the UN's September 22 meeting to commemorate the 2001 Durban conference, a supposed anti-racism meeting that turned into a mass display of antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda. Canada, Israel and the US have already stated that they will not be attending the "Durban III" summit.

As the explanations for the pullout given by the Czech Republic, Italy and Holland demonstrate, we can expect this years Durban III summit to be a repeat of the first Durban conference in 2001 - which essentially labeled Zionism as racism, and Israel as the world's only racist state.

What do Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Egypt have in common?

In the past week, all four countries have been abuzz with conspiratorial news stories suggesting that Israel has been maliciously meddling in their internal affairs.

American author, thinktanker and foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead has used the anniversary of the publication of Mein Kampf to set out some important and valuable thoughts on modern expressions of antisemitism...

Meanwhile, some interesting thoughts on how the far left became susceptible to this sort of prejudice in their dedicated hatred of Israel have come from British academic and writer Alan Johnson, himself a man of the left...

In another example of antisemitism sponsored by the Palestinian Authority (PA), this week the PA rebroadcast an antisemitic cartoon from a Jordanian newspaper regarding the division of Sudan on official PA television.

The cartoon had the headline "Division of Sudan," and it showed the distorted images of an American and a Jew toasting the division over barrels of Sudanese oil.

Amid the cheers over the birth of the new nation state of the Republic of South Sudan, some commentators are noting the largely overlooked significance of what has just occurred, not least for an Israeli-Palestinian peace process eventually leading to a two state solution.

Compared with South Sudan, Palestine is the French Riviera. This raises serious questions about the moral justification for the Palestinians to take extreme stands that make compromise so difficult, while they continue to act as a bottomless drain on the ultimately limited resources the developed world can provide in aid.

AIJAC's latest email Update looks at why and how the 2011 Gaza flotilla gambit fizzled out. In contrast to 2010's headline-grabbing political stunt that acted as a Trojan Horse for the Turkish Islamist IHH charity resulting in needless deaths and injuries, this was no replay.

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and Federal MP Mr Michael Danby should be highly commended for their visit yesterday to a branch of Max Brenner in Melbourne, a target of recent anti-Israel protests, where they took a strong stance against the boycott of Jewish and Israeli-owned business. Two weeks ago, Palestinian supporters of the boycott launched a protest outside the café that took a violent turn, leaving three policemen injured and 19 protesters arrested. The Herald-Sun reported Rudd calling the boycott "archaic" and saying, "I went there deliberately to make a point and that is 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." The Age also reported Rudd stating that: 

"As an individual citizen - that is me, K. Rudd - I am here because I object to the boycotting of Jewish businesses."

AIJAC's latest email Update looks at US foreign policy positions in the Middle East that many analysts describe as alarmingly passive and which will effectively deliver the region into the anti-Western clutches of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

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 produced in these countries to be replete with extremely offensive material regarding Jews, as well as Christians and women. The antisemitic subject matter included references to Jews as the "spawn of monkeys and pigs", as well as material from The Protocols of The Elders of Zion...

Max Brenner chocolate shops in Melbourne and Sydney have recently been the target of aggressive protests. The protests were part of the Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. The protest in Melbourne was a violent demonstration - Victorian Police suffered three injuries and 19 protesters were arrested. Demonstrators called for the destruction of Israel and chanted: "From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free."

Gerard Henderson in his article "Jews know acceptance still has its exceptions" commented on the current double standards towards Jews and Catholics in Australia.

He writes: "Today Australia is an accepting society which formally outlaws discrimination on the basis of race or gender and disapproves of intolerance towards minorities. Except, it seems, Jews and Catholics."

AIJAC welcomes the Victorian Government's decision to undertake an investigation into racist activity in Victoria and to ascertain the extent of racist incidents over the past ten years. The investigation will be conducted by the Victorian Government Multicultural Commission with the assistance of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission.

The UN's so-called "special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories", Richard Falk, apologised this morning for publishing an anti-Semitic cartoon on his blog. The cartoon (below) depicts the United States as Lady Justice's guide dog, wearing a Jewish skullcap and urinating on Justice whilst feeding on a human corpse...

Amnesty International (AI), the world's largest human rights organisation, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. However new reports suggest that the once respected moral watchdog has lost sight of its original principles.

One of the greatest scandals to have rocked AI was in February 2010 with the suspension of highly respected, lifelong human rights activist Gita Sahgal who was the head of its women's rights division. Sahgal was suspended after she was quoted by The Sunday Times criticising AI for its high-profile associations with Moazzam Begg, the Director of a campaign group called Cageprisoners, who she referred to as "Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban". In April 2010, AI fired Sahgal due to ‘irreconcilable differences'.

In post-revolutionary Egypt, Coptic Christians have been increasingly attacked in aseries of bloody clashes. In March, armed thugs bulldozed a church allegedly over an illicit relationship between a Coptic man and a Muslim woman. This led to riots and clashes that left thirteen people dead and 140 wounded. No arrests were made and no one was charged.

Egypt's Christian minority community accounts for some 10 percent of the country's 82 million people and they fear further incidents of violence and persecution.

A new report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE), suggests that the attacks against Egyptian Coptic Christians are largely fuelled by the Egyptian school curricula, which is laden with anti-Semitic and anti-Christian sentiment. IMPACT-SE is calling for Egypt to reform its curricula in order to comply with UNESCO standards.

Ten years ago, I wasn't in Iran. While there have been many other times when I haven't been in that country (actually, I have never been there), the 2001 non-visit was significant then and relevant a decade later.

The murderous terrorist outrages of September 11 that year are etched into the public memory, but events the preceding fortnight also have long-term significance.

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 the Libyan Jewish communities:

Bublil-Waldman, who heads an organization of Jews from Arab countries in San Francisco, said she was still angry and hurt by the memory of her family's expulsion from Libya. Those feelings remained strong, she said, and at this point she "would be afraid to go." Navit Barel, a 34-year-old Israeli of Libyan descent, said the upheaval made her want to visit the country where her parents were born. Her mother and father, now deceased, both grew up near the Dar al-Bishi synagogue. "I feel like it brought back my yearning to talk to my father," she said.

Peace is not made solely through agreements, it is made through both sides accepting each other's legitimacy and working together. BDS and other attacks on Israel's existence have only ever served to vindicate the voices saying that peace and reconciliation are impossibilities. Well-meaning people have been duped by this movement into thinking that they are fighting for human rights. However the policy today is as malicious as the boycott of Jewish settlements was in 1922. For all its carefully-framed rhetoric, its leaders have but one true aim, which they occasionally admit - to end the Jewish state.

Howard Jacobson is a master of the craft of entertaining, thought provoking and humane fiction. While his latest novel, The Finkler Question, has been applauded as the first work of humour to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize, that label is a little misleading. The book is rather a wonderfully written, engrossing story featuring, interestingly, three-dimensional characters, with comic devices employed to flesh out their successes, doubts and fears.

As the author admits freely, it is a very "Jewish" novel. In fact, it is arguably the most "Jewish" English novel ever published.

Not only are many of the central protagonists Jewish, but the book revolves around the relationships of the broad cast of characters to Jews, their own Jewishness, their own perceived Jewishness, Jewish ritual, history and contemporary culture.

Was there ever a time when anti-Israel students felt afraid? Certainly, anti-Zionist fundamentalists, thuggish Israel-bashers and others have been in institutions where they have lost sympathy, debates and votes. But have they ever had to navigate an environment of threats and intimidation?

Have pro-Palestinian, pan-Arab or expansionist Islamist voices been shouted down, physically attacked, bullied or harassed on Australian campuses or in other forums?

I am not talking about anti-Muslim or anti-Arab prejudice, bigotry and racism - which does exist and can have violent manifestations - but thuggish attacks on people seeking to advocate a political position.

While other mosques, together with temples, churches and synagogues, routinely welcome members of the public, a mosque associated with the infamous Sheikh Tajeddin el-Hilaly and an association which has been identified with the controversial and self-contradictory Keysar Trad had more reason than most to display openness and engagement.

On a freezing February night in Paris, Cardinal Kurt Koch and Rabbi Richard Marker took turns shovelling soil outside the synagogue in suburban Raincy.

[The study] does not mean that Fayyad should not be supported. He remains almost certainly better than any alternative. But it does mean there should be some scepticism directed at Fayyad's claims to be building the institutions of statehood. That is not true if those institutions are completely dependent on a huge, ongoing flow of foreign aid.

But the ultimate source of Arab backwardness, unmentioned by most of these studies, lies in the debasement of the Arab mind. When the only diagnosis Egyptians can offer for their various predicaments - ranging from sectarian terrorism to a recent spate of freak shark attacks at a Sinai beach resort - is that it's all a Zionist plot, you know that the country is in very deep trouble.

On a balmy summer's day in Sydney recently, a friend who is a respected intellectual figure and religious personality in a significant Muslim-majority country told me some of the contemporary claims about Jews and Israel which he encounters, from leading public figures, on a daily basis.

Dr. Colin Rubenstein, Executive Director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council said today, "AIJAC welcomes the December 24 vote by Australia at the UN against the 'Durban III' conference. The vote adds to Australia's long and proud history of acting against racism."

When talking about West Bank settlements, a common talking-point among those who seek to paint them as a major obstacle to peace is to claim their growth is accelerating.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has welcomed ACMA's finding that al-Manar breached Australia's broadcasting codes in regards to racism.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has formally "acknowledged and extended appreciation" to the Australian Government for the "principled stand in voting against the UN resolution to hold a conference in New York in 2011 marking 10 years since the Durban WCAR [World Conference against Racism]."

Of course, disproportionate hatred of Israel is nothing new - nor are attempts at making parallels of Nazi treatment of Jews with Israeli treatment of Palestinians, however ignorant, offensive and morally bankrupt these attempted parallels are. What is new, and what is making observers increasingly worried, is the mainstreaming of these sentiments over the last few years.

It was encouraging to take part in well-developed discussions on the balance between free speech and protection from the effects of hate speech, and on the distinctions between criticism of Israel (and/or the actions of Jewish people) and antisemitic propaganda and incitement.

A common nonsense spouted by individuals and organisations who seek to delegitimise, defame or destroy the standing of Israel is the claim that Israel's behaviour/existence is the principal cause of antisemitism.

The magnificent Notre Dame Cathedral in the centre of Strasbourg, France, is deservedly on the itineraries of most visitors to the city. On the outer facade of the cathedral there are two statues of idealised young women - Ecclesia and Synagoga, in place for almost 800 years. Ecclesia, representing Christianity, is grinning in triumph while Synagoga, representing Judaism, has her head bowed in defeat and wears a blindfold to symbolise her inability to see the "truth" of Church teachings.

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 to those who seek to deny, diminish and misrepresent the nature, and abuse the memory, of the Shoah.

Quick's Australian visit received almost no public attention and his hosts escaped the criticism and condemnation they merited.

Jews straddle the fault line of Europe's engagement with Islam, and the level of antisemitism has become a critical barometer of Europe's fate. So while the fall of the antisemitic taboo is bad news for Jews, it also measures the effect of Europe's loss of certainty in its values, traditions, institutions and identity.

Although the relentlessly irrational quality of antisemitism makes it an irresistible target for elaborate psychological theories, Wistrich largely and wisely steers clear of that quagmire.

The existence of bigotry, prejudice and racism is unfortunately far from absent in Australia, but in this instance the shock was that it was disseminated through a body promoting multiculturalism.

Concern about domestic radicalisation and home-grown terrorism is a big part of the government's white paper on counter-terrorism released last week. So why haven't successive governments banned Hezbollah's television station, al-Manar, from screening in Australia? After all, al-Manar is all about radicalising its viewers.

Even in or era of heightened awareness of the harm to society inflicted by racism, many individuals in positions of authority and leadership seem completely oblivious to the nature and reality of antisemitism.

Virtually every day I see one or more reports of a Jewish person being assaulted, Jewish communal property vandalised, abusive and threatening emails, offensive letters and telephone calls or abuse yelled at identifiably Jewish people from passing vehicles.

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.

One of the loudest Muslim commentators, however, used the issue to foster anti-Jewish feeling, with the subtle invocation of the myth of Jewish power.

Jim Saleam has become one of the best known faces of the generally faceless far right fringe, who appears oblivious to his lack of accord with the basic decency of the population to which he offers himself as a leader.

There are two points to be made about the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdal Baset al-Megrahi to his native Libya on "compassionate grounds" by Scottish authorities.

Unlike the other individuals who have been ordered by Australian courts to cease harassment, insult and vilification, Fredrick Toben seemed determined to bring punishment upon himself by flaunting the very gentle "penalty" of being directed to obey this country's laws.

ACMA did not see any problem with an advertisement on al-Manar soliciting donations for the al-Emdad charity, which is used primarily for supporting the families of Hezbollah fighters. Giving it money is effectively indistinguishable from giving money to Hezbollah, which is illegal in Australia.

3ZZZ's Syrian programming advances the Nazi-inspired dogma of a violent secular party - it is the mouthpiece of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP).

The magazine features imagery, poems and stories designed to encourage children to seek martyrdom, "liberate Palestine" and deplore Jews.

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

Ever since I heard that a "Durban II" conference on racism was going to be held, I've watched with interest to see whether New Zealand would be involved and what sort of public dialogue might occur about our stance.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's tirade on April 20 to the United Nations' Durban II "anti-racism" conference in Geneva should not have surprised anyone.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and many others in the Iranian Islamist regime, are true believers. The hatred, the distortions of history, the religiously-sourced arrogance he spouted in Geneva was not a cynical political ploy as much as an expression of firmly held ideology.

We leave the UN precinct satisfied. The conference now seems totally undermined and Ahmadinejad has unwittingly alienated Iran from the rest of the nations. Our protest has worked both in the NGO hall and the plenary.

As readers will no doubt be aware, the UN Durban Review Conference in now under way in Geneva. This is designed as a follow-up to the infamous 2001 Durban "anti-racism" conference, which was marred by large-scale antisemitism, as well as the singling out of Israel as the only country named as "racist."

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has welcomed the Australian Government decision on Sunday that Australian delegates will not attend the UN Durban Review Conference in Geneva this week.

Rowan Laxton was watching news of Israeli military activity in Gaza on television while working out on an exercise bike at his central London gym. What happened next unnerved fellow gym patrons: "F-ing Israelis. F-ing Jews," he screamed repeatedly, interspersing his rant with demands for Israeli troops to be "wiped off the face of the earth."

At the London conference, it was encouraging, even inspiring, to hear Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other parliamentarians from Europe, the Americas, Turkey and North Africa express their revulsion at antisemitism in its multiple manifestations, including the pernicious Nazi/Israeli analogy.

As readers are probably aware, US President Obama made a Nowruz (Persian New Year) message to the people and leaders of Iran, which is widely regarded as part of his efforts to initiate a dialogue with Iran.

What credibility can Khatami maintain in calling for a dialogue of civilisations when he excludes Israel and Israelis? Or when he argues there is no anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, when under his presidency Iran became a sanctuary for Holocaust revisionists?

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council today called for the Australian government to withdraw from the process leading to the UN's scheduled "Durban Review Conference". The conference, known as "Durban II", is intended to be a follow up to the 2001 Durban "anti-racism" conference which degenerated into frequent displays of open antisemitism by NGO representatives

This Update features two pieces discussing the decision of the Obama Administration in the US to send representatives to planning sessions of the controversial Durban II "anti-racism" conference.

As tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets of Europe over the past month, the chants were modified but the message remained substantially intact: "Hamas, Hamas, Hamas - Jews to the Gas." Or, more simply: "Death to the Jews."

Mixed with chants such as "Bomb the Jews" and children bearing placards bemoaning that Jews didn't get enough Nazi treatment, were many posters and signs claiming Israel/Jews were perpetrating a Holocaust, that the Star of David was the same as the swastika and/or that the Jewish people are involved in genocide.

Continuing its yearly tradition, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) debated and voted on a cavalcade of recycled anti-Israel resolutions during its November sessions. This annual rehashing of the same anti-Israel ritual presents an opportunity to review Australia's voting record on the issues and assess the progress in combating the anti-Israel bureaucracy entrenched at the UNGA and UN generally.

When some Sydney teenagers created a group on the social networking internet platform "Facebook", on which they posted photos of poorly or creatively parked vehicles and made infantile and sometimes offensive comments about Jews, they were apparently oblivious to the public nature of their activities and the consequences of their actions.

During the twelve months ending September 30, 2008, 652 reports were recorded of "racist violence" against Jewish Australians. These incidents included physical assault, vandalism, threatening telephone calls, hate mail, graffiti, leaflets, posters and abusive emails. This exceeded by 2% the previous highest total, recorded in the year ending September 30, 2007. It was more than twice the previous average annual total.

The United Nations' Review Conference for the 2001 "World Conference Against Racism" is shaping up to be as unworthy of its name as was its predecessor. The 2001 conference (Durban I) was hosted by South Africa in Durban and its legacy as a hate fest of antisemitism and anti-Israel thuggery has blighted the city's reputation.

The raw data on anti-Jewish assaults, vandalism and harassment in Australia makes for sobering reading. In the 12 month period concluding on September 30, 2008, Jewish communal institutions in Australia received a total of 652 reports of incidents which unambiguously fall under the definition of "Racist Violence"

As Adelaide's Fredrick Toben awaits judgements on whether he will, on appeal, be extradited from the UK to Germany, and/or will be found to be in contempt of the Federal Court of Australia due to the Holocaust denial material he has published over many years, reports reached Australia of the publication in Iran, of a "100-page book of cartoons on the Holocaust".

As readers may be aware, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the opening of this year's session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on Sept. 23. This Update includes comments on the significance of his speech and Ahmadinejad's reception.

Having analysed data on anti-Jewish activity in Australia, I have often observed that the most important co-efficient of increased antisemitism in Australia is increased racism in general, and the Pew Project received headlines such as "Anti-Jew, anti-Muslim attitudes rise in Europe".

HEZBOLLAH'S terrorist television station is once again being beamed into Australia. Al-Manar, translated as "the beacon", has been called more accurately a beacon of hatred and violence. It is to be hoped that the Rudd Government and the Australian Communications and Media Authority are doing everything in their power to block the station.

In any debate about Israel and the Palestinians these days, one is likely to hear the allegation that Jews and other supporters of Israel use accusations of antisemitism to shut down, deter or deflect anti-Israel critics.

As I accepted my invitation to participate in the 2nd World Peace Forum in Jakarta this June, I had in mind a comment made by a participant in the 2006 World Peace Forum, that the environment had been "hostile to Jews, even antisemitic".

There were, as usual, some mixed signals from Indonesia as Israelis and Palestinians alike paused to consider 60 years of the Jewish state. The lead negative item was an international anti-Zionist conference at the University of Indonesia in Depok, West Java, held to coincide with the anniversary celebrations in Jerusalem.

In Poland last month, I was shown a copy of the April 3-9 issue of Tylko Polska, an extreme right-wing tabloid available on Warsaw newsstands. There, on page 17, I saw a piece in which I featured by name as an enemy of Holocaust deniers.

This Update reports on the problematic deliberations last week at the UN in Geneva, as preparations, chaired by Libya, are made for a follow-up conference to the infamous 2001 Durban conference on racism.

This Update features two articles on the Arab League Summit held in Damascus on the weekend, which saw most Arab heads of state refuse to attend in protest over Syrian misbehaviour in Lebanon and coziness with Iran.

Petra Pau, a parliamentarian from Germany's Left Party, was one of many presenters who made the 2008 Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism an important, unique event.

The Darfur region of Sudan first made headlines in February 2003 with news of massacres, rapes, mutilations, and other atrocities perpetrated by the Sudanese government and its allied armed Arab militia, the Janjaweed, against civilians in the black Arab and non-Arab south.

The visit to Australia of Gregg Rickman, the US State Department's Special Envoy on Antisemitism, prompted a reflection on one aspect of anti-Jewish prejudice by the writer of the Fairfax-linked weblog "All Men Are Liars".

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has praised the Rudd Government and its UN ambassador for voting the last week of December against funding for the so-called UN Durban Review Conference, or "Durban II".

In October, a Jewish cemetery in Wellington was desecrated. Again. Like many Jewish New Zealanders, when I heard about the latest attack I had a sad sense of deja vu. This sort of thing should not, and is not meant to, happen in our "fair go for all", egalitarian country. But it does.

To meet Luluk Nur Hamidah is to be impressed. A dynamic, irrepressible academic, poet and political activist with Indonesia?s - and most likely the world?s - largest Islamic organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama, Luluk expressed opinions on virtually every topic raised at the inaugural Youth Interfaith Forum in Perth in December, with passion and an overwhelming commitment to democratic values and interfaith cooperation.

The concern over controversial Croatian rock musician Marko Perkovic’s upcoming Australian tour may surprise some but it is understandable because of the serious allegations surrounding him. Overseas reports claim Perkovic, 42, is openly sympathetic to the World War Two Nazi-collaborationist Ustashe regime, which sent thousands of Jews, gypsies and Serbs to their deaths.

When assessing the world of neo-Nazi music, the cliche that music has charms to soothe the savage beast takes a savage beating.

In late November, the US Justice Department released the FBI's 2006 Hate Crime Statistics. While few who follow the media will be surprised to read of 156 'Anti-Islamic' incidents, the 967 'Anti-Jewish' attacks in the same table provides a rare perspective.

Everyone knows that the Arab-Israel conflict is one of the bloodiest and most intense in the world, and this is the reason solving it will lead to great benefits for the whole world - from halting terrorism, to democratising the Middle East, to helping cure global warming - right?

When asked to speak at Melbourne International Conference on Counter Terrorism 2007: Counter Terrorism Policing and Culturally Diverse Communities, I explored a number of options in considering what I could most constructively contribute.

The Washington Post had a piece earlier this week reporting that not only are many in Washington saying that "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" has now been "crippled", but, while there are debates about the detail, virtually everyone agrees that the organisation has suffered "major blows" over the past three months.

On a recent visit to Lakemba, I popped in to one of the larger Islamic bookstores and enquired about texts outlining and explaining different schools of Islamic jurisprudence. The bookseller was keen to help, showing me what he had for sale, and explaining that some books were much cheaper than others because of state subsidies for Islamic texts.

Urbane and articulate, Waleed Aly is Australia's most accessible voice of the Muslim community. Married to a convert to Islam, the Melbourne born and educated lawyer, has worked up a tremendous profile in the media despite his relative youth.

Up until the year 2000, David Irving was the Henry Ford of the Holocaust denial industry. But a lawsuit brought by Irving against a critic effectively put a spanner in his production line of hate.

Members of the internet social networking community “Facebook” in August saw naked, unambiguous antisemitism in comments posted to the group “FU Ajax Cricket Club”.

Forget setting aspirational targets for cutting greenhouse gases. And stop pointing the finger at China and America as the main stumbling blocks for a climate change treaty. Because, according to a prominent British MP, it's actually cold-hearted Israel that's to blame for global warming.

I have no hesitation in stating that the "Death Series" of DVDs, featuring the dubious wisdom of Sheikh Feiz Muhammad, ooze hate and contempt and provide a rationale for terrorism.

Australia is not exempt from many of the contemporary expressions of antisemitism ... The reality is that antisemitism has not disappeared. It may have just changed form, from explicit, crude expressions, to more subtle, thinly veiled quasi-intellectual arguments.

Some years ago, a document produced and distributed by an Australian religious denomination caused upset, offence and outrage.

The statistics are damning. Antisemitic incidents are up nearly 50% in one year. They have increased seven-fold since 1989. Moreover, racist assaults on Jewish individuals nearly doubled globally in a single year.

Could Arab attitudes to the Holocaust be changing? "Not so fast," says Robert Satloff ... author of Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands (Public Affairs, 2006). But he says there are positive signs.

As widely reported, a major renewal of fighting in Afghanistan is expected shortly. The Taliban, based across the border with Pakistan, are expected to make large scale incursions as soon as the mountain snows allow. This Update leads with two pieces on Pakistan's invidious role in encouraging this problem.

On December 12, 2006, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad personally brought to a close the infamous Holocaust deniers' conference in Teheran.

Speaking at the recent Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism, in Jerusalem, Professor Robert Wistrich identified what he called "a stunning paradox". Â?Never before has it been so unacceptable to be antisemitic, yet at no time since 1945 have Jewish communities been so fearful of its eruption,Â? he argued.

Regular readers of the print and on-line publications of various Nazi apologists, anti-Israel fanatics and obsessive antisemites will not have been surprised at the presence at the Iranian Holocaust denier confab in December of a small group of individuals purporting to be Â?Torah-True JewsÂ?.

People are punished for crime, for creating anarchy and for subjecting humanity to horrifying terror. But, could we ever believe that someone would be arrested, tortured and imprisoned for 17 long months just for being in favour of global peace, inter-faith dialogue and ending religious hatred?

In November, scholars and experts met in Berlin to discuss racism, genocide and antisemitism. In December, in Teheran, the same subject matter was on the table, but the discussants were cut from very different cloth.

It is, unfortunately, not historically uncommon. A small Jewish community has developed a network of institutions providing a full and meaningful Jewish life, while being well-integrated and accepted into the broader society.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council today expressed its sorrow at the passing of Pope John Paul II and conveyed its sincere sympathy to the Catholic World.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) welcomes the Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMA) proposed new standards that will prohibit broadcasts that directly support terrorist organisations.

The ACMA decision to ban programs that are "directly recruiting persons to join, or participate in, the activities of a terrorist organization" or that are "soliciting or assisting in the collection or provision of funds for a terrorist organization" come as a result of a lengthy investigation following an AIJAC complaint into the broadcast of Hezbollah television "al-Manar" in Australia by satellite company TARBS in 2003.

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council National Chairman Mark Leibler AC and Executive Director Dr. Colin Rubenstein expressed their sorrow upon the death of acclaimed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal at the age of 96. Wiesenthal was a Holocaust survivor who dedicated his life to ensuring that the perpetrators of one of history's greatest crimes - the Nazi genocide against the Jews - would not escape punishment.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) today called for a thorough and immediate review of legal and policy counter-measures in the wake of new revelations about the extent of extremist hate material and pro-terror propaganda in some Australian bookshops in Mosques and Islamic schools.

On the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September, 2001, I took part in a dignified ceremony where diplomats and other representatives of countries including the USA, Turkey, France and Israel lit memorial candles for the victims of terrorism.

It can't be easy being the diplomatic representative of Syria in Australia. The job description would include putting a gloss on the Baathist regime, with its strong ideological roots in European fascism of the 1930s.

In recent weeks, Australians have witnessed outbursts of antisemitism, ranging from attacks on synagogues to the use of past Jewish suffering as a tool with which to attack Jews today.

Eric Butler is dead. At one time, that simple statement of fact would have excited media commentary, and provided an opportunity for politicians to nail their colours to the mast on issues such as antisemitism, cultural diversity and Australian identity.

As this edition of the Australia/Israel Review makes clear, Australia has a problem with some extremist Muslim literature which incites to violent hatred, and even calls for violent terrorism against non-Muslims.

â??I have a confession to make. If you are Jewish... I used to hate you. I hated you because I thought you were responsible for the war which took my father from me for so long... I saw poor people from a place called Palestine...

On April 23 this year, I attended the annual ceremony at the Martyrs' Memorial in Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery, to recall and honour the memory of the victims of the Nazis.

In February, Prime Minister John Howard's Muslim Advisory Group met for the first time for 2006, and it was not a happy event.

There is little doubt that the hard-core 21st century Left has cast its political lot with those who are agitating for Israel's disappearance from the map.

Writing in London's The Independent newspaper, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown urged Muslims to join in her country's national commemoration of the Holocaust.

On October 8, Melbourne's Age newspaper featured a large photo of a daunting looking fence, consisting of two parallel wire barriers approximately three metres tall, each topped with razor wire, and patrolled by soldiers and military vehicles.

To Jewish people, Kishinev, the capital of the modern, post-Soviet Republic of Moldova, will forever be linked with the horrific events of just over a century ago. In a nearby town, a Christian child'?s murderers, relatives of the victim, claimed that Jews had performed the evil deed as part of ritual practices.

The meeting convened by Prime Minister Howard for senior government members and prominent Australian Muslims indicated just how seriously this country treats community harmony and inter-community relations.

During Soviet times, the story was told of a young man who opted to become a futurologist rather than meet his family'?s expectations of becoming a historian. His argument was that, under Communism, it was not too hard to predict the future but it was almost impossible to predict the past.

It has all the drama of a Melbourne Cup, but it is infinitely more important. The outcome of a horse race can be measured in dollars and cents. We are witnessing a contest between a simmering grassroots yearning for democracy in Iran and an obsessive pursuit of nuclear weapons by the junta of Islamic extremists who rule that nation.

I find it shameful that in France, the France of "Liberty, equality, fraternity," synagogues are torched, Jews are terrorised, and their cemeteries profaned ... that in Holland and Germany and Denmark youngsters show off the kaffiyeh like the vanguard of Mussolini displayed the stick and Fascist emblem ... that in almost every European university, Palestinian students take over and nurture antisemitism. - Oriana Fallaci

The question of evil and the way human beings justify brutality was a recurrent theme at the UNESCO-sponsored conference on "Religion in Peace and Conflict" held in Melbourne in mid-April.

In January 2004, a prominent Christian leader in Sydney invited Jews and Muslims involved in Interfaith Dialogue to observe a Church service before adjourning for the opportunity to engage informally with his congregation and with each other.

In the last week in January, the Australian media gave considerable coverage to the Shoah, the Nazi Genocide, as the world marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops.

Did you know that "political censorship of the Internet is almost upon us in Australia"? And remember the drastic changes to firearm laws following the 1996 Port Arthur massacre?