Back in January during Israel’s invasion of Gaza the Israel lobby here in the Netherlands pulled out all the stops to delegitimise opposition to the invasion, with the usual accusations of anti-semitism flying through the air a bit like Hellfire missiles on Gaza. It’s interesting to see that these tactics are not unique to Dutch zionists, as this Australian article shows:
Once again, the so-called pro-Israel lobby has shown how it feels about debate on Israel.
The latest major episode is the Jeff Halper affair. The Australian Jewish News (AJN) refused to publicise the times and venues of Halper’s talks, and urged the Temple Emanuel to cancel its invitation of him. This was because Halper not only opposes house demolitions, but is “a hardline detractor of Israel”, who believes that the state “courts ‘apartheid'”.
In a sense, this is a useful demonstration of the sorts of views “supporters of Israel” think the Jewish community should be protected from. Yet, most of these major organisations do not identify as pro-Israel, but as simply Jewish. The Executive Council for Australian Jewry (ECAJ), with all of its underlying Jewish bodies, the AJN, the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) are all presented as Jewish organisations, but they are all committed to strongly partisan positions on Israel.
This is problematic for a variety of reasons. Firstly, they claim to speak on behalf of the Jewish community, even though political opinions by a community organisation are unlikely to ever be entirely representative. Consequently, these organisations often say things that members of the Jewish community — such as myself — strongly disagree with.