Keywords: Australian Jews
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AUSTRALIA
- Irfan Yusuf
- 25 January 2016
11 Comments
I arrived in Australia at the ripe old age of five months. I learned Australian values by a process of gentle osmosis. Many Indigenous Australians learned these values in a less gentle fashion. Today, many Australian Jews show a strong loyalty to the world's only Jewish state. Others combine loyalties with other ancestral homelands. Australian Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists and Hindus have similar broadened loyalties. Exactly how such loyalties make them any less Australian beats me.
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AUSTRALIA
- Aloysious Mowe
- 15 December 2015
25 Comments
The UNHCR guidelines for resettlement are there for a reason: those who need resettlement, when this option is available, are the most vulnerable and weak in a refugee population: children and teenagers, women at risk, people with urgent medical needs, the elderly, victims of torture and trauma, split families. None of these should be subject to a religious test. As several Muslim commentators have said in the Australian media, you do not ask a drowning person her religion before rescuing her.
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INTERNATIONAL
- William Gourlay
- 22 September 2015
4 Comments
Canny politicians know it is impossible to please everyone all of the time. This must be clear to Obama in the wake of the nuclear deal reached with Iran. As he heralded the accord as a harbinger of a 'more hopeful world', Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a 'stunning historical mistake'. The deal is a result of 18 months of hard diplomatic negotiation, but for the naysayers it means Iran is off the leash.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 06 July 2015
32 Comments
On July 1 the Australian Border Force Act 2015 became law. Detention centre staff are now forbidden to speak about human rights abuses, with a two year jail penalty applying. It is perhaps appropriate to recall the secrecy of the security apparatus of Stalinist Russia, Apartheid South Africa, and Chile and Argentina under the Generals, where victims were denigrated and information prevented from leaking out.
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RELIGION
A poorly-organised ill-resourced minority community often feels it has better things to worried about than 'white' converts who, like converts to any faith or belief system are known for their zeal. If the government really imagines young Muslims and converts are ripe for 'radicalisation', an excellent investment they could make would be in support services for new Muslims. In our lucky country, there is much loneliness in this group and many reasons to feel marginalised.
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- Simon Caterson
- 02 April 2015
4 Comments
In contrast to the sectarian suspicion expressed by elements of non-Catholic Australia towards Melbourne’s Archbishop Daniel Mannix, who opposed military conscription during the First World War, his Perth contemporary Archbishop Patrick Clune was lauded during the war as ‘pro-war effort, pro-conscription, pro-empire and pro-crown’. Clune travelled from Perth all the way to the Western Front so as to minister to the Catholic soldiers sent there, and he enjoyed warm relations with Protestants and Jews.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Nikolas Feith Tan
- 03 December 2014
9 Comments
Israel is one of the world's developed countries that is attempting to deter asylum seekers from accessing the protection that international refugee law entitles them to. Yet Israel is a state with refugeehood in its roots. Israeli refugee advocates have encouraged a change of policy on the basis of Jewish exile in Egypt as recorded in the Torah.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tess Ashton
- 30 September 2014
2 Comments
Our Uber appeared, a black Chevvy sculpture, a mere click of the fingers, from there to here, Denzel Washington, quipped hubby later was the driver, tall as a Pennsylvania night and lustrous as a god.
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AUSTRALIA
- Irfan Yusuf
- 22 September 2014
21 Comments
Today the Kalimah Shahada is being used on flags of groups whose mission is to kill Sunni and Shia Muslims. Imagine how it must feel to be a Sunni Kurd or a Shia Iraqi or an Alawi Syrian . Imagine how it must feel to be an ordinary Shia or Alawi or Sunni Australian walking around in a Sydney shopping centre and being treated by one's neighbours as an ISIS fighter.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 21 August 2014
17 Comments
Antisemitism and racism are rightly considered shameful. Those accused of these things usually deny the charges vehemently. Declaring critics of the actions or policies of, say, the Zimbabwe or the Israeli government, to be racist or antisemitic should be called for the bullying it is. Prejudice needs to be demonstrated, not asserted.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Trainor
- 18 August 2014
16 Comments
In Australia and around the world, places of Jewish worship have been daubed with graffiti. One tag reads, 'Weep for Gaza'. In the face of the tragic loss of innocent civilian lives in Gaza, Muslims, Jews and Christians all weep for Gaza. We deplore the tagging.
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MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD
- James O'Brien
- 13 August 2014
18 Comments
Religious leaders used methods of non-violent protest to respond to the Federal Government's 'No Way' campaign that aimed to discourage Afghan asylum seekers. Calling their movement 'Love Makes a Way', their strategy started to take shape: sit-ins in the electorate offices of federal parliamentarians, asking that justice may 'roll down like waters'. Nonviolent direct action changes hearts.
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