Thursday 9 August 2012

ICJS / LYONS / SEIDNER

ICJS / LYONS / SEIDNER

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Israelis resigned to fresh wave of terror

On Wednesday night, as news of the terrorist attack against Israelis in Bulgaria was emerging, a group of foreign journalists in Jerusalem gathered in the home of a leading lawyer for an evening with Israelis keen to talk about how the worldviewed their country.

It was a high-powered group of Israelis: former prime minister Ehud Olmert walked in, fresh from being found not guilty of key charges in a corruption trial.
But the mood of the evening was dominated by the news that five Israelis had been killed as they arrived for a holiday in Bulgaria. And while Olmert, a big political figure in Israel, normally commands the attention of a group such as this, it was another guest who was in the spotlight. This guest had an extremely difficult job: to make sure that when Israelis were killed overseas by terrorism they were brought home quickly and that the needs of the families were met.
The Foreign Ministry liaised with him through the evening following the murder of the Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver by a suicide bomber.

'There are days that are painful and yesterday was one such day'
EHUD BARAK
ISRAEL'S DEFENSE MINISTER

The man also had to undertake his grim role justmonths ago; he was in charge of making sure three children killed as theyarrived at school in Toulouse, France, in March were brought back to Israel. The Israelis at the dinner feared that this could signal the beginning of a new wave of attacks on Jewish targets. "Israel needs to assume that weare now at the beginning of a wave of terror attacks of this kind," Alex Fishman wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth. Young Israelis are prolific travellers. It is almost a rite of passage that after their time in the army, which is compulsory for most, they travel to decompress.

The Israelis killed in Bulgaria never had a chance. Unbeknown to them, as they walked from the airport they were being followed. The video footage of the bomber is chilling. Wearing shorts and baseball cap, he appears to be a typical backpacker. But he is pacing back and forth, waiting for his prey, and it is now clear his bulging backpackwas heavy with explosives. Survivors returning to Israel yesterday gave insights into the bombing. One man told how when he jumped from the bus he could see three bodies below. Another said all he could see were "disconnected hands and legs".

When you live in Israel you see the human effect of terrorism up close. One of the most difficult stories I've had to cover was the funeral of the four Toulouse victims. As we stood at the cemetery outside Jerusalem, first came the body of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler.

But when the next body was carried in, that of three-year-old Gabriel, it wastoo much for most people. Even the translator of French foreign minister Alain Juppe, who was attending, could not bear it.

She broke down. It was the smallest body: it barely covered one-third of the stretcher. It is difficult for those who do not live in Israel to understand the impact that terrorism, particularly the second intifada has had on this society.

I once asked my dentist, who had moved from Melbourne, whether he had been in Jerusalem during the second intifada, when Palestinian terrorists targeted Israeli civilians. He explained that he had been in the Moment cafe in Jerusalem one Saturday evening when a man exploded himself, killing 11. A year later a bus was blown up outside his practice and he had the horrible task of trying to work out which bodies still had life in them and assisting.

One person every foreign journalist coming to Israel should meet is Arnold Roth, originally from Melbourne. On August 9, 2001, Roth's daughter Malki, 15, walkedinto the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem. A man with a guitar case also walked in and exploded himself, killing Malki and 14 others. "For all practical purposes my daughter's murder took place this morning," Roth told me.
It is excruciating but important to hear Roth recall the night his daughter was killed. He turned up to one hospital looking for his daughter and a frantic doctor told him:"There's a dead girl over there,go and have a look, and there's another girl over there who's about to be operated on."
He and his wife Frimet now run a foundation in Malki's name that raises money for disabled children so they can be cared for at home. It gives help to both Jewish and Arab children. Since the second intifada ended in 2004, Israel has enjoyed relative calm. There are many reasons for this, including better security by Israel and an acknowledgment by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank that violence is no answer. New threats to Israelis abroad, as suggested by Toulouse and Bulgaria, appear driven by Islamic extremists taking cues from Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah.
No matter how good Israel's intelligence is, it is impossible to detect every threat. Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak told a shocked Israeli public yesterday that Bulgaria was not an intelligence failure. "The success of our intelligence and of others has been great, but there are days that are painful, and yesterday was one such day," he said.
Israelis now are bracing themselves for a possible return to the horrors of the past.

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Has John Lyons started to learn folly of his previous approach to journalism? http://wotnews.com.au/news/John_Lyons/

Posted on 2012-07-22 03:48:59 GMT

For once some unadulterated facts....John Lyons is usually very unsymaptrhetic to Israel.

Posted on 2012-07-22 04:18:05 GMT

People's attitude towards acts of terrorism can be likened to that of car accidents! Unless they, a loved one, or someone they know is involved in one, they never really think about it! Maybe this experience has been an 'epihpany' for Mr Lyons?

Posted by Freddo on 2012-07-24 02:53:39 GMT

I read this article over the weekend and I was surprised by the unusually sympathetic tone. Until the bit where Lyons surmises that there had been less terror because the Pals have seen that violence is not the answer. This is of course wishful thinking and complete nonsense. The reason that there are fewer successful attacks in Israel is purely a result of Israel's improved security ie The Fence. Every day would-be terrorists are thwarted by Israeli security and border guards. And in Ramallah and elsewhere children continue to be indoctrinated with lessons of hatred and martyrdom. So no points to the Pals.

Posted by Shyrla Werdiger on 2012-07-24 03:03:12 GMT

Or to Lyons really!

Posted by Ronit on 2012-07-24 03:03:54 GMT

John Lyons has 'history.' Any favourable article from him has to be taken with a poisonous grain of humbug! The link below will inform. Geoff Seidner East St Kida http://generallyjewish.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/khghjgt-i-note-with-interest-that-my.html

Posted by Geoff Seidner on 2012-07-24 05:04:06 GMT

John Lyons is not Robert Fisk but he has penned some dreadful moral equivalence junk in the past. The current article doesn't add up to a trend but it is a step in the right direction.

Posted by Ymr on 2012-07-24 05:13:32 GMT

What a bunch of uncharitable comments. Sure, John Lyons has written a lot of tripe in the past, but even journalists can mend their ways. So can governments. Until recently, foreign correspondents in Israel were treated with disdain by officialdom and often had to rely on local stringers for information. Clearly, hasbara has improved.

Posted by Zelda Cawthorne on 2012-07-24 06:51:48 GMT

"A single swallow does not a summer make"

Posted by Yoda on 2012-07-24 06:54:30 GMT

I would love to believe that Lyons has changed. But when journalists change opinions they usually tell the reader honestly about the turning point for them eg Nick Cohen. I see nothing of that from Lyons' current piece. What I see is a journalist who has been forced from above to write a piece sympathetic to one side. I'll go out on a limb here and say that the next few articles he writes will be sympathetic to the other side, justifying his journalistic 'balance'. I'd love to be wrong.

Posted on 2012-07-24 08:44:51 GMT

Posted by freddo on 2012-07-24 09:12:53 GMT

One article doesn't make him a friend. Let's see what the future brings.

Posted on 2012-07-24 09:14:10 GMT

Excuses for Lyons http://www.icjs-online.org/index.php?article=3790 I am saddened by some comments on this blog variously espousing excuses, justifications for John Lyons' record. Here - under is a grab - bag of unfortunate attempts at ameliorating the unconscionable, justifying the untennable and unrealistically espousing optimism that Lyons has changed his 'spots.' Uncharitable, mend his ways, then the strained, oblique defacto contradiction about how ''hasbara has improved!'' Even Z's use of ''Hasbara'' is a clear attack on Israel - if you read it carefully. Zelda C manages to blame the Israeli government via some asinine strained idea that biased attacks on Eretz Israel was penned because of lack of co - operation by said government!! How ''UNCHARITABLY'' absurd her essential excuse for Lyons is - via the idea that L had to in the past rely on ''local stringers.'' INDEED - he surely did - as he painted regular visages of their 'victimhood! INDEED - HE INTERVIEWED THE PEOPLE THAT HE PAINTED AS VICTIMS OF ISRAELI VIOLENCE OR DISPARATE CONTRIVED, IMAGINED TRAVESTIES! Then one needs to look at merely the use of the 'but' word: ''but'' it is a step in the right direction.'' {I once wrote an essay: An 'Ode to the words But, Butts and Balderdash.' I think the last word was Bullocks!!] Does the writer realize that this cliched 'step' is not motivated from The Australian's Ramallah correspondent's cold heart? He has written some of the worst attacks on Israel ever seen on the pages of The Oz. Dozens of times. Period. He has been eviscerated - writes 'nice' articles - and returns to form soon: it is merely time - based. Then the cycle starts again ad infinitum. Surely one can see that his latent warm - inner - glow towards Israel was as a result of enormous pressure put on the man by the likes of myself complaining to the editor. I also wrote I to Rupert Murdoch's office in New York - and received immediately a personal apology - from the editor of The Australian. And to the writer who espouses some sort of ''epihany'' - get real! ''Junk'' articles? Does this writer seriously think Lyons did not know what he was doing? That he had a pool of monkeys bashing on his keyboard and came up with his many internicine, pre - ''epiphanous, junk'' of articles. I am going to send this stream - and other matters material hereto - to Mr Murdoch's office as well as to the editors of The Australian. And if perchance more pressure can be put on Lyons to write with human decency - it will not be as a result of some of the 'junk' I have seen above my entries on this esteemed blog. This writer realizes that a measure of success on one tangent of these scribbles will indubitably prove the flaw with the obverse. To wit - I allude as to wheteher Lyons will indeed write appropriate articles in future. It is a matter of historical fact that very few writers change their style unless it is forced on them. Eventually - when this pressure becomes so great as to be 'intolerable' - they resign - like The Australian's previous scribbler Martin Chulov. He now works for The Guardian! He too had 'history'! Geoff Seidner East St Kilda http://generallyjewish.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/khghjgt-i-note-with-interest-that-my.html

Posted by Geoff Seidner on 2012-07-26 02:42:09 GMT

Hear, hear: Geoff Seidner

Posted on 2012-07-26 11:04:04 GMT

Friday 3 August 2012

7 July 2011: Having pride in Britain protects all cultures (published in The Times)

Having pride in Britain protects all cultures (published in The Times)

An Article By The Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in The London Times 7 July 2011

David Cameron was right to say that multiculturalism has failed, echoing similar statements by Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel. It was undertaken for the highest of motives. It was intended to create a more tolerant society, one in which everyone, regardless of colour, creed or culture, felt at home. Its effect has been precisely the opposite.

Last week the Community Security Trust, the body that monitors antisemitic incidents, published its annual report, showing that the figures for 2010 were the second highest since record-keeping began. Jews especially in London and Manchester have found themselves attacked on their way to and from synagogue, or abused by passers-by. Jewish students feel themselves so intimidated on campuses throughout the country that last week they were in Westminster lobbying their MPs, something I cannot recall happening before.

The Jewish community in Britain is small, and antisemitism only one form of hatred among many. But the Jewish story is worth telling if only because the re-emergence of antisemitism in a culture is always an early warning signal of wider breakdown. The alarm has been sounding loudly for some time.

Many Jews of my parents’ generation owed their lives to this country. It took them in when they faced persecution elsewhere. They loved Britain and deeply internalized its values. The inscription on the tombstone of a former President of the United Synagogue summed up the entire Anglo-Jewish experience. It read, “A proud Englishman and a proud Jew.”

The role model was Sir Moses Montefiore, the Victorian philanthropist and president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The Times, in an editorial written on his hundredth birthday in 1884, said that he had shown that “fervent Judaism and patriotic citizenship are absolutely compatible with one another”. That might sound condescending now, but considering what was happening to Jews elsewhere in Europe, it was a lifeline.

My parents lived those values and taught them to us. They became the first Jews in their families for perhaps a thousand years not to teach their children Yiddish because they wanted us to be English and identify with the wider society.

They were not naive. They remembered vividly when Mosley and the British Union of Fascists marched through London’s East End. They knew the genteel anti-Semitism that was almost ubiquitous in certain literary and social circles. They knew that England was a class bound society with many faults.

But they admired the British for their tolerance and decency, their sense of fair play and their understated but indomitable courage. They were proud to be English because the English were proud to be English. Indeed in the absence of pride there can be no identity at all. They integrated and encouraged us to go further because there was something to integrate into.

At some time that pride disintegrated, to be replaced by what Kate Fox amusingly calls “one-downmanship.” TheBritish started seeing their own history as an irredeemable narrative of class, snobbery, imperialism, racism and social exclusion. It was in this atmosphere that, in the 1970s, multiculturalism was born. It said: there is no need to integrate.

The first people to try multiculturalism, the Dutch, were also the first people to regret it. The Princeton sociologists Paul Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn found that the Dutch favoured tolerance and opposed multiculturalism. When asked what the difference was, they replied that tolerance ignores differences; multiculturalism makes an issue of them at every point.

Multiculturalism is part of the wider European phenomenon of moral relativism, a doctrine that became influential as a response to the Holocaust. It was argued that taking a stand on moral issues was a sign of an “authoritarian personality”. Moral judgment was seen as the first step down the road to fanaticism. But moral relativism is the deathknell of a civilization. In a relativist culture, there is no moral consensus, only a clash of conflicting views in which the loudest voice wins.

That is where we are today. The extremists command attention and capture the headlines, and they become the role models for the young. Since there is no national identity to claim their allegiance, there is no contest. Hence the phenomenon, widespread throughout Europe today but rare in the past, that the children of immigrants are more hostile to the host society than their parents were, and feel themselves more alien to its values.

I have never known the British Jewish community, especially its university students, more anxious about the future than they are today. But I have heard the same from many Hindus and Sikhs. They feel that the more they seek to integrate, the less attention is paid to them by the government and the media. They are no problem, therefore they can be ignored. That too is terribly dangerous for the British future.

Multiculturalism, entered into for the noblest of reasons, has suffered from the law of unintended consequences. By dissolving national identity it makes it impossible for groups to integrate because there is nothing to integrate into, and by failing to offer people pride in being British, it forces them to find sources of pride elsewhere.

Without shared values and a sense of collective identity, no society can sustain itself for long. I fear the extremism that is slowly but surely becoming, throughout the world, the siren song of the twenty-first century. We have to fight it here before we can convincingly oppose it elsewhere.

Sacks to House of Commons on Multiculturalism 8 sept 2011

Sacks on 8 Sept 2011House of Commons dvd here

Improving Interfaith Dialogue in Multicultural Britain – House of Lords Debate (8 Sept 2011)

House of Lords 1 Response »

Sep082011

“My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, for initiating this important and necessary debate. I go back to words said by an expert on the subject 2,600 years ago. His name was Jeremiah and he became known as a prophet of gloom. Were he to return to life today, doubtless he would be an economist. He was the first person to analyse the situation many find themselves in today of being a minority in a culture whose beliefs are not their own.

Jeremiah wrote a letter to the Jewish exiles in Babylon in which he said:

“Seek the welfare of the city to which you have gone and pray to God on its behalf, for in its peace and prosperity you will find peace and prosperity”.

He told them in effect: “Maintain your identity while contributing to the common good. Be true to your faith while being a blessing to others regardless of their faith”. That is the challenge today. The good news about religion is that it creates communities based on altruism and trust. It teaches people to make sacrifices for the sake of others. It builds social capital. The bad news is that every community divides as it unites, because for every “us” there is a “them”-the people not like us.

The best way to improve interfaith dialogue in multicultural Britain is to create a sense of national identity so strong that it brings different ethnic and religious communities together in pursuit of the common good-not just the good for “my” group, but the good for all of us together. A nation should respect its faiths, and faiths should respect the nation. That is the only way we will achieve integrated diversity and the dignity of difference, in which we see our differences as contributions that we bring to the common good.

In yesterday’s Times, Daniel Finkelstein wrote a moving tribute to his late father, who came to Britain as a Jewish refugee in World War II. He wrote:

“He lived here proud of the nation that let him live, let him learn, let him teach, let him practise his religion. And ultimately let him die in bed, loved by his family”.

That is what Britain means to us in the Jewish community, and surely to the vast majority in all our faith communities. It is vital that we teach all our children, whether in faith schools or not, to honour this country, respect its traditions, contribute to its welfare and show the same respect to others as we ask others to show to us.

Therefore I have a simple proposal. I believe that all Britain’s faith communities should be invited to make a voluntary covenant with Britain articulating our responsibilities to others and to the nation as a whole, so that we can be true to our faith while being a blessing to others regardless of theirs.”

Having pride in Britain protects all cultures (published in The Times)

Articles, Writings & Speeches No Responses »

Feb072011

Giving and Belonging: The Lesson Jews Can Offer New Immigrants (published in The Times)

Articles, Writings & Speeches No Responses »

Oct012005

In the course of the new Jewish year, which begins on Monday evening, we will be celebrating the 350th anniversary of British Jewry. The story of our community has some relevance to the current debate about multiculturalism.

The Jews who came here were asylum-seekers from successive waves of persecution. The first were descendants of the victims of the Spanish and Portuguese expulsions. My late father came to find refuge from anti-Semitism in Poland. Some came through Kindertransport, the British effort to save Jewish children from Nazi Germany. Others arrived as survivors of the Holocaust.

It wasn’t always easy to be Jewish in Britain. It took 200 years before Jews were permitted to enter universities or be elected to Parliament. Jewish immigrants — poor, concentrated in ghettoes, barely able to speak English — were caricatured as alien elements in British life. Jews who remember those days can readily sympathise with Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims today.

Within an astonishingly short time, they were full participants in British society. There were philosophers such as Sir A. J. Ayer and Sir Isaiah Berlin, intellectuals from Jacob Bronowski to Elias Canetti and historians such as Sir Martin Gilbert and Simon Schama. There were businessmen from Michael Marks of Marks & Spencer to Sir Alan Sugar, and politicians such as Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Howard. Anglo-Jewry provided two of the last three Lord Chief Justices.

There is a message of hope here for other ethnic and religious minorities. Integration and acceptance don’t happen overnight. And yes, there were conflicts between immigrant parents and their British-born and educated children. There was a long struggle to define an identity both British and Jewish. But these are pains of adjustment, not permanent conditions.

The Jewish experience challenges the received wisdom about minorities. Jews did not seek multiculturalism. They sought to integrate, adapt and belong. Jewish schools focused on turning Jews into British citizens, at home in the nation’s language, culture and history. Sermons were spiced with quotations from Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth. The role model was Sir Moses Montefiore, whom The Times praised on his 100th birthday in 1884 for his “ determination to show, by his life, that fervent Judaism and patriotic citizenship are absolutely consistent with one another”.

Britain was different in those days. It knew who and what it was. It had the quiet confidence of a nation secure in its own identity. It remembered what it is now beginning to forget, that for minorities to integrate there must be something for them to integrate into. Subtly and with a certain grace, Britain reminded Jews that there were rules, things you did and didn’t do. I remember Bertha Leverton, one of the children saved from Germany in 1939, telling of how she was taught, on her first day in England, that it was polite to leave some food uneaten on the side of your plate. She was starving and traumatised, yet the gesture helped to make her feel at home. She appreciated the hidden message: from here on, you are one of us.

Our postmodern culture — moral relativism, multiculturalism, the right to self-esteem — entered into with the highest motives, has by the law of unintended consequences made it almost impossible for minorities to integrate. The result is not more tolerance but less. For the first time in my life, Jews feel uncomfortable in Britain. They have heard public figures making crude gibes about Jews. They have seen Holocaust Memorial Day — dedicated to all victims of man’s inhum- anity to man — misrepresented and politicised. Throughout Europe, Jewish students are harassed, synagogues vandalised and cemeteries desecrated.

These things matter not because of the threat they pose to Jews, but because anti-Semitism is always an advance warning of a wider crisis. Today religious groups are in danger of becoming pressure groups instead of thinking what is in the best interests of Britain as a whole. That is not good for some of us: it is bad for all of us.

Jews also learnt, through 20 centuries of dispersion, a principle almost forgotten in contemporary debates: the connection between giving and belonging. They remembered the advice given by Jeremiah: “Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to God on its behalf, for in its peace and prosperity you will find peace and prosperity.” They recalled God’s words to Abraham, to be a blessing to “all the families on earth”. To be true to your faith while being a blessing to others, regardless of their faith, is the best formula I know for a multifaith environment.

Recently we have thought of society as a hotel where you pay money in return for services and you are then free to do what you like so long as you don’t disturb the other guests. Hotels are fine, but they do not generate a sense of belonging. Society is not a hotel. It is the home we build together. It is the place to which we bring our distinctive contributions to the common good. The Jewish plea to Britain is: don’t forget who you are, for that is who we aspire to be.

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Thursday 9 August 2012

ICJS / LYONS / SEIDNER

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Israelis resigned to fresh wave of terror

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Friday 3 August 2012

7 July 2011: Having pride in Britain protects all cultures (published in The Times)

Having pride in Britain protects all cultures (published in The Times)

Sacks to House of Commons on Multiculturalism 8 sept 2011

Improving Interfaith Dialogue in Multicultural Britain – House of Lords Debate (8 Sept 2011)

Having pride in Britain protects all cultures (published in The Times)

Giving and Belonging: The Lesson Jews Can Offer New Immigrants (published in The Times)