Australia/Israel Review

The farce continues. A UN committee established to throw mud at Israel has thrown yet more mud. This time, it’s a report alleging that Israel has a policy of targeting children in Gaza. Political leaders know the report is full of holes and largely ignored it. In the entire gamut of Australian media, it produced only a handful of articles. But the people who already hate Israel, and the undecided, will read the headlines and come to incorrect conclusions.

“AIJAC is deeply concerned by reports that the ALP’s draft National Platform to be released at the upcoming national conference in Adelaide has dropped explicit calls for Hamas to disarm and for the Palestinian Authority to reform, as well as calls for guarantees of Israel’s security.

AIJAC research associate Dr Ran Porat discussed the latest developments in the Israeli government’s clashes with the judicial branch with the ABC’s Sarah Dingle.

Head of AIJAC’s Sydney office Arsen Ostrovsky featured in an ABC 730 report into social media’s role in the spread of Antisemitism.

Just six months after Israel became the first state to formally acknowledge and establish diplomatic relations with Somaliland, the two have further deepened their ties across defence and security, technology, agriculture and more. All of this occurred in the background of the Horn of Africa state’s biggest threat, the al-Qaeda-linked terrorists al-Shabaab movement, joining with one of Israel’s biggest threats, the Iranian-backed Houthis, in Yemen.

Crispin Hull’s claim that there would now be peace in the Middle East had the world insisted Israel follow the 1947 UN partition plan of Mandate Palestine (“Decades-old pact put at risk” July 1) is bizarre. Israel accepted the partition plan. The Arab leaders in the Mandate and the surrounding Arab states were the ones who rejected it, and all attacked Israel as soon as it declared independence, hoping to wipe it off the map. After the war, Jordan held the West Bank and Egypt held Gaza.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) is the premier public affairs organisation for the Australian Jewish community.

AIJAC’s Arsen Ostrovsky gave evidence before the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has hailed the 14-point agreement signed between Israel and Lebanon this week as a “historic breakthrough”, and expressed the hope that it could be a major step toward an eventual full peace between Israel and Lebanon. AIJAC Executive Director Dr Colin Rubenstein said, “This framework agreement appears to be a historic breakthrough, which we hope may eventually lead to full peace and normalisation between Israel and Lebanon.

The first two hearing blocks of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion have already vindicated the Australian Jewish community’s insistence that only the nation’s most powerful form of inquiry was adequate to investigate the national antisemitism crisis that culminated in the Bondi massacre. The second block, much of which was behind closed doors, examined the security, intelligence and law-enforcement failures preceding that horrific attack.