Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

Speaking at the annual Global Forum of the American Jewish Committee earlier this month, the US State Department's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Ira Forman, noted the worrying global rise in anti-Jewish sentiment around the world... The latest incident to be exposed internation

Speaking to SBS Radio's Ron Sutton (June 5), Dr Mona El Farra, head of the health committee for the Red Crescent for Gaza Strip, blamed Israel and to a lesser extent, Egypt, for a litany of health problems in Gaza. SBS's website noted that El Farra held a meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Bo

The recent passing of the Associated Press' acclaimed journalist Hal McClure at the age of 92 coincides closely with the event that brought him his greatest fame - his coverage of the 1967 Six Day War, which began 46 years ago yesterday. His passing is yet another reminder of a bygone era when a jo

SBS TV's "Dateline" program (May 21) travelled to Greece to look at the worrying rise in the Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn movement which has used the economic crisis there to increase its Parliamentary representation through scapegoating Jews, foreigners, homosexuals and other rival political groupings. Wh

Yesterday, Greg Sheridan noted in the Australian that Foreign Minister Bob Carr "expresses concern about the treatment of Christians and other minorities in the region", and said "The Foreign Minister is right to make this point and it is a sad commentary about political correctness in much of the W

The Conversation is a website funded by Australian universities and the Federal government for academics and post-grad students to share the fruits of their enquiring minds. Unfortunately, where the topic of Israel is concerned the Conversation is fast devolving into an outlet for a great deal of s

ABC Radio "Triple J"'s Sophie McNeill is probably quite proud of a half hour "special" aired on the "Hack" program she hosts dedicated to a recent visit she made to Gaza (May 2). But she really shouldn't be.

This Update deals with a worrying trend some distinguished scholars are beginning to to identify in the aftermath of the so-called "Arab Spring" - the decline of unified Arab nation-states in the Middle East.

In a bizarre move, the hardcopy edition of the Daily Telegraph failed to run any coverage before or after a BDS protest on April 30 at the University of NSW against a planned Max Brenner outlet set to open on campus in June. However, in the paper's "They Said It" section (May 1) which highlights qu

Contrary to recent headlines, the Arab League as a collective body did not substantially "sweeten" its 2002 Peace Initiative (API) for Israel on Monday. Nonetheless, there is some reason to see this diplomatic movement, while relatively minor, as a small, positive step.

On Fairfax's "Daily Life" site (April 23) Ruby Hamad, who has previously penned some ill-informed and one-sided pieces on Israel, presented a sober account of the escalating restrictions imposed by Hamas on Gazans. Unfortunately her explanation for Gaza's economic difficulties was entirely predicta

It is one of the seminal images that appeared over and over again in the early stages of last November's Second Gaza-Israel war.   Distraught Palestinian father Jihad Masharawi, holding the dead body of his 11-month-old son, Omar, who was reported to have been the victim of an Israeli rock

In Melbourne on March 15, AIJAC hosted Dr. Steve Rosen, the Director of the Middle East Forum's Washington Project and the former director of foreign policy issues for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee from 1982-2005.

Maybe it's the fact that Hamas' outgoing leader Khaled Meshal and Fairfax's Paul McGeough both have a penchant for beards, or that they are both persona non grata in Israel but their bromance spilled over into three separate articles in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald on March 2 and 3.

Judging by his first State of the Union address since his reelection, US President Barack Obama will focus in his second term on domestic issues - from the deficit, defence spending, and neglected bridges to the minimum wage, gun control and trade relations. After all this, there was very little ti

There is a great deal we don't know or that is pure speculation about the tragic story of Ben Zygier/Prisoner X. But here is one thing we absolutely do know about this saga - the NGO Human Rights Watch again demonstrated that it does not need any confirmed facts whatsoever to condemn Israel. The o

The release of The Art of Betrayal, by Gordon Corera, the highly-regarded veteran BBC journalist, should, if our media indeed has the commitment to truth which it constantly proclaims, rightfully see the last decade of often conspiratorial rhetoric about the 2003 war in Iraq fade to reveal a differe

ABC Radio's Melbourne host Jon Faine (23/1) should hang his head in shame for his line of questioning to Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the results of the Israeli election. Even though the evidence showed the opposite, Faine claimed that "the Coalition likely to be elected in the new Knesset in Is

On Friday January 18 at the close of the Australia-UK Ministerial Consultations (AUKMIN) conference in Perth, Foreign Minister the Hon Senator Bob Carr and UK Foreign Secretary William Hague released a joint statement on the Middle East peace process, condemning Israel's settlements as "illegal unde

As much as we would like to wish it so, it is a mistake to think the United States can pivot away from the Middle East and toward Asia, as though we have a fixed amount of bandwidth and the luxury of reapportioning it based on our preference. For the foreseeable future, the United States cannot avoi