How the West was lost
August 4, 2025 | Justin Amler
This past week has demonstrated how the Western world, which often speaks about defending freedom, liberty and democracy, can be so easily duped by terrorists in pick-up trucks. We saw a statement by 28 countries, including Australia, that was so detached from reality that it blamed Israel for the terrible consequences of the current war in Gaza, rather than Hamas who started the war in the first place…
Among Israelis, the view of the situation in Gaza is complex — rooted in a trust deficit
August 1, 2025 | Ran Porat
The international media has a responsibility to show what is happening in this war-ravaged area and to present the plight of the Palestinian people. However, the same media is often remiss when it comes to reporting on the situation in Israel. It fails to adequately convey the Israeli psyche: how Israelis perceive the war, its objectives and the people on the other side.
Hamas and its enablers
August 1, 2025 | Justin Amler
To Hamas, every civilian death is a strategic victory. Why? Because it knows – and tragically, it is right – that images of Gazan casualties will be weaponized to turn public opinion against Israel and smear its name on the world stage. And it’s working.
Why Labor risks making the wrong call on Palestine recognition
July 31, 2025 | Bren Carlill
Premature recognition is short-sighted and self-defeating, regardless of the motivations for doing it. The difficult but correct alternative is continuing to insist that the foundations for peace are properly established… Politically expedient shortcuts will make the situation worse.
Letter in The Age: Blame not so simple
July 29, 2025 | Jamie Hyams
Regarding Sean Kelly, the Geneva Conventions allow the blocking of aid if the enemy is stealing or using it. Kelly cites a New York Times story denying Hamas is doing so, but a Washington Post report set out in detail how Hamas is in financial crisis because Israel has stopped it taxing aid, or stealing and selling it.
Prolonging Gaza’s suffering, one ill-advised statement at a time
July 24, 2025 | Colin Rubenstein
This week’s statement called for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” and a return to the old UN-dominated aid system for Gaza, which Hamas exploited routinely in order to maintain itself in power and keep the war going. Both can only benefit Hamas – not the longer-term interests of Gaza’s civilians.
Call for ceasefire wilfully ignores realities of Gaza conflict
July 23, 2025 | Justin Amler
The statement was not only highly critical of Israel but bereft of any value in solving the ongoing Gaza war, or ending the suffering that results from it. It demonstrated once again the profound lack of understanding of the Middle East or the Hamas-Israel conflict that has become all too common in this country.
The arithmetic of hope and despair
July 17, 2025 | Rabbi Ralph Genende
The three weeks of constriction, the nine days of devastation, the seven weeks of numeration and the seven weeks of consolation; the Six-Day War, the Twelve-Day War. Numbers define Jewish identity from the past to the present.
Melbourne’s night of shame
July 10, 2025 | Justin Amler
We need them to understand that when rampant demonstrators attack our institutions and our community with word and deed, chanting “all Zionists are terrorists,” we take it very personally because they are not calling for dialogue – they are calling for death.
Politicians’ reactions ring hollow in echo chambers of outrage
July 8, 2025 | Bren Carlill
“Zionists” are the targets, but it just so happens that most Zionists out there are Jews, and almost all Jews are Zionists. And, certainly, the protesters don’t usually bother to discriminate. Which is why synagogues are burnt. Which is why Jewish schools are graffitied and students are taunted. Which is why Jewish artists are de-platformed.
Anti-Semitism: Very fabric of our society is in deep, dark danger
July 7, 2025 | Mark Leibler
Those who took to the streets of Melbourne are fundamentally driven by a hatred of Jews. Such people have always been here, but the murders, rapes and abductions that took place on October 7, 2023, emboldened them. And as long as protests accompanied by chants of “Zionists are terrorists”, “death to the IDF”, “globalise the intifada” and “from the river to the sea” continue, violence directed at the Jewish community and its institutions will follow.
Tragic shift on antisemitism should terrify us all
July 7, 2025 | Paul Rubenstein
This kind of hatred never stays contained. The history is clear: every society that has allowed itself to follow this path has ended up ashamed of where it arrived and inevitably in abject failure. So we must ask, urgently and clearly: is this really the road we want Australia to go down?
