The authors said:

"While the Australian Communications and Media Authority regulations cover violence and pornography, its policy guidelines fail to mention the promotion of racial hatred and religious bigotry."

Presumably the authors mean all religious bigotry except their own.

The authors also wrote:

"Politicians, civic and faith leaders can speak out when episodes of racial hatred and bigotry occur."

What a strange statement. Tell me, are 'ordinary citizens' also allowed to 'speak out when episodes of racial hatred and bigotry occur'? If so, I would like to do so now, with the following public statement:

"I hereby speak out against this bigoted article."

The authors also said:

"In 2006, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) recorded 442 ('anti-semtic') incidents, 47 per cent above the annual average. Serious or violent incidents were 74 per cent above average."

The above statistics, as well as all the examples of violence against individuals mentioned in the article, make the extremely silly assumption that all attacks on Jewish people are based on religious prejudices. In addition, why does this religion keep statistics on assaults against its members in Australia which, as the authors claim, is 'generally, a peaceful, tolerant and just society,' and where 'anti-Semitism is not a major source of alarm.'?

How many anti-Buddhist 'incidents' did the Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils record in 2006?

These authors only care about prejudice against their own mob and magnify it intensely to get maximum mileage.

The authors expect us to throw up our arms in horror because 'early in the 19th Century, a little Jewish boy was insulted and kicked in the streets of Hobart,' while at the same time, just a short distance away from Hobart, the convict settlement of Port Arthur was being established as a brutal torture-hole.

Thanks for the info, Danielle, as well as many thanks for your evenhanded point of view.

I am one who in his old age, gained Honours in the social sciences after studying Third World problems in Sri-Lanka. My degree was mostly based on the colonial Tea Economy and how the Sri-Lankan Buddhist and Janist Sri-Lankans revolted against the East India Company clearing the sacred timbered hillsides to grow tea for the colonialists.

The result was the British bringing Tamils over from colonial India to make way for a forced on economy, which unfortunately the Sri-Lankans still have to rely on.

Such studies have left me with a bitter taste concerning the neo-colonialism that is still going on in the Middle East today, with the mess in Iraq now forced to be fixed by a permanent US imperialist occupation, helped along by its Anglophile cohorts, Britain and Australia.

As also a successful historian having written a trilogy on Westralian history as part of my Post Grad, I have tried to base my reasoning on fair play, or a fair go, which unfortunately is lacking in the Middle East with the Arabs.

After all it is their territory, and it is why most historians have wished that the unfortunate wandering Jewish peoples, rather than arming them with nuclear weapons, would have been far better absorbed into an America, that is already made up with similar greatly talented wandering groups from other nations.

Such was certainly discussed in the lead-up to the Balfour Declaration, and the Middle East would have been a much more contented place today.

In addition to my previous post, I would like to direct readers to the following homepage of 'The Sydney Eruv':

http://www.sydneyeruv.org.au/index.htm

What's this all about? Well according to website:

"Sydney Eruv Incorporated is the organization responsible for the design, construction, operation, checking and maintenance of the Sydney Eruv. Planning commenced in April 1998 to establish an Eruv initially in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. The committee comprised Rabbinic and lay representatives of most of the synagogues in the Eastern Suburbs."

Design, construction, operation, checking and maintenance of what?:

"The Sydney Eruv is created from a combination of natural walls (the South Head Peninsula cliff faces), existing telegraph poles and cables, golf course and park perimeter fencing, and fencing around Bondi and Tamarama Beaches."

The website then shows a map outlining the boundaries of the Eruv - including Bondi Beach, Vaucluse, and Tamarama:

http://www.sydneyeruv.org.au/boundary.htm

"An Eruv is simply a practical method of denoting the area within which carrying objects and pushing strollers & wheelchairs is permitted on Shabbat.

One of the main qualifications for an Eruv to be effective is its physical boundaries. Ideally they should be walls, but when one is unavailable it is permissable to rely on a 'legal' device recommended by the Rabbis of King Solomon's court known as "Tzurat Hapesach", a community surrounded by door images - 2 sideposts and a lintel above. These can be represented by existing telegraph poles & cables which are attached to them. Assembling such strutures gives the community the status of one big house, inside which one may carry."

So what this is saying is - the physical boundaries around these suburbs defines what they consider to be 'one big house'.

After 4 years these boundaries were completed.

And this mob has the sheer audacity to try to lecture Australians about 'religious bigotry'.

Bernie Masters

You asked why the Jews have been so badly treated over the centuries. As you know, Christian millenarian belief, expressed in New Testament Revelations, prophesied an ultimate struggle between good and evil, with the former triumphant. Not only would God save all good Christians, but also would establish a new Jerusalem. However, Christianity also inherited the Old Testament’s idea of the Jews as the Chosen, which the Christian Messiah had not denied.

The resolution of the Jewish issue became a high priority for the early church fathers. St Paul rejected the idea of Jewish Chosenness and stated that Christ, as God’s son, made a new covenant with his people - thus Christians were the Chosen people - the Jews, by not following Christ, were apostate. In Paul’s letter to the Romans 11:12, he asserted that the Savior’s Second Coming depended upon the conversion of the Jews to Christianity. Not only did Paul deny the Chosenness of the Jews, but also went on to claim that the existense of Judaism would obstruct the attainment of the Christian paradise, implying that as long as there were Jews, there could never be redemption for mankind. The claim that conversion of the Jews would bring with it redemption of Christians profoundly infludenced Christian-Jewish relations for over 1,500 years, with grave repercussions for European Jewry. Christian desire for the end of Judaism, was widespread during the middle ages.

As late as the 18th century, missionaries in America repeated these beliefs in guides for converting Jews in preparation of the Last Days; Gernan Pietist scholars established an institute to promote the conversion of Jews believing that the end of Judaism would coincide with the arrival of paradise.

cont ...

"It is imperative that Jews have a homeland where they are welcome and have a place on the world stage of politics."
Why?
Perhaps it is because of the outrages claims made by them to be "special". Like all religious belief its in one being special, most frequently at the expense of others.
Israel was created at the expense of the Arab who was not then a nationalistic philosophy, my uncle who served in Palestine found the Arab to be amiable and child like.
I'm not anti jewish "some of my best etc etc" I am fiercely against Israel and their separatist philosophies. Why based on religion did they need a separate state, so making an enemy of all Arabs, and people like me. They killed "Brit's" who were there only to see a UN sanctioned takeover. It is a separatist military state that deserves our condemnation if only for the expulsion of the Arabs.
The nations of the world gave them a "state". Born in bigotry and aggression the people who occupied Arab lands were supported by jews around the world, particularly powerful American jews who never have lived there. Zionism is a false prophet and will be their undoing.

I have hosted three Israeli's, one recently discharged from national service a woman and the ugly face of zionism. Another a secret service agent based in Rome, the third a brother and deserter from the obligation to serve in the military. They were brothers and sister.
The deserter was an amiable fellow and is now I believe an Aussie citizen, a dissenter of Israel's policy of Arab exclusion.
fluff

A large proportion of arab moslems are also Semites. Who knew.

Given the rampant anti-moslem sentiment about then clearly anti-semitism is rampant.

It seems that moslems who vilify jews and jews who vilify moslems are likely to be self-hating Semites.

Will the newspeaking wounders never cease.