'Kingdom Culture' conference 27th - 28th August

Time is ticking and the highly anticipated 'Kingdom Culture' conference at Subiaco Church of Christ, on the evenings of Tuesday the 27th and Wednesday the 28th of August, is looming fast!

Such a quality conference, featuring Ps Peter Tsukahira and Steve Carpenter, both coming all the way from Israel, is a rarity in our city.  Please see the brochure below for their bios and for further info about this conference.

Organiser, Carmel Friends Inc. urges you not to miss this one.  Tickets are limited.

Contact Craig Beech for details of how to register: 0419 899 363

 

 

 

New Australian Ambassador to israel is Australia's youngest

From JPost, 28 July 2013, by GREER FAY CASHMAN:

"People should see it as a vote of confidence – young ambassadors who have a future will remain friends of Israel," Dave Sharma, 37, tells Post.

Dave Sharma. Photo: Courtesy Australian Embassy

... Australia’s ambassador- designate to Israel Dave Sharma, who at 37, is the youngest ambassador on Australia’s diplomatic circuit... and his wife, Rachel, and their three daughters aged six, four and three months, arrived in Israel in June.
... Although he is a career diplomat who has served in other postings abroad, most recently in Washington, this is his first ambassadorial post. Sharma is the third-consecutive envoy from Australia, following James Larsen and Andrea Faulkner, who will be an ambassador for the first time in Israel.
Sharma said this is indicative of the importance that Canberra attaches to its relations with Israel. “People should see it as a vote of confidence. It says something if you’re sending relatively young ambassadors who have a future ahead of them and will remain friends of Israel for years to come,” he said.

... Sharma barely had time to unpack his suitcases after his arrival, when he was told that he must attend the Presidential Facing Tomorrow conference in Jerusalem.
Not long afterward, Sharma hosted a dinner for a delegation from Woodside Petroleum.
Woodside is Australia’s largest independent oil and gas company, and one of the world’s leading operators, producing an average of 900,000 barrels of oil a day.
Woodside’s 30 percent stake in the Leviathan gas field west of Haifa has hit rocky ground, but if things sort themselves out and Woodside puts its flag on the site, Sharma is more than optimistic that other Australian energy companies will invest in Israel. The government recently cut the share of the gas due to be exported, likely reducing the liquefied natural gas exports Woodside will operate.
Sharma came into early contact with people from the Israel office of the Zionist Federation of Australia when he attended the launch in Ra’anana of a partnership between Telfed, the representative organ of the Zionist Federation of South Africa, and the ZFA, which have joined forces in providing services to aid new immigrants from South Africa and Australia.
He also hosted a reception for an Australian Trade Mission on Science Innovation and Technology headed by Peter Ryan who is the deputy premier and minister for state development in the State of Victoria.
Keen on archeology and ancient history, Sharma was delighted to take a look at the archeological digs in Gath where two Australian teams from Macquarie and Melbourne Universities are among the excavators.
In Jerusalem, he did the tour of the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus, where many facilities have been donated by Australian Friends of the Hebrew University.
Sharma hosted a reception for members of the Australian delegation to the Maccabiah Games. Like other Australian ambassadors before him, he participated in a memorial service for the four Australians killed in the bridge disaster in the 1997 Maccabiah Games.
He attended the opening of the current 19th Maccabiah Games.
Sharma is an all-round sportsman – a runner, swimmer, tennis player, golfer, cycler and soccer player.
When asked if he plays Australian Rules football, he reminded his interviewer that he’s from Sydney, not Melbourne, and that his games are rugby and soccer.
Among the essential tasks that he has set himself during his tour of duty is to broaden Israel’s profile in Australia, because most Australians get their impressions of Israel from the media, and the general public perception of Israel is that of a country in conflict and turmoil, always on the brink of war.
Sharma wants to make Australians aware of antiquities, tourist attractions and the impact of Israel’s scientific and technological research on commerce and medicine.
He is less concerned about giving Israelis a more rounded picture of Australia, because quite a few Israelis spend up to a year in Australia after their army service.
Given that it is the 11thlargest donor toward humanitarian needs in the Palestinian Authority, Australia would like to be more involved in the peace process, said Sharma.
As far as bilateral relations with Israel are concerned, he wants to encourage greater sharing of know-how in that the Australians have much experience with regulation, taxation, management and environmental issues related to gas and oil exploration that it could share with Israel, while Israel is much stronger than Australia in innovation and entrepreneurship.
Another thing he hopes to do is to revive Australia Day (January 26) get-togethers.
He has never understood why Australia Day is not an open house celebration by Australian embassies abroad.
Sharma cannot fathom why ANZAC Day is commemorated in Israel each year, yet there is no Australia Day celebration.
But first he has to focus on Australia’s upcoming federal elections on Saturday, September 14. Voting is compulsory in Australia, and religiously observant Jews or people who may be out of the country on Election Day have the option of casting postal votes.
Early in-person voting will be conducted at the Australian Embassy starting on September 2. Postal voting applications are available at the embassy. There are approximately 10,000 to 11,000 Australian citizens in Israel, but Sharma does not know how many have voting rights. Australians living abroad must have an address in Australia and pay taxes in Australia if they want to apply to be enrolled on electoral voting lists.
When an ambassador is appointed, it occasionally gets a media mention in the country of origin and in the prospective host country. In Sharma’s case, it was also reported with fanfare in the Indian press because his father is Indian, and because Sharma is only the second Australian of Indian background to be appointed an ambassador.
Reports at home and abroad also emphasized his age.
When asked why all this is such a big deal, he explained that while Australia is a successful migrant country, immigrants tend to succeed in the private sector but it takes much longer for them to succeed in politics and the diplomatic service, which are still dominated by people of Anglo background.
His mother is third or fourth generation Australian with a mix of Scots, Prussian and Irish blood.
The most frequent question that Sharma has been asked since arriving in Israel is whether his wife, Rachel, is Jewish. The answer is no. She merely has a biblical name.

 

Trade Unions Linking Israel & Palestine spread the word about what's really happening in Israel

From an email from Eric Lee, Trade Unions Linking Israel & Palestine (TULIP), 22 July 2013:

In some countries, and in some unions, it's become commonplace to talk about "Israeli apartheid" and to call for unions to break ties with Israeli trade unions.
Some Israel-haters go so far as to say that there are no real unions in Israel.
The reality is that Israeli workers -- Jewish and Arab -- are involved every day in the same kinds of struggles as trade unionists everywhere else in the world. Their unions are often on the front lines of the fight for social justice, equality and peace.
Please help me spread the word about what's really happening in Israel and Palestine.
Share this message with your fellow union members. Encourage them to get onto our mailing list here: http://www.tuliponline.org/?page_id=4212
Here are some news stories from the last two weeks that we reported on the TULIP website:

• Union representing Jewish and Arab workers, mostly women, signs first-ever collective bargaining agreement in Nazareth
• Big win for cleaners as Histadrut signs agreement to extend public sector conditions to private companies
• International Transport Workers Federation votes unanimously to support Israeli port workers
• Short video about attempt to unionize by Palestinian workers at Israeli-owned factory in the West Bank
• General strike averted – for now – as Netanyahu talks to Histadrut

Thank you
Eric Lee

Israel Film Festival 2013: 21-28 August

Birdbrained fact-checking at the ABC

From AIJAC 22 July 2013, by Ahron Shapiro:

An ABC interview with the Australian organisers behind the building of a park in Gaza took a bizarre and embarrassing turn last month, when an outlandish and demonstrably false claim made during the interview was later employed to promote the interview on the ABC website.

During the June 7 interview, pro-Palestinian humanitarian aid advocate Moira Kelly, one of the founders of the "Global Gardens of Peace", told ABC News Breakfast hosts Michael Rowland and Beverly O'Connor that "there are no birds in Gaza" - a claim so shocking on face value that O'Connor repeated it back to her, yet she did not actually question its authenticity.

One might have been tempted to simply let such a nonsensical claim go, yet this became more difficult after ABC decided to draw further attention to it when it posted the interview their website under the heading "Peace garden to bring birds back to Gaza" along with the following description:

A new garden dubbed 'The Garden of Hope' is set to bring a sense of peace and serenity to the war torn Gaza Strip. It's said that no birds inhabit the region but it's hoped the garden will provide a habitat for them to return.

It is hard to imagine how ABC news staff could have not caught Kelly's blatant exaggeration and even felt free to put the ABC's imprimatur on the claim by including it in the story summary. Yet even the most cursory investigation would have confirmed that the Gaza Strip, like its neighbour Israel, is literally teeming with avian life.

Type "birds in Gaza Strip" into Google and the very second response you get, in terms of relevance (the first being a Wikipedia article) is a bird checklist by the World Bird Database which lists 171 species of birds in the Gaza Strip.

The third most relevant response is a scholarly paper from 2011 by Dr. Abdel Fattah N. Abd Rabou from the Department of Biology at the Islamic University of Gaza.

The paper, "Notes on Some Palestinian Bird Fauna Existing in the Zoological Gardens of the Gaza Strip" focuses mainly on birds in captivity in the Strip. However, the paper also includes a survey of the natural bird life in the area.

Writes Dr. Abd Rabou:

The Gaza Strip, which is located at the southern portion of the Palestine coast along the Mediterranean Sea, is blessed with a considerable number of bird fauna including terrestrial and aquatic forms. Dense concentration of birds occurs over the Gaza Strip during spring and autumn migration seasons [5, 6]. It is worth mentioning that wetlands, including the wetland ecosystem of Wadi Gaza, are considered as very productive ecosystems, having rich bird fauna. They provide bird fauna with all necessary requirements such as shelter, protection, food and breeding, resting and roosting places ... etc [7-13].

It should be noted that, in spite of the abundance of bird life in the Strip, the biologist does identify threats to the bird population. It's worth mentioning here that none of them have anything to do with the conflict with Israel, but rather suggest an indictment of internal Palestinian mismanagement of ecological issues.

In autumn, scores of fine nets are erected each year along the Gaza coastline to illegally catch migratory birds such as the Common Quail Coturnix coturnix [1, 9, 10]. In addition to poaching and hunting, urbanization and residential creeping, ecosystem alteration and destruction, environmental pollution and the extensive and intensive use of pesticides impose real threats on birdlife in the Gaza Strip.

 

What about visual evidence to support the existence of a healthy bird population in Gaza? There is tons. Take, just for one example, this photo essay by Palestinian photographer Abed Rahim Khatib from April 2012. Flocks of birds literally fill his lens.

Khatib's caption:

Migratory birds in the spring season also come from all over the world and pass in the skies of the Gaza Strip.

Given the abundance of evidence to be found regarding the proliferation of birds in Gaza, there is no need to belabour the point.

Summing up, this blog post should not be construed as some sort of objection to the building of a park in Gaza. On the contrary, one should only hope that Gazan children of the future should enjoy a plethora of wholesome recreational pursuits in parks rather than the Hamas paramilitary "summer camps" and hateful indoctrination and incitement against Jews and Israel they are currently exposed to.

Furthermore, there is no disputing that any trees in a new park will provide additional perches for birds traversing the area and this is undoubtedly a positive (although from the pictures of the park site, it seems that the land that was given to Kelly for the park is not actually situated in a densely populated neighbourhood).

At the same time, though, one can only wonder why Rowland and O'Connor failed to ask Kelly why Hamas, which rules Gaza, chooses to pour its money into building offensive weapon capabilities against Israel instead of building and supporting its own parks.

But more importantly, ABC goofed by giving Kelly a license to exaggerate claims about conditions in Gaza as a fundraising and propaganda tool. Even before the construction of this park, Gaza most certainly did, and continues to have, trees, bird life as well as green spaces (even some lavish ones, like the Dolphin Water Park and Resort which opened in April, compensating for another one which Hamas destroyed in 2010).

Kelly and the ABC effectively conspired to distort the reality on the ground in the interests of manufacturing sympathy for a doubtlessly worthwhile project. But when Australia's public broadcaster uncritically promotes such storytelling, it is acting counter to the principles of ethical journalism, and its own charter.

While this incident is, of course, peripheral to the more substantive issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for ABC's journalists and editors to "parrot" the bizarre notion that Gaza is devoid of birdlife without anyone along the way bothering to exercise the most basic level of fact-checking is indeed troubling.

It raises the question of what other fact-checking, if any, is employed by the ABC regarding news items originating in Palestinian controlled areas on more important subjects.

"The approach taken by the EU is ham-fisted and potentially counter-productive..."

From the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, 21 July 2013:
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has warmly welcomed the announcement of an agreement being reached for resuming direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

"We express our sincere hope that a just and enduring peace can be reached between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of the principle of two States for two peoples", said ECAJ President, Dr Danny Lamm. "We note with appreciation that the Australian Government’s policy statements have consistently affirmed this principle, and have urged the parties to return to direct negotiations without preconditions," Dr Lamm said.

Dr Lamm was also highly critical of new guidelines published by the European Union concerning the eligibility of Israeli entities which operate beyond the Green Line to benefit from grants, prizes and financial instruments funded by the EU.

"It is not the place of the EU or anyone else to try to pre-empt the resolution of final status issues such as borders and settlements which the parties themselves have previously agreed can only be resolved by them in direct negotiations", Dr Lamm said.
"The approach taken by the EU is ham-fisted and potentially counter-productive. It sends out the utterly unrealistic message that only the Israelis, and not the Palestinians, will need to make painful compromises to achieve peace".

Where has the billions of PA aid gone?

From an email from Simon McIlwaine, Anglican Friends of Israel:
Anglican Friends of Israel Membership Director Fran Waddams was invited to be one of a group of leaders of pro-Israel Christian organisations on a recent fact finding trip to Israel organised by the Jewish Leadership Council.  The group was briefed by top civil servants and Israeli government officials as well as having the opportunity to meet Arab Israelis and Palestinian Christians.

Particularly moving was the welcome given by young soldiers of the IDF stationed near Gaza, who usually meet Christians who are insensitive to their delicate, dangerous mission, and whose objective is often to make their difficult lives even more difficult.  It was quite a different experience for them to meet Christians who supported their mission and appreciated their courage and cheerfulness.

Sderot was an eye-opener.  Reading about the beleaguered town is one thing.  It is quite another to walk its streets calculating whether there the 15 seconds after the warning siren goes off will be enough to reach the nearest bomb shelter.

Fran was invited to write an article about her experience after her return to the UK, and she has done this in the form of an open letter to Archbishop Justin Welby, whose own visit to the Holy Land took place only days after the group left Israel. 

[That letter is reproduced in the JPost and below]

Shalom

Simon McIlwaine, Anglican Friends of Israel

From JPost, 13 July 2013, by FRAN WADDAMS:

The Palestinian Authority has received billions of dollars in aid. Where, exactly, has this money gone?            

Archbishop of Canterbury in Jerusalem, June 27, 2013. Photo: REUTERS

           

The Jewish Leadership Council of the UK recently led a group of leaders from several Christian organizations to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
This group had the opportunity to meet with and question Israeli officials, citizens and clergy.
Fran Waddams of Anglican Friends of Israel, one of the organizations represented on the trip, responds to a report by the archbishop of Canterbury on his visit to the Holy Land which took place a few days later.

An open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury by FRAN WADDAMS
Dear Archbishop Justin,
I toured the Holy Land, together with Christian leaders of other organizations, on a visit organized by the UK Jewish Leadership Council just a few days before you last month, and read your reflections on your own visit to the region wondering whether you would be as attentive and impartial as you were at a meeting a few years ago at which I spoke and you were chair.
It’s heartening that you support the rights of all people in the region “to peace, security, and justice.”
The issues you touch on also arose on our three days of visits and meetings with Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, and Palestinians, and some questions sprang to mind as I read your piece.
You were shocked at the contrast between west Jerusalem and Ramallah.
Next time you visit, would you ask Palestinian leaders why there is such a contrast? The Palestinian Authority has received billions of dollars in aid. Where, exactly, has this money gone? It doesn’t appear to have gone into infrastructure, public buildings and utilities, nor created Palestinian jobs nor gone onto Palestinian tables. It might really help our understanding if we knew the answers to this question.
Palestinians may find passing through IDF checkpoints inconvenient, or even humiliating.
But air travelers of every nationality accept the indignity of intrusive security searches, understanding that there are those who would blow airliners out of the sky if measures were not taken to stop them.
Israel’s security fence and checkpoints exist for the same reason. They were put into place only after dozens of murders and hundreds of mutilations caused by Palestinian suicide bombers who drove unhindered into Israel to carry out their missions. Several people loaded with explosives have been stopped at checkpoints over the years. Every week the Israel Defense Forces intercepts weapons and explosives and prevents indiscriminate death and mutilation of Palestinians and Israelis alike. Israel’s security measures save lives.
One young Palestinian woman has written that “most Palestinian Christians and peace loving Muslims acknowledge (privately) that the wall was built as a direct response to suicide bombers from within the Palestinian community.”
However unwilling the Ecumenical Accompaniers Programme for Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) is to believe it, it is a fact that the number of terror attacks, which reached epidemic proportions by 2003, has dwindled to almost nothing.
Like us, you were alarmed by the danger with which the citizens of Sderot live daily. It’s one thing to read dispassionately the few reports that appear in the UK media, quite another to be on the spot, wondering whether the nearest bomb shelter (at every bus stop) could be reached within the 15 seconds between the Red Alert and the missile exploding. The morning after our visit, terrorists were lobbing missiles toward Israel.
They missed this time. But missing was not the intention, and it didn’t stop Sderot’s parents having to make agonizing decisions on whether they had time to get all their children to shelter in time.
Then we met young IDF soldiers, amazed that British Christians wanted to show appreciation for their dangerous work. Most Christians they encounter are scrutinizing their behavior for faults as they work at checkpoints or try to prevent violence at demonstrations.
These Christians seem indifferent to the dangers they face as they try to distinguish between peaceful Palestinians and those smuggling explosives or weapons.
Finally we had the privilege of visiting Baptist Pastor Naim Khoury in Bethlehem. Brought up to believe that the Jewish Scriptures were irrelevant, he began to read them for himself as a 17 year old. He has discovered that the whole Bible is God’s Word, not just the New Testament and as a result insists that Palestinian Christians are obliged to love all their neighbors, Muslim and Jew.
He also learned that God has given the Jewish people a right to live in the Holy Land. Pastor Khoury does not endorse all that the Israeli government does. Nevertheless, he insists that Jews’ right to live unhindered on the land promised to them by the God is clearly set out in the Bible.
As a result of his courage, Pastor Khoury is shunned by fellow Christians, his church has had its right to conduct official marriages and baptisms withdrawn by the Palestinian Authority, his church has been bombed 14 times, and he was once shot. Nevertheless, his Arab congregation numbers in the hundreds, the largest in the Territories. What an irony.
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is complex.
It is about land and it is about justice. And your question is excellent – what constitutes a “just solution.” There are many voices that you won’t hear by sticking to “official” channels. The truths told by the “other voices” are out there, but so often those voices have to be sought out.
They’re worth listening to.
They really are.