Dear all,
 
Who will protect Australian citizens from Israel and pro-Israel lobby?
The Greens ELECTED Senators put their heads on the sand at the Senate special sitting, 7 November 2003!
 
I will not surprise if the Prime Minister of my country, Australia, call me a 'terrorist'! That's why:
 
On 14 August 2001, American-Jewish Rabbi Michael Lerner wrote that: "I am someone who daily receives death threats from Right-wing Jews. I am editor of TIKKUN: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society,  the one internationally distributed progressive Jewish magazine that unequivocally supports Palestinians rights, calls for a Palestinian state and an end to the Occupation and Israeli settlements, sharing of Jerusalem, and acknowledgment by Israel of responsibility to combine reparations for Palestinian refugees with a process of allowing about 25,000 a year to return 
to Israel."

How many Australian Jews receives telephone death threats? How many Australian non-Jews receives telephone death threats? 
No questions the millions of Australian dollars, TAX EXMPT, that find its way to Israel which financing Israeli daily human rights violation and discrimination, illegal Israeli settlements and extreme right-wing settlers etc.
 
Even the two Greens Senators, DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED, didn't dare to raise this issue in the Australian parliament. They put their heads on the sand at the Senate special sitting, 7 November 2003, to pass newly appointed Attorney-General, Mr Philip Ruddock, legislation Criminal Code Amendment (Hamas and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) Bill 2003. Keep in your mind that the Greens National Conference, October 2003, adopted extensive and detailed Israel/Palestine policy.
 
Most importantly your publicly funded media, your ABC, deliberately ignored this issue.
 
If that's the case who will protect Australian citizens? How Australian Intellegence and Security Agencies such as ASIO and AFP will protect ALL Australians, regardless of their ethnicity or religion, when the Government of the day and most importantly the elected Parliamentarians politicising an important issue like terrorism.
 
I wounder what will happen if Australian government of the day and opposition adopted an even handed and balanced policy toward Middle East? I am sure that another non-Muslim terrorist groups will appear
 
I am saying that because an extreme right-wing and pro-Israel had a website called http://masada2000.org/. In that website they listed all Jews who dared to speak out against Israel occupation, policies, and crimes against Palestinians. Israelis/Zionist call those Jews who spoken out, Self-Hating Jews. The full list can be found at http://masada2000.org/shit-list.html. Please note that some Australian citizens included in the list.
 
When the two Greens elected Senators put their heads on the sand and don't say one word about Israelis crimes and terror infrastructure, of course pro-Israel lobby will think that they are above the law. 
When the Government of the day and the opposition have discriminate Israel/Palestine foreign policy, of course that will encourage pro-Israel lobby to further in their intimidation campaign toward any Australian citizen, including Jews, who dares to speak out against Israel.
When 'humanitarian Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) remain shamefully silent on Israel's daily crimes this will keep the wider community ignorant!
 
When your publicly funded media, your ABC, deliberately ignore reporting about Israel state sponsor terrorism and deliberately mislead the public through its Israel/Palestine coverage. That simply will prepare the grounds for the policy makers to politicise the issue of terrorism!
 
"Different climates of opinion…exist in Sydney and Melbourne, and it is from the SMH [Sydney Morning Herald] and ABC that most opinion leaders, such as parliamentarians, draw their opinion." (Labor MP Michael Danby, Australian Jewish News 27 September 2002)
 
I am sure the list of Self-Hating Jews will get bigger and bigger. That's because the Palestinian Intifada will continue.
 
For those who been in my mailing list since 1998 remember that since Wye River agreement between former Israeli PM, Netanyahoo and Palestinain Authority I was warning from Peace Process Phase 3, BLOOD FOR PEACE. [Phase 1 was LAND for Peace and Phase 2 was Security for Peace]. Also, I wrote about that in detail at Deir Yassin Remembered/Australia www.deiryassin.org PUBLIC submission, 252 pages, to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Middle East, May 2000.
 
Peace Process Phase 3, BLOOD FOR PEACE, started on 28 September 2000, when Israeli war criminal, Ariel Sharon provocative visit to AlAqsa Mosque. The only way to end Blood for Peace is by ending Israeli military occupation to Palestinain 1967 land.
 
Until the so-called civilised world understand and act to end Israeli military barbaric occupation, more Jews inside Israel and around the world will speak out. More non-Jews from the so-called civilised world will speak out. That will force pro-Israel lobby to act aggressively toward any one dares to criticise Israel.
 
Interestingly, security agencies using the term 'politically motivated violence' to define terrorism. Isn't threatening Australians lives a 'politically motivated violence'?
 
I will not surprise if the Prime Minister of my country, Australia, call me a 'terrorist'. Simply because I have Arab-Palestinian and Muslim background!!!
 
Finally, do you feel safe? If not who will protect us?
 
Attached are:
 
1. Email from Australian Jew, her name included at the Self-Hated Jews list to massada2000.org 
2. SAY "NO" TO THE "ZIONISM IS RACISM" LYNCH MOB. By Rabbi Michael Lerner. Editor, TIKKUN

In peace,
 
Asem Judeh
POBox 2080
Templestwoe Heights 3107
mobile: 0415 802 780
 
P.S. The writer is member of the Greens Party.
 
Please advise if you want to remove your email from the list. 
------------------------------------
 
1. Email from Australian Jew, her name included at the Self-Hated Jews list to massada2000.org 

My email to massada2000 -- the publishers of that 'self-haters' list... 

Hello,

I am writing to let you know that I saw your list (self haters etc.) today and am proud to be on it. I am glad to see that there are so many of us on it, and am proud to be in such good company! 

If you think that you will succeed in intimidating people like myself into silence you are mistaken. I grew up in Israel and if there is one thing that having been an Israeli and an Israeli soldier has taught me is to not worry about the likes of you. 

I am puzzled by what you think you can achieve with your website and your list. The only thing you are achieving is to show the world that Jews can be just as extremist and closed-minded as all other extremists out there. It is one thing to disagree with someone but it is another to put labels on them or try to silence them -- this kind of action begins to put you in the same category as all terrorists. 

Your sad attempts at smearing, silencing or intimidating unfortunately show you for what you are. You are letting your emotions get the better of you instead of using common sense. The issue in Palestine is unambiguously that of occupation. I witnessed what Israel has done and there is no denial on your part that can change any of that. All the documents are there in Israeli archives. You just have to look for yourself. When the war crimes trials begin I wonder where you would be and what you would think.  

Consider that you are not helping your cause but damaging it.

May God have mercy on  your souls.
[  ] 
--------------------------------------
2. 
 
SAY "NO" TO THE "ZIONISM IS RACISM" LYNCH MOB
by Rabbi Mchael Lerner
Editor, TIKKUN

Nothing could be more destructive to the struggle against racism 
than to attempt to divert it into a struggle against Israeli policies today, 
policies with which I disagree. .
I am someone who daily receives death threats from Right-wing
Jews. I am editor of TIKKUN: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of 
Politics, Culture and Society,  the one internationally distributed 
progressive Jewish magazine that unequivocally supports Palestinians 
rights, calls for a Palestinian state and an end to the Occupation and
Israeli settlements, sharing of Jerusalem, and acknowledgment 
by Israel of responsibility to combine reparations for Palestinian
refugees with a process of allowing about 25,000 a year to return 
to Israel.
I am also a strong supporter of reparations for slavery,
apartheid and segregation, both in the U.S. and around the 
world--and at a level that would substantially alter the present distribution of
wealth in the world.  Professor of African American Studies 
Cornel West and I have written a book together: Jews and Blacks: Let 
the Healing Begin.
Because I am a strong supporter of efforts to rectify the
history of oppression of peoples of color by colonial and imperial
forces, I am horrified that some misguided friends of the
Palestinians will use this moment to misdirect the conference 
against racism into a futile propaganda battle against Israeli policy.
Here are several reasons why this is a big mistake:
1. There is nothing racist about affirmative action to
rectify histories of past oppression. Israel is the first state to be
created as an act of international affirmative action in light of:
a. A history of world-wide discrimination,
oppression, and genocide against the Jewish people that went 
on for 1800 years b. The forceful dispossession of the Jewish people
from their land by Roman and later by Islamic forces
c. The long history of apartheid against Jews in
Islamic countries, culminating in assaults and pogroms--which, 
though never as intense as those in Europe, were as intense and 
oppressive as the treatment of Africans by the white population of South 
Africa during apartheid.
d. The illegitimate and racist actions by Palestinians seeking to
prevent Jews from immigrating to Palestine when the Jews were 
the refugees climbing out of the crematoria and gas chambers of Europe or fleeing 
from racist mobs in Islamic countries.
In light of this, the establishment of a specifically Jewish
state with special rights for Jews, including the right of return, is
not anymore racist than other policies in other societies which 
seek to rectify historical oppression by giving special rights to the
group that has been previously oppressed.
2. Israel's policies of expropriating Palestinians from their 
homes is morally unacceptable, but again not specifically racist, but 
a form of distorted nationalism that we see frequently in countries around 
the world--and quite often done on the basis of one group's national 
aspirations versus another. We can deplore all forms of nationalism that 
demean others. I do--including deploring those who use notions of Jewish 
chosen-ness to affirm special entitlements to the Jewish people. But I delpore 
it equally in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, India, China, and do I really need 
to say that this list would go on to most countries on the planet--most of whom 
have expropriated one population to benefit another. So, the reason I reject 
Israel's so-called "right" to the land of Israel is that I reject anyone's right to 
any ownership of any land-- in accord with the Bible's strong statement from 
God "The entire earth is Mine" (kee lee kol ha'aretz) in a context \ that rejects 
private ownership. The only "Right" I believe that any individual or nation has 
with regard to land is the right to use it to alleviate human suffering and to promote 
the well-being of all. Israel is not doing that, neither is any other country on the 
planet. They are all screwed up, and none is in any position to sit in judgment of 
any other.
As a spiritual leader, and a rabbi, I call for everyone to stop using their land just for 
their own benefit, and start using it to address the needs of everyone on this planet, 
redressing the social injustices caused by millennia of conquest, cruelty oppression 
and unfair distribution of the world's resources.  I spell out the new way to think about 
these issues in my latest book: Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul. 
But applying this to the current situation, I can say this:
though no state has a Right to anything, given the way states systematically violate God's 
laws, if any state has any right to exist at all it would be those that are created by international 
bodies (e.g. the UN) in order to rectify past histories of oppression and unfair distribution. 
Israel, with all its faults, has a high claim to exist on this criterion, and its subsequent crimes, 
seen as I do as a reflection of the distortions in Jewish perception of the world engendered 
in us by two thousand years of outrageous oppression by others (including explulsions, stealing 
of our lands, systematic exploitation, murder and finally mass genocide against us) give the 
Jewish people an understandable (though not fully excusable) explanation for why it is unable 
to respond in compassionate and decent ways to the legitimate claims of the Palestinian people.
3. The level of torture, displacement, false imprisonment, etc. of Palestinians is a tragedy and 
a travesty of Jewish values.
But it is NOT qualitatively or quantitatively as horrible as what has been done in the post World 
War II era to  a. the Tibetan people by China,  b.the Chechnyan people by Russia c. the Hutus 
by the Tutus and vice versa  d. the Bosnian people by Serbia  e. Indians and Pakistanis by each 
other  f. the genocidal assault on Vietnam and Cambodia by the United States  f. the genocidal 
assault on its own eople by the Khmer Roughe  f.. dozens of other circumstances in the odern 
world that you could document as well as I.
So, when one singles out Israel and its outrageous behavior, ne is actually doing a racist 
act--playing into the long history in hich a double-standard is applied to the Jewish people. This 
racist ct completely discredits any group of people who hope to establish international legitimacy 
for an anti-racist agenda.
4. In using racist criteria to judge Israel, the international community actually strengthens the voices 
of those in Israel who disparage all talk of human rights or international standards. They therefore 
give a vital club into the hands of the Israeli right and weaken the forces of those within Israel who 
seek reconciliation with the Palestinian people. Far from being an act of solidarity with the Palestinian 
people, those who single out Israel for special condemnation actually make it harder to build peace 
and social justice for Palestinians.
None of this applies to Jews who hold Israel to a higher standard than they hold others. As part of a 
family and nation, one has both the responsibility to defend that family (as I did when I gave my son 
permission to serve in the Israeli army), and the right to ask it to live up to its own highest ideals. But 
others who are not similarly committed to Judaism or to the Jewish people have no right to use a higher 
standard in judging Israel than they use in judging themselves and others--to do so is to adopt a racist 
standard and to reveal an underlying antagonism which destroys moral credibility.
Israel's policies should be reversed. The Palestinian people must be granted full national rights and 
reparations for the damage done to it.  And there are racist elements in some of Israel's internal policies 
which deserve to be challenged. So, too should the terrorist attacks against civilians by Palestinians be 
challenged and critiqued--just as its wrong for Israel to punish large sections of the Palestinian people for 
terrorist assaults by a small group of extremists, so too its wrong to attack Israeli civilians for the
barbarous behavior of some sections of the Israeli Army. But these are separate issues from the right of 
the Jewish people to have their own state. The fundamental venture of the Jewish liberation struggle,
Zionism, is a legitimate response to a world that has rarely treated Jews as equally deserving of respect.  
This is no time for the world to fall back into a racist response to Israeli policies it rightly deplores.

--Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of TIKKUN Magazine and
author of Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation 
and editor of (forthcoming in October from JosseyBass/Wiley) 
Best Contemporary Jewish Writing.
     To support this voice, please subscribe to TIKKUN Magazine
(on line at www.tikkun.org or 415-575-1200).
      If you are in the Bay Area of California, come to High Holidays 
with Rabbi Lerner at Beyt Tikkun Synagogue (information at 
www.BeytTikkun.org).