If at first you don’t succeed…writes Michael Kuttner

First there were rockets. Then terror tunnels dug underneath Israeli houses. This was followed by kidnappings and explosive devices. In between there were frogmen trying to infiltrate from the sea and misnamed aid flotillas trying to smuggle in forbidden items to Gaza. Lately there have been flaming kites setting fire to wheat fields and forests. Read more

Haley slams UN Security Council as resolution to condemn Gaza rockets is blocked

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley slammed the Security Council for its failure to condemn Hamas rocket attacks against Israel on Wednesday. Read more

Community condemns Gaza rocket attacks

Leaders of the Australian Jewish community have spoken about Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza aimed at Israel. Read more

Let’s abolish Jewish celebrities

Like any embattled minority that needed positive role models, early- and mid-20th-century Jews  embraced celebrities with any sort of tie to the tribe…writes Jonathan S. Tobin. Read more

Palestinian Islamic Jihad prompts dangerous escalation in southern Israel

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World Jewish Congress condemns terror attacks from Gaza

The World Jewish Congress has strongly condemned the terror barrage being launched against Israel from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and urges the international community to recognise that Israel is under attack. Read more

Chevra Hatzolah parters with Ambulance Victoria in life-saving app

Ambulance Victoria has today launched a smartphone app that’s already helped save the lives of two Victorians. Read more

Shabbat with Pride

Members of Sydney’s North Shore Temple Emanuel (NSTE) has celebrated its inaugural “Pride Shabbat” . Read more

NCJWA backs Irish vote on abortion

The National Council of Jewish Women of Australia published its support to the Irish referendum vote on abortion. Read more

Eliyahu’s Mistress: a book review by Geoffrey Zygier

Melbourne lawyer Roger Mendelson has chosen a demanding subject for his debut novel ‘Eliyahu’s Mistress’. Read more

Does a lavish simcha detract from its religious significance?…ask the rabbi.

Rabbi Raymond Apple answers this question and others… Read more

Polish embassy screens Holocaust movie

The Embassy of Poland in Canberra has screened a film about the Holocaust, highlighting the efforts of a great Polish hero – “The Courageous Heart of Irina Sandler”. Read more

Reviewing a month of hypocrisy and moral decadence

Never have we witnessed such morally decadent political behavior as what has transpired these past weeks…writes Isi Leibler. Read more

Will Prince William follow royal tradition with a tattoo at centuries-old Jerusalem parlour?

Ever since Kensington Palace announced the dates of Prince William’s  scheduled trip to the region on Friday, speculation has been rife that he will visit the Razzouk tattoo parlour in Jerusalem’s Old City to acquire a tattoo of the cross and follow in the footsteps of his royal ancestors King Edward VII in 1862 and Princes  Albert and George (the future King George V) in 1882. Read more

ABC apologises to ECAJ

The ABC has written to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) apologising for inaccuracies and for the omission of material context that occurred during an interview of Rev Dr Stephen Sizer which was aired on RN Breakfast on Good Friday, and the eve of the Jewish festival of Pesach (Passover), on 30 March 2018.  Read more

First Torah in 100 years for Melbourne’s CBD

A Sefer Torah has been donated for the first time in 100 years to Melbourne’s downtown city area. Read more

Protests in New Zealand by pro-Palestinian activists over Ben-Gurion screening

Pro-Palestinian activists in Wellington and Auckland have demonstrated threats and actions to sabotage the screening of a new film about Israel’s founder and first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Read more

Feintooner

This week’s cartoon…Of Mice and Men. Read more

Medical wearable monitors

Researchers from the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed an integrated system for early diagnosis of diseases using wearable monitors. Read more

Canberra plans its first Jewish dayschool

Its first Jewish day school is on the cards for Canberra with Chabad ACT applying for its registration. Read more

On the other hand

Things are hotting up in this part of the world. Summer is kicking in with rising temperatures while regional troublemakers are ensuring that things remain at boiling point. Despite these climatic and political impediments the start up nation continues to thrive. Read more

Inane, again! Thomas Friedman on Gaza

What if all two million Palestinians of Gaza marched to the Israeli border fence with an olive branch in one hand and a sign in Hebrew and Arabic in the other, saying, “Two states for two peoples: We, the Palestinian people of Gaza, want to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish people—a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed adjustments. – Thomas L. Friedman, Hamas, Netanyahu and Mother Nature, New York Times, May 22, 2018.

… the American conduct of the peace process bears an unhappy resemblance to the custom of treating diseases by placing leeches on the body of the afflicted person: It was based on an inadequate understanding of the pathology it attempted to cure, it did not solve the problem it was intended to fix, and it sometimes made it substantially worse. – Michael Mandelbaum, The Peace Process Is an Obstacle to Peace, Commentary, April 14, 2016. Read more

Orchestrated chaos: Palestinian rejectionism again proves its futility

Events at the Israel-Gaza security barrier on May 15 followed what has become an all too predictable pattern…Hamas starts a confrontation with Israel; Israel defends itself; the world condemns Israel…writes Peter Wertheim. Read more

Politicians’ impressions of Israel

David Leyonhjelm, Liberal Democrat Senator for New South Wales, and Trent Zimmerman, Liberal Member for North Sydney, spoke at an Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) luncheon in Sydney on their experience in Israel. Read more

Israeli couple rescued after building ‘SOS’ out of rocks

Israeli Police rescue volunteers were able to locate a missing Tel Aviv couple lost in the Negev Desert on Tuesday thanks to an “SOS” sign they fashioned out of stones. Read more

Behind Erdoğan’s boycott threat against Israel

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is in the midst of one of his periodic bouts of Israel-hatred, lashing out at the Jewish state and its leaders with all the insults (“Nazi,” “apartheid,” “child-killers” and so forth) that he has deployed with such aplomb in the past…writes Ben Cohen/JNS. Read more

Philip Roth, famed Jewish-American author, dies at 85

Philip Roth, the author who shook up the norms and narrative of Jewish teens in a rapidly changing time in American society, died on May 22 at the age of 85. Read more

Chutzpah unlimited

We live at a time when even the most outrageous behaviour is accepted as normal…writes Michael Kuttner. Read more

Laya – Local Hero

Rebbetzin Laya Slavin has been award this year’s Local Hero by Sydney’s Waverley Council. Read more

Calling all artists

For the fifth year, Asylum Arts will be bringing together Jewish artists from all over the world for our International Jewish Artist Retreat, a four-day retreat of learning, community building, and professional development. Read more

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