Is there a movie in this?

Okay, we’ve got some serious stuff to deal with today, so let’s get the funnies out of the way at the start.

1. Typically, when Bibi bags someone out, he’s so desperate to bolster his coalition numbers that, come election time, they end up being offered a place in his government. All of which is to say, next time Israel goes to the polls, don’t be surprised if Anthony Albanese’s offered the Department of Foreign Affairs.
2. Students of history will recall the concept of Realpolitik, practised by the likes of Bismarck and Kissinger. In short, it’s prioritising pragmatism over ideology. Nowadays, though, there’s Realpolitik 2.0, which is simply inserting the letters REAL into the name of a politician. For instance, Albanese becomes Albanes-real-e … which sounds suspiciously like “I’ll ban Israeli”. And let’s face it, that’s how this latest sorry mess started.

Ok, tachlis time. Cast your minds back to April 2020, the halcyon days of the very first Covid lockdown.

Now you may recall that it coincided with Pesach, and, having just discovered Zoom, everyone was talking about hooking up with their families online for Seder.

But our Orthodox rabbis were having none of it, declaring even in these unprecedented times, we couldn’t transgress the laws of yom tov. We may have crossed the Red Sea, but a live stream, absolutely not.

Perhaps you accepted their edict, perhaps not. Either way, fair play to them, it’s their business to rule on these things.

But imagine then that a group of communal leaders charged with handling secular rather than religious affairs had issued a statement saying they didn’t agree with the rabbis and they felt people should Zoom. I daresay a few eyebrows would have been raised quite rightly, not least from the rabbis themselves and members of the Orthodox community.

Leave Torah declarations to the people whose job it is.

We don’t live in a theocracy. Church and state, or rather synagogue and state, should stick within their own boundaries.

Fast forward five and a half years to last Friday after Benjamin Netanyahu felt he wasn’t at war on enough fronts, so he launched hostilities against the people of Albanestan.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m not sympathetic with the views he expressed. Just two weeks ago, you may recall a column in which I stated that Albo’s recognition of Palestine meant I no longer recognised the Australia I once knew. And ever since October 2023, I’ve lamented the fact that when it comes to tackling antisemitism, our government’s been as effective as a raspberry with a typewriter (I don’t quite know what that means, but you get the gist.)

That said, I don’t believe Bibi was right to publicly trash Albo. It was undiplomatic, it was undignified, it was unedifying and I can see no possible way that it would benefit us as Jews in Australia. Just consider how we take umbrage when any foreign politician takes a public swipe at the Israeli government. Step forward Tony Burke …

So when the Executive Council of Australian Jewry wrote to Bibi lamenting his rather Trump-esque behaviour and likewise sent a letter to Albo voicing concern over some of his recent public pronouncements, I was rather pleased at the level of leadership shown.

But then, out of the blue, the Rabbinical Association of Australasia weighed in, publicly disassociating itself from ECAJ’s course of action and siding unequivocally with Bibi. And then I suddenly felt rather uncomfortable. It was the Zoom Seder scenario I laid out earlier, but in reverse.

Maybe I’m wrong, but to my mind, this situation doesn’t fall within the rabbinical remit, any more than if the Jewish Butterfly Appreciation Society had said ECAJ didn’t speak for them on this issue.

In short, it’s bad enough Bibi not sticking to his lane but now organisations in our community are making a show of stepping outside their lanes as well. I’m not saying people aren’t entitled to their opinions, but you don’t always need to make a song and dance about them, particularly when the object of those opinions isn’t within your purview, which in this instance is spiritual matters (or butterflies and, at a push, caterpillars.

As for Mr Bibinyahu, when you have a million people protesting in the streets, hundreds of organisations and businesses going on strike and you’re two years into a devastating war, you might want to sort out your own backyard before meddling in someone else’s.

Not forgetting, of course, that you and your country are duking it out for the title of World’s Most Hated.

It’s almost as if Bibi’s putting on his best Edward G Robinson in The Ten Commandments voice and sneering at the world, “Where’s your pariah now?”

(For those of you too young to know who Edward G Robinson was if you were looking to cast a pint-sized mobster in the 1930s who looked like he was an accountant called Emanuel Goldenberg, and whose real name was actually Emanuel Goldenberg, he was your man. For those of you too young to know what the 1930s were, it’s like the 2020s but in black and white, with no mobile phones and all the men wearing hats.)

All of which is to say, we have Bibi played by Edward G Robinson, so who else is in our cast? Well, I’m thinking Stan Laurel as Anthony Albanese, Gregory Peck as Alex Ryvchin, Henry Fonda as Peter Wertheim, Leslie Howard as Daniel Aghion, Bela Lugosi as Tony Burke, Finlay Currie as Rabbi Nochum Shapiro, Charles Laughton as Donald Trump, Peter Lorre as Elon Musk and Marlene Dietrich as Penny Wong.

Now that’s a movie I’d pay to see.