Vivienne Porzsolt

Once again we have seen the spectacle of the Jewish leadership banning dissenting Jews from their annual festival of ideas, Limmud Oz. Organisers of this year’s conference held last weekend in Melbourne told the co-ordinators of a workshop on a new book, Beyond Tribal Loyalties, that their session would not be included.

In recent weeks, something unprecedented has erupted in Israel. Protesting the high cost of living, especially of housing, predominantly young people have established protest camps. The campaign was sparked by a young single mother who, in desperation over her housing situation, pitched her tent outside the Knesset (Israeli parliament). Now the tent protests have spread like wildfire all over Israel.

On July 15, former NSW Greens MP Sylvia Hale and I used the freedom from deportation awarded us by an Israeli court to good effect. We joined the largest rally for some years in support of a Palestinian state ahead of the expected United Nations vote in September. We carried a green and yellow banner saying, “Aussies say end blockade of Palestine”. The rally and march, with drumming circles and flowers was organized by a coalition of groups called Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity.

I know many Jews feel deeply threatened by the boycott, divestment sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. It feels like a threat to eliminate Israel. For so many Jews, Israel is a guarantee of survival, so BDS is a threat to Jewish survival and ipso facto anti-Semitic.

Leichhardt Friends of Hebron can be very proud of the Festival of Friendship for Hebron it held over June 25-26. The event raised more than $5000 for a kindergarten in the impoverished village of Um al Khair in the South Hebron hills. It also won a significant political victory over the ban the previous Leichhardt Council administration placed on a Palestinian photo exhibition two years earlier.

The murder of international peace activists on the Gaza flotilla by Israeli commandos marks a turning point in the international standing of the state of Israel.

In late September, I was one of 16 international activists from Britain, the US, Canada, Belgium and Australia who converged on Israel to draw international attention to the plight of Mordechai Vanunu, who has been in solitary

Uri Avnery, well-known Israeli writer and representative of Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), described how, over lunch with the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Yasser Arafat, he saw an Israeli gunboat blockading

Why has Helen Garner's book, The First Stone, been so applauded by so many with so few feminist credentials? Why was the right-wing Sydney Institute so eager to give her a platform? Why has the debate been shifted from

Last week I saw Ordinary Fascism, a fascinating documentary on Nazism by Soviet film maker Mikhail Romm. Made in 1961, it is remarkable both for its portrayal of that weird brand of fascism and for the way it does so.

The National Pay Equity Coalition held a seminar on May 7 in Sydney on the impact of enterprise bargaining on the pay and working conditions of women workers.

Since the February 25 massacre of worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron by Israeli settler Barukh Goldstein, ongoing Palestinian demonstrations have been viciously put down by the Israeli military. The entire occupied