Friends of Israel

From a statement by the Israel Embassy in Australia, 19 July 2012:

(see "Israeli Tourist bus bombed in Bulgaria" for background)

The Government of Israel condemns the terror attack on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas, around 400 kilometers east of Sofia on Wednesday 18 July 2012.

At least seven people were killed and some 30 others were injured. The Bulgarian media reported that the explosion took place while the bus was still in the terminal of Sarafovo Airport.

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said police were investigating two possible causes of the blast - that an explosive device was put in the bus before the tourists boarded or that the explosives were in the tourists' luggage.

The explosion occurred at around 5 pm, as Israeli tourists who arrived in Burgas on a charter flight boarded buses that were supposed to transport them to a local hotel. The blast took place on only one of the buses.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was holding security consultations following the terror attack in Bulgaria yesterday.

The Prime Minister said: “All signs point towards Iran. Over the last few months we have seen Iran’s attempts to attack Israelis in Thailand, India, Georgia, Kenya, Cyprus and other countries. Exactly 18 years to the day after the horrendous attack on the Jewish Community Center in Argentina, deadly Iranian terrorism continues to strike at innocent people. This is a global Iranian terror onslaught and Israel will react firmly to it.”

The Prime Minister sends his condolences to the families of the victims and wishes a speedy recovery to the wounded.

From The Commentator, 12 July 2012, by Nick Gray*:

...Sadly, the BDS-o-meter comes back up again with this week’s decision by the Synod of the Church of England to recognise the hugely unbalanced work of the EAPPI (Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel) in presenting the situation in Israel and the Territories from an almost completely Palestinian perspective to British churches.

In general terms the various campaigns by British BDS groups have been noisy and sometimes messy, but in practical terms of effective boycotts they have been a complete failure...

It is easy for Israel-supporters and indeed anyone who wants to see the Middle East reported in a fair and balanced way to be discouraged by the claims of the various NGOs and charities advocating boycotts, but the reality ...should lift our spirits and encourage us.

Following the last general election, the [UK] government commissioned a white paper to ascertain how best to rescue the British economy and kick-start growth. “Trade And Investment for Growth”, published in February 2011, looked across the global economic scene to find potential trading partners and nations to work with in promoting trade, innovation and jobs.

Of the 62 action points to be implemented “vigorously and actively”, near the top was: “Encourage a stronger partnership between British and Israeli companies in innovation, high technology, and science”. Besides being recognition of Israel’s top place in the world in innovation and tech industries, this is a huge blow to the hopes of effective boycotts and sanctions held by the BDS campaigners.

The Israeli Embassy in London was not slow to capitalise on this positive sign and now actively “match-makes” British and Israeli companies, most recently in the areas of communications and new media. Partly as a result of these government-supported efforts, bi-lateral trade between Britain and Israel in just the first third of 2012 was 42 percent higher than for the same period in 2011.

Going back a little further, from 2012 to 2011, bilateral trade [between Israel and the UK] increased from $3.7billion to $5.1billion – that’s a whopping 38 percent that has made Britain Israel’s fourth largest trading partner. What price now a few oranges and tomatoes from supermarket shelves?

A further blow to boycott efforts is the complete failure of every local BDS campaign (and there have been quite a few) to force local authorities to boycott Veolia (a French-based corporation that held a small stake in the consortium that built the Jerusalem Light Rail system).

As a soon-to-be-published report will show, in every case where a political campaign was waged to pressure local councillors not to give Veolia contracts, such decisions were made on purely commercial grounds that totally ignored the political pressure of the campaigners.

The ultimate aim of an internationally waged boycott campaign is that the target nation will be brought to its economic knees and cave in to the boycotters’ demands. According to Israeli figures, produce from the “illegal” settlements of the West Bank amounts to around 1 percent of Israel’s economic output. The Co-Op would have bought only a tiny percentage of that 1 percent before its boycott decision – hardly enough to bring down the Israeli economy.  

Comparing such a campaign to the reality of British-Israel trade is like comparing my morning jog to, well, the Olympics.

Finally, an official from the Israeli Embassy made my day recently by assuring me that the UK boycott campaigns do not affect the Israeli economy at all. At the end of the day, the noise and mess of BDS meetings and demonstrations is empty posturing and publicity. We just have to stop it poisoning more minds.

*Nick Gray is Director of Christian Middle East Watch.

From a letter from the Australian PM to the International Olympic Committee:

(download the full letter here)

...The occasion of the Olympic Games in London this summer also markes the 40th anniversay of the terrible tragedy that occurre in Munich during thew 1972 Olympyic Games.

On behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia, I am writing ...to express support for the observation of a moment of silence to be held at the 2012 London Olympic Games opening ceremony, or at an appropriate time during the Games, so that the Olympic Movement can honour, before the world, the memory of those whose lives were lost during that horrific event...

From “Genocide Perspectives IV: Essays on Holocaust and Genocide” edited by  Colin Tatz, The Australian Institute for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, 2012 (pp372-311): “...Zentai and the Quest for Historical Justice” by Ruth Balint:<?xml:namespace prefix = o />
...The Holocaust in Hungary and the case of Peter Balàzs
...In 1944, the Jews of Hungary, numbering some 700,000, remained the most physically intact Jewish community in Europe. Close to 64,000 Hungarian Jews had already lost their lives; 20,000 ‘alien’ Jews had been sent across the border into Poland and shot at Kamenets-Poldolsk, and a majority of the rest were Jewish men killed when serving in labour battalions on the Ukrainian front. A series of severe anti-Jewish laws had also been implemented, restricting basic civil and socio-economic rights. But the conservative government of Miklos Kallay (9 March 1942 to 22 March 1944) had stopped short of complying with Germany’s demands for the deportation of Hungarian Jewry. The occupation of Hungary by Germany in March 1944 led to the implementation of the 'Final Solution' with a speed and efficiency unrivalled in other Nazi-occupied countries. Within a few short months, at a time when it was clear that the war was already lost, and when the realities of Auschwitz were public knowledge among the world’s leaders, more than 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported from the provinces to the death camps. This was only made possible with the wholehearted support of the Hungarian constitutionally appointed government of Döme Sztójay, the endorsement of the Regent of Hungary, Miklos Horthy, and with the assistance of local authorities. As Braham writes: ‘With Horthy still at the helm, providing the symbol of national sovereignty, the Hungarian police, gendarmerie, and civil service collaborated with the SS in the anti-Jewish drive with a routine and efficiency that impressed even the Germans.’ By 1 June, the average daily number of Hungarian Jews being deported to Auschwitz was 20,000.
By the end of July, virtually the only remaining Jews surviving in Hungary were in Budapest. In the month of July, 25,000 were deported to Auschwitz, at which point the government temporarily suspended deportations. In October, the fascist Arrow Cross party, under the leadership of Ferenc Szàlasi, was installed in government in a Nazi-orchestrated coup. The Arrow Cross embarked on a reign of terror, enacting frenetic killing sprees of the remaining Jews seeking refuge in the city. Thousands were arrested and shot and dumped into the Danube, and thousands more were shot or perished during a death march of 70,000 to Austria. The Arrow Cross reign lasted until Soviet forces liberated the city on 13 February 1945; during this time, those Jews who managed to stay outside of the ghetto, using false papers and not wearing a yellow star, had a slim chance of survival. Péter Balázs, an 18-year-old boy, was among those who chose the Jewish underground.
It was during this time that Zentai, a conscripted Hungarian Royal Army officer, was stationed at the Aréna Road military barracks in Budapest in 1944. Zentai’s commanding officer was Bela Máder, and his fellow officer Lajos Nagy. After the war, they were tried for the murder of Péter Balázs and found guilty, Máder in 1946, Nagy in 1947. Máder was sentenced to forced labour for life; Nagy was given the death sentence, later commuted to life imprisonment. Evidence given at these trials prompted the Hungarian authorities to charge Zentai with the same crime; by that time, he was already in Germany living as a DP. These trials were part of the wave of war crimes trials held in Hungary in the immediate postwar period; approximately 27,000 people were sentenced by the Hungarian 'people's courts' for war crimes, crimes against the state or crimes against humanity, among them a number of senior government ministers. These also included local and county government officials, gendarmerie and military officers responsible for the expropriation, ghettoisation and deportation of the Jews of Hungary.
At his trial, Nagy told of how, under the orders of their commanding officer Bela Máder, Zentai went out on patrols regularly to perform identity checks and round up Jews for interrogation. According to Nagy, Zentai already knew Péter Balázs: in his statement after his arrest he told the police, ‘Zentai told me that the boy and his family were old acquaintances of his’. The Zentai and Balázs families were both from Budafok, a small town on the outskirts of Budapest. The Balázs family were well known in their region as Jews and for their leftist sympathies; Dezsö Balázs, Péter’s father, had his legal practice there until 1942 when the family moved into Budapest. Zentai, only a few years older than Péter Balázs, was apparently his ‘Levente’ instructor for a time in Budafok. Balázs was surviving on false identity papers, and defied a call-up order for a Jewish forced labour unit in April 1944. On 8 November, Zentai recognised the boy on a Buda-pest tram and arrested him for not wearing the yellow star.
What happened afterwards, according to the evidence presented at Nagy's trial, is that between the hours of 3 pm and 8 pm, Zentai and Nagy beat Balázs so badly that by 8 pm he was dying. According to Nagy's evidence, they (Zentai, Máder and himself) saw that the boy was dying, and then went to an adjoining room and began drinking. In a macabre twist, Captain Máder decided to show off their handiwork to a number of other prisoners detained that night at Aréna Road. As a number of them testified at Nagy's trial, eight of them (some say six) were taken to Captain Máder's rooms, where one by one, they were shown a man lying on the floor covered by his own overcoat. His breath rattled, and it was clear that he was dying. ‘Can you hear that music?’ Sándor Révner stated that Máder asked him, when it came his turn to view the dying man. ‘That's the way you will go too.’ Each of the witnesses said they were told the same thing. The prisoners were then brought back into the room and forced to say the Hebrew prayer for the dead, ‘and we said that prayer according to his instructions’. The next day, all but one of them escaped. Each confirmed, as did other officers present that day, that the man lying on the floor, according to his photograph, was Péter Balázs.
I have before me the original court transcripts in which witnesses describe the brutalities they endured while they were detained at the barracks. There are various references to Zentai’s regular participation in these beatings. Imre Zoltan testified that in 1944, while in Budapest as a forced labourer, he was arrested and taken to the barracks ‘where at Béla Máder's orders, Cadet Károly Zentai and Cadet Ferenc Érsek beat me up for hours with boxing gloves until I lost consciousness’. Ervin Barinkai, another soldier at the barracks, remembered seeing Zoltan ‘gravely assaulted several times, especially by Cadet Sergeant Károly Zentai’. Another cadet, György Varsányi, stated that ‘it was Cadet Sergeant Zentai who did the beatings, I saw that myself several times’.
On the night in question, József Monori, another officer assigned to the barracks under Máder’s command, reported that he heard, but did not see, the beating going on behind closed doors. He ‘definitely’ remembered Zentai, Nagy and Máder present. He went to bed, but was woken up at around 11 pm and told to harness a horse and carriage: ‘Nagy and Zentai brought down a corpse from the office, put it on the cart, and covered it with straw…Nagy sat on the driver’s seat, Zentai beside him, and I sat on the side of the cart. Nagy was driving the cart. We drove along Aréna Road…down to the Danube…There Nagy and Zentai took the corpse and dumped it in the Danube. They waited a while to see if the corpse would come up but it sank.’ Monori also stated that during the journey ‘Nagy and Zentai were talking about how they should not have beaten the boy so hard’.
 

Hungarian journalist György Vámos, referring to the ‘unusual circumstances’ of judicial practices in postwar Hungary, recently cautioned that witness testimonies relating to this case should be treated with care. He offers no detail beyond remarking that social justice, as opposed to merely criminal justice, was an important objective of the government at the time. This is largely true. The people’s courts were driven less by legal concerns than by the desire for retribution and, in many cases, revenge. Confusion, insufficient preparation and political bias were rife during the major political trials, of which there were 14 between 1945 and 1946. ‘The historical responsibility of the Hungarian principal war criminals is beyond question’, wrote historian Laszlo Karsai. ‘What is questionable, however, is whether the people's courts were sufficiently equipped to establish their criminal responsibility.’...
...Istvan Hargittai is a professor of chemistry at Budapest Technical University and one of a few to have published in Hungarian his Holocaust experiences and the wall of silence that surrounds this history. He recalls that he and his generation grew up thinking ‘it was the Germans’ who were responsible for the Hungarian Holocaust. Members of the Arrow Cross were outsiders, so the theory went, unrepresentative of the Hungarian people. This myth prevails. Most Hungarians, he says, have lived since World War II as if Auschwitz never happened. The crimes of the Communist regime command the sphere of public debate over retribution and justice. The question of Hungarian complicity in the crimes against a significant number of its own people in World War II has yet to be asked....
 

...The story of how Zentai came to be in Australia is part of the history of Australia’s first immigration program, in which tens of thousands of DPs were brought out on ships from the DP camps in Germany and Italy to Australia on its mass resettlement scheme. For many genuine refugees, Australia was ‘the farthest place’, far removed from the Europe of old race hatreds that had led to the concentration camps of World War II; for others, Australia was a country of last resort. Zentai’s own application for refugee status, for example, lists Canada and Argentina as countries of preference for immigration. There is no mention of Australia. Contemporary observers were often struck by how comparatively easy it could be, if you were non-Jewish and ‘fit’, to get in to Australia when applications elsewhere had failed. Ron Maslyn Williams—on location in Germany in 1949 to make Mike and Stefani (1952)—wrote to his boss at the Commonwealth Film Unit, Stanley Hawes: ‘As one intelligent DP put it to me “It is Australia or Siberia or starvation…Australia is the gambler’s shot”. Moreover, “quite literally, very many IRO officials regard Australia as a kind of modern Van Dieman’s (sic) land where they can dump the people who constitute IRO’s problem”.’
The Australian authorities, for their part, counted physical attributes above all else as criteria for migration: one needed to be fit, preferably young and, more preferably still, fair-skinned. Until 1960, humanitarian principles did not inform motives for assisted refugee migration—pragmatism did. Australia needed to expand its labour force and its population, and the only way that the government could sell its scheme of mass migration was by assuring its public that it remained committed to the principles of a ‘White Australia’ on which the Commonwealth was founded. Jews were especially unwelcome. Immediately after the war the government announced a humanitarian scheme to permit the arrival of concentration camp victims with Australian relatives; the scheme was met by antisemitic protest, and in response, the immigration minister Arthur Calwell introduced a quota system, in which only 25 percent of each ship carrying migrants could comprise Jews. These would be admitted only on the grounds of their potential contribution to Australia's economy, not on humanitarian grounds.
As Klaus Neumann has written: ‘Suitable non-British settlers were young, educated and healthy and, ideally, possessed certain racial features. Australian selection teams preferred vigorous, flaxen-haired, fair-skinned and blue-eyed young men and women from the Baltic countries who did not or could not return to the Soviet Union.’ These were to resemble Australia's ‘own kind’ as closely as possible. Beyond this, a philosophy of assimilation governed immigration policy and popular attitudes towards new arrivals. Immigrants, labelled ‘New Australians’, were expected to merge, quickly and quietly, into the Australian cultural and social landscape. This kind of thinking also implied, of course, that people's political pasts were as irrelevant as their cultural pasts—a slate wiped clean by the promise of Australian acculturation.
The Zentais ticked the right boxes: ‘fit worker’ is handwritten across both Károly and Rozsa’s migration selection forms. In March 1949, Zentai, his wife Rozsa, their two sons born after the war, and Zentai’s older sister, Julia, were at Tuttlingen in southern Germany’s French zone, where they were interviewed and accepted by the Australian Migration Team for resettlement in Australia. Zentai’s screening card twice states that he arrived in Germany on 9 March 1949, and that he had ‘fled from the Communist Party’. His wife’s card indicates the same information. The accompanying resettlement card from the IRO, which establishes their status as DPs, also states that Zentai and his wife were in Budafok between 1945 and 1949, and that their son Gabor was born in Budafok, Hungary, in 1946.
Except that he wasn’t, and they weren’t. Documents held by the International Tracing Service (ITS) tell a different story. The ITS, located in Bad Arolsen in Germany, is a massive storage house of SS records of the death camps, yet it also holds the records created by the Allies in the DP camps. Zentai’s file includes his application for refugee assistance to the IRO, and lists his places of residence from 1938 onwards: in March 1945 he was already on his way to Dietersburg, Bavaria, where he arrived, according to the information he provided, on 19 April 1945 and remained until March 1948. A document dated 14 August 1946 confirms that he, his wife, his sister and his son, Gabor, born 26 February of that year, were in Dietersburg. His son Gabor is twice recorded as having been born in Arnstorf, Bavaria. Another, dated 15 July 1947, indicates that Zentai was temporarily in Kösslarn, in the district of Griesbach, also in Bavaria.
In his application for IRO assistance, a routine statutory declaration states that Karl Zentai was ‘never a member of the Arrow Cross or any political party and never committed any atrocities’. It is signed by Zentai and three witnesses, dated 12 March 1948 at the Hungarian office (Ungarisches Büro) in Pfarrkirchen. A handwritten statement by an IRO officer concludes: ‘On account of credibility of the statement of the Hungarian office and the witnesses he should be found eligible for refugee status with IRO assistance. Refuses to return home for the present regime there—no political freedoms.’
None of these official records hint at the warrant for his arrest issued by the Budapest People’s Court in April 1948, despite the fact that his whereabouts were well known to the Hungarian authorities. The warrant even lists an address, ‘the American occupation zone in Germany, where his address at present is…Furth in Pfarrkirchen district with farmer Jakob Schneiderbauer’. It appears that Zentai was able to make his way safely to Tuttlingen almost one year after the warrant was issued. Was the warrant ever communicated to the Allied Occupation Forces in Germany, and if so, why was it ignored? Did Zentai know about his warrant? The answers to these questions, of course, can only be speculative. Yet the inconsistencies in the records as to his whereabouts for the four years between 1945 and 1949 seem to indicate some kind of attempt to cover his tracks. In his recent interviews with the media, Zentai has never tried to deny that he was already living under the protection of the Allied Occupation Forces in Germany from 1945. Why then did he lie about his whereabouts in 1949? I contend that his decision was strategic: rewriting those four years in this way so as to convey that he was coming from Hungary in 1949 rather than 1945 distanced his decision to leave Hungary from the imme-diate aftermath of World War II, thus making it simpler to argue that he was ‘fleeing the Communists’, as so many other East Europeans were doing in the years of 1948 and 1949.
Moreover, as Zentai’s case makes clear, the DP camps, and their route to Australia, could provide avenues of escape for those wishing to avoid retribution or exposure. It was well known to contemporaries that a number of collaborators and war criminals were hiding in the DP camps. G Daniel Cohen has examined the extensive technologies of screening and identification developed by the IRO, which took over from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in 1947, to determine the authenticity of refugees and displaced persons. It was a daunting task, but according to IRO officials, ‘of first importance in its work’.70 Refugees were now required to fill in numerous forms and questionnaires, yet as Cohen explains, if there was no apparent reason for exclusion, that is, if they seemed to fit the story they presented, they were not required to prove their right to be included as eligible. IRO officers received manuals that included sample cases and historical information to guide their decisions, and were taught how to detect untrue statements, yet in practice their mission to cleanse the system of ineligibles was often frustrated. Visitors reported that the ‘right answers’ to IRO questionnaires were circulating in the camps; further, it was clear to IRO officials that many simply destroyed their identity papers and made up new ones. Dates of displacement were frequently altered during interrogations to make their applications more plausible. Within the IRO, Cohen quotes, it was commonly believed that ‘after many months of observation and listening, the DPs are told what to say and know how to craft an acceptable story leading to eligibility’.
Over one million people arrived in Australia under various immigration schemes by the end of the 1950s, and there are estimates that even in its earliest years, 4,000 to 5,000 Nazis may have found sanctuary there, most of them from East-Central Europe. As Konrad Kwiet notes, during the screening process they lied about their wartime activities, usually claiming to have been subjected to ‘forced labour’ or ‘deportation to Germany’. ‘In reality’, he writes, ‘many of them had actively enthusiastically assisted the Nazis. Their claims concealed “police work”, military and Waffen SS service and participation in killing operations’.
This should also be viewed in the context of a broader Allied retreat from the issue of denazification and punishment of wartime activities. Zentai was in Germany at the very moment that Europe’s postwar memory was being moulded, by all sides, around the notion of German guilt, in which all responsibility for the war was made to lie squarely at the feet of the Germans. This focus on Germany meant the postwar status of other countries could be resolved. Thus Austria was retrospectively declared the ‘first victim’ of Nazi aggression and with Austria’s innocence assured, the responsibilities of other non-German nationals in Europe were similarly eradicated. As the Cold War deepened, the Allies were determined to avoid alienating Austria and Germany, and this meant removing attention from the past. ‘In a process that would have been unthinkable in 1945’, Judt wrote, ‘the identification and punishment of active Nazis in German-speaking Europe had effectively ended by 1948 and was a forgotten issue by the early fifties’.
IRO policy also reflected a softening towards those who previously may have been denied eligibility as collaborators. Ideological motives for assisting enemy forces, for example, became as important as their actions during the war; in other words, if someone had voluntarily enlisted in the German army because they wanted to oppose the Soviet regime, this was reason enough for inclusion. DP claims of anti-Communist sympathies and fear of Communist persecution began to carry as much, if not more, weight than claims of Nazi persecution. ‘By 1950, refugees deemed "imposters" or "security threats" in the days of UNRRA were now offered the chance to emigrate to Australia or the North American continent.’
This strategic refocusing of attention away from the crimes of the past identified by Judt was enormously significant for the thousands, if not millions, whose wartime pasts were being reframed by a deliberate process of forgetting and denial, and whose identities were recast as refugees of an oppressive Communist regime. Australia’s own role in this history was one of passivity and equally, one of denial. In the 1950s, protests by the Australian Jewish community over the migration of Nazis and their collaborators were even-tually silenced by the continuing apathy and even hostility to their campaign. The politics and ideology of anti-Communism coloured government rhetoric and attitudes to the evidence of Nazi war criminals and collaborators living in Australia, and governed the state’s failure to act. This was made explicit in the official response in 1961 to a request by the USSR for the extradition of an Estonian immigrant Ervin Viks, who was accused of murdering 12,000 Jews and Roma in the Tartu concentration camp. The Liberal government of Robert Menzies refused. In a speech defending the decision, Australian Attorney General Sir Garfield Barwick declared that against the ‘utter abhorrence’ felt by Australians against war crimes, ‘there is the right of this nation, by receiving people into this country to enable men to turn their backs on past bitternesses and to make a new life for themselves in a happier community’. He concluded, in what has become an infamous phrase: ‘the time has come to close the chapter’.
This directive to forget in order to create ‘new lives’ and a ‘happier community’ became a prevailing ethos in the next few decades, assisted by the fact that there was no legal framework established for extradition or prosecution of suspected war criminals. This changed briefly in the late 1980s when, under the Hawke Labor government, a special inquiry was set up to investigate allegations of Nazi war criminals living here, inspired largely by the forensic investigations of journalist Mark Aarons in a series of reports for ABC radio and television, which resulted in the Menzies Report. Controversial legislation was passed in parliament enabling Australian courts to prosecute suspects for war crimes (War Crimes Amendment Act, 1988). Most importantly, a Special Investigation Unit (SIU) was created within the federal Attorney General’s department to investigate suspected war criminals. In its five short years of operation, there were 843 investigations, three individuals charged and tried in Adelaide, with no successful conviction.82 In 1992, the SIU was closed down, and responsibility for following up war crimes’ accusations delegated to the federal police, who were either unwilling or unable to investigate them. It was, in Kwiet’s words, ‘a clear signal that the second chapter of the war crimes debate in Australia was closed’. During his brief tenure as chief historian for the SIU, Kwiet observed both the negative, ‘even damning’ attitude that prevailed within the legal fraternity towards war crimes’ legislation and the proceedings themselves; and the frequent indifference of the Australian public. He recalls:
In the public domain the war crimes debate had, in my view, little, if any impact on public awareness and memory… The public proceedings in Adelaide took place in front of empty galleries. Quite popular in the scant media coverage were references to the accused as ‘nice neighbours’ or ‘old’ and ‘sick’ pensioners. For the overwhelming majority of Australians, the news of the closure of the SIU went almost unnoticed.
David Fraser has also noted that the presence of unpunished perpetrators never became part of the cultural or political dynamic of Australian national identity or Australian values. Yet others have recognised that in spite of a lethargic community response to war crimes trials, these are important forums for producing cosmopolitan ideals of justice and human rights. They also affirm the role of history, in the form of evidence that 'things happened', in justice work and in the work of remembrance.
Although the legal framework was successfully developed by the SIU in the late 1980s, the resources for the investigation of people who have committed war crimes overseas have not been forthcoming and there have been no charges laid since.
The Wiesenthal Centre recently listed Australia as the ‘only major country of refuge’ and former diplomat Fergus Hansen, in a recent report compiled for the Lowy Institute, writes that Australia ‘has inadvertently become a safe haven for war criminals’. This is certainly the impression Australia has been giving the world, and presumably its war criminals, for some time. Hansen notes that there are indications war criminals have come here from Afghanistan, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Sierra Leone, India, Cambodia, Iran, Iraq, Chile, Lebanon, Nigeria, Bangladesh, the former Yugoslavia, possibly Rwanda and East Timor as well, among other countries.
 

Zentai’s appeal against his extradition to Australia’s Federal Court in April 2008 failed, with Federal Court judge John Gilmour finding that there was no reason why Zentai should not be extradited to face trial. The court agreed to bail for Zentai on the grounds of ill health, and his lawyers took the case to the Minister for Home Affairs, O’Connor. This appeal failed, and Zentai was ruled fit to travel. This time Zentai’s lawyers based the justification for their appeal on the argument that the offence for which Zentai is convicted did not constitute a war crime at the time it was committed. The implications of an argument such as this, although not new, are momentous, legitimising what was, in effect, a fascist regime at the time and putting forward the quite extraordinary idea that for Jews like Balázs, being beaten to death was somehow lawful. A similar argument was made during the Nuremberg Trials, in which the question of whether the 24 German leaders should have to answer for actions rendered illegal after the fact—ex-post-facto—was put forward by the defence. The prosecuting lawyers never conceded this point, arguing that the charges were grounded in international law and what they called a common law of nations. Such an argument suggested that the accused had no idea they were acting illegally, an argument without merit in the minds of contemporary observers: murder is murder. The legality of the charge of war crimes was upheld at Nuremberg, and it is commendable that Federal Court judge John Gilmour resisted such logic today.
His lawyers successfully appealed the decision, taking it back to the Federal Court. In July 2010, Justice Neil McKerracher ruled that the Government had made an ‘error of law’ in agreeing to extradite him, and that the crime for which Zentai was charged was not an extraditable offence under the Extradition Act. Zentai returned home, but in 2011 the Federal Government returned to the High Court for another appeal, seeking a ruling on what constitutes a war crime. It is thought that such a ruling will have a significant impact on Australia’s extradition regime.
Zentai has clearly led an exemplary life in Australia. He is the embodiment of the multicultural ideal, a man who worked, brought up a family here and settled quietly into the suburban landscape. It is not easy to watch a frail elderly man being hauled in front of the courts to face trial. He might, despite all the evidence, be innocent. There are powerful incentives to simply turn our collective back on this story and let the old man be. But are we also prepared to accept a statute of limitations on war crimes or crimes against humanity? Is there a time when it is too late for justice? ‘That the past slips into the oblivion of forgetting does not change its moral nature’, writes Booth. ‘The passage of time may dull our recollection of events, but it does not erase the (morally weighty) fact of their having happened nor the wrong involved in them.’
...Andreas Huyssen has described our time as the twilight of memory. ‘Twilight’, he writes, ‘is that moment of the day that foreshadows the night of forgetting, but that seems to slow time itself, an in-between state in which the last light of the day may still play out its ultimate marvels. It is memory’s privileged time.’ As did Levi, Huyssen believes the struggle for memory is also a struggle for history. When we think of the Holocaust today, we often imagine our present time in terms of it being ‘too late’ for justice.
... in this brief twilight of Holocaust time when victims and perpetrators are gradually leaving our world behind, we should be ensuring that these cases are told and not forgotten. Justice, not memory, is the antonym of forgetting, writes Booth. ‘In other words, the imperative to remember is not the leaden voice of what has gone before, but rather it is the call of justice insisting on the irreversibility and persistence of what has been done, its claims on us which are neither diminished nor augmented by the extra-moral passing of time, and which call on us to bear these injustices in mind.’ History’s purpose is to give meaning to the present even as it seeks knowledge of the past; justice, or the attempt at it, however flawed and incomplete, belongs squarely within the historical project of understanding. A 1987 cartoon by Ben Sargent about the Klaus Barbie trial in France remains pertinent: ‘It's been more than forty years’, a younger man remarks. ‘Why are we hunting down a bunch of pathetic old men just to prosecute them for…er…uh…well, you know…uh…whatever that stuff was they did…?’ The older man replies: ‘That's precisely why.’
As Huyssen writes, ‘the inner temporality and the politics of Holocaust memory, however, even where it speaks of the past, must be directed towards the future. The future will not judge us for forgetting but for remembering all too well and still not acting in accordance with those memories’.
 

From JPost, 4 July 2012, by JULIE NATHAN*:

Anti-Semitism is being promoted  in pro-Palestinian discourse....

Photo: Reuters

After Brendon O’Connell, who had attended an anti-Israel action in Perth organized by Friends of Palestine WA (FOPWA), was convicted by a jury of racial incitement, Alex Bainbridge of FOPWA announced that the group “makes a conscious policy of condemning expressions of anti-Semitism and other forms of racism.” He added, “We are friends of Palestine, not enemies of the Jewish people.”

Regardless of how genuine Bainbridge’s claims were, there is very real and insidious anti-Jewish content within the discourse of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel people and organizations in Australia. Many supporters of the Palestinian cause claim their support is based on a social justice and antiracism platform. Anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian individuals and organizations often make the claim that they are simply anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish.

However, many of these people and organizations cross the line from legitimate criticism of the State of Israel into outright anti-Semitism.

Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel organizations utilize both websites and facebook to promote their beliefs, propagate articles and news and advertise upcoming protests, forums and other actions. Organizations set up many different facebook sites, often for specific events. Facebook is one area in particular where members can post comments, links and other material. It is on these official websites and facebook pages that anti-Jewish content is to be found.

When anti-Jewish comments, such as the post “i don’t give a f***, jews are pricks!!!!!” and another post advocating to protest in a “major jewish [sic] suburb” in Melbourne, are posted on the facebook sites of Students for Palestine (Melbourne), and are not removed, then a tolerance, or even approval, for anti-Semitism can be produced.

Videos are another means of propagating anti-Jewish sentiment, conspiracy theories, or similar sinister insinuations about Jews. Such videos, posted on the facebook site of the Australians Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA), based in Adelaide, include videos entitled “Zionists are a Satan worshiping Cult!,” “Dangers Of A ‘Jewish’ State,” and “The Hitler Speech They Don’t Want You To Hear.”

The first two titles sound anti-Israel, yet the synopsis of the first states: “To help you understand the difference between the “true Israel” and the Synagogue of Satan.” This is the familiar terminology of far-right religious anti- Semitism.

The second video repeats this theme, as it states: “Jewish elitism has permeated every aspect of our nation’s infrastructure....

If this trend continues then a Judaic tyranny never before experienced in American life will dismantle all that Christianity has bequeathed to our once free and prosperous nation.”

The third video claims to be the English translation of a speech by Hitler which blames Roosevelt for WWII and portrays Hitler and the Nazis as innocent and peaceful, which is a standard neo-Nazi theme.

When, for example, AFOPA allows anti-Semitic videos which demonize Jews and sell Hitler as a hero to be posted and kept on their facebook page, this belies the claim that they are only anti-Israel. It shows, at best, an unacceptable tolerance for those who are deeply and overtly hostile to Jews.

When pro-Palestinian websites, like Australians For Palestine (AFP) and AFOPA, republish articles from overseas which use anti-Semitic language, this only reinforces the negative portrayal of Jews. An example is an article which uses the term “Talmudic rituals.”

This term, a coded expression for attacking Judaism, is used on many Islamic websites such as IslamOnline, and by Arab journalists such as Khalid Amayreh.

As one study of anti-Semitism has noted, “The term ‘Talmudic rituals’ used by Amayreh (2009c) and Islam- Online (2009a) in reference to Jews near Al-Aqsa is a coded allusion to some sort of ‘sinister’ Jewish rituals, given that historically the Christian authorities condemned and burned the Talmud as an allegedly sinister Jewish text in an effort to convert the Jews to Christianity” (ADL 2003).

In comparison, a less active website, Palestine Solidarity Campaign Melbourne, has the same story but from the Maan News website, where the article contains nothing inflammatory or anti-Semitic. This shows that there are various ways to choose to tell a story and that anti-Israel organizations like AFP and AFOPA have chosen to use and republish articles with anti-Jewish language and content rather than articles that are not anti-Semitic.

Of even graver import is when pro- Palestinian websites republish anti- Semitic articles. Australians For Palestine (AFP) reproduced in full an article from the anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying website Institute for Historical Review.

Anti-Semitic claims in the article include: “In reality, the Jewish hold on American life is far more dangerous...

Throughout history Jews have time and again wielded great power to further group interests that are separate from, and often contrary to, those of the non-Jewish populations among whom they live... Now we are engaged in a great, global struggle – in which two distinct and irreconcilable sides confront each other. A struggle that pits a self-assured and diabolical power that feels ordained to rule over others, on one side, and all other nations and societies – indeed, humanity itself – on the other.”

By publishing such blatant racism, and from an avowedly anti-Semitic website, AFP clearly shows that underlying its anti-Zionist veneer is a tolerance at best, an identification with at worst, Holocaust denial, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and the demonizing of the Jewish people. AFP is a major website of the pro-Palestinian movement in Australia, reproducing many articles and news reports.

AFP also reproduce classic anti-Semitic accusations, for example: “Such are the practices of the Jewish-owned media such as Murdoch and his ilk.

And it follows that the government is no better. In fact, being a government of feckless politicians, they too are manipulated in their decisions by the local Melbourne Zionist fraternity, well organized and who have many such politicians under their control.”

Such statements serve to reinforce anti-Jewish conspiracy theories reminiscent of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Cartoons are another means of expressing anti-Jewish racism on pro- Palestinian websites. One particular cartoon appeared on at least three pro- Palestinian facebook sites, including “Social Justice Network” and two others.

This cartoon plays directly on the 2,000-year-old depiction of Jews collectively as Christ-killers, an accusation which has incited centuries of persecution and butchery against Jews and was repudiated by the Catholic Church 50 years ago.

The cartoon is rich in traditional anti-Semitic religious imagery. Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis falls squarely within the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (EUFRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism.

An egregious example of willingness to engage in actions specifically targeting Jews, rather than Israel, was the decision by two pro-Palestinian organizations, Students for Palestine and Socialist Alternative, to protest outside a synagogue in Melbourne last February.

Not only did they target a Jewish place of worship, but the protest was to be staged on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

The target was stated to be Joseph Gutnick, for his alleged support of families living in settlements in Hebron; yet Gutnick is not a member of the targeted synagogue, nor does he attend services there.

Students for Palestine and Socialist Alternative considered targeting a synagogue an acceptable anti-Israel action.

This also shows that the protest organizers do not distinguish between ordinary Australian Jews and Israel.

The publication of anti-Semitic content on pro-Palestinian websites can lead to contempt toward Jews, and incitement of racial hatred, but it also lessens the credibility of the organizations that elicit and permit racist content.

Many of these organizations claim to be only against Israel and not against Jews, and yet their websites and facebook pages tell a very different and disturbing story.

*Julie Nathan is the research officer for the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the officially elected representative organization of the Australian Jewish Community.

From Israel Law Center, May 4, 2012:

In a letter sent to Foreign Minister Bob Carr last week, Victorian Liberal Senator Michael Ronaldson cited evidence collected by Israeli civil rights organisation ShuratHaDin, which alleges that the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), based in Gaza, is a subsidiary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The PFLP has a history of hijackings and suicide bombings, and was listed as a terrorist organisation by the Australian government in 2001. The Australian government’s foreign-aid arm, AusAID, funds the UAWC through World Vision Australia.

ShuratHaDin wrote to both AusAID and World Vision earlier this year to present its claim. Both dismissed its initial claim after conducting their own investigation.

In his letter to Carr, Ronaldson said after reading ShuratHaDin’s evidence, he believed AusAID’s investigation to be inadequate. “I am unconvinced that AusAID have taken these concerns seriously,” he wrote. “I would therefore request that you make the findings of the AusAID investigation public, and direct that all funding to the UAWC be suspended pending the outcome of a proper inquiry.”

AusAID informed The AJN on Wednesday that it is currently examining more detailed evidence that was provided to it last month by ShuratHaDin. “AusAID is examining this material very carefully. “Our examination will be thorough and will be completed as quickly as possible,” an AusAID spokesperson said. “We take these claims very seriously. AusAID does not fund terrorist organisations.”

A spokesperson for World Vision Australia, however, said there “remains absolutely no evidence whatsoever” that it or AusAID had provided funding to the PFLP. Potential partner organisations and key individuals were checked against relevant government and United Nations lists, while World Vision also looked at who its partner organisations had worked with, the spokesperson said.

“The UAWC has worked with some of the world’s major multilateral organisations – all of whom are subject to the similar anti-terrorism prohibitions, and therefore [have] similar obligations to vet,” the spokesperson said. The developments come as more than 150 entertainers, politicians, and business and community leaders signed an open letter on Tuesday insisting that Prime Minister Julia Gillard keep her promise to increase Australian aid to 0.5 per cent of national income by 2015.

ShuratHaDin’s evidence claims the president and vice-president of the UAWC board of directors are senior members of the PFLP. Also according to ShuratHaDin, three other UAWC directors are members of the PFLP, while UAWC directly makes its assets available for PFLP use. ShuratHaDin also claims that senior PFLP personnel are actively and publicly involved in UAWC activity on an ongoing basis. In addition, a USAID document from May 1993 identifies the UAWC as the agricultural arm of the PFLP. According to Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, the UAWC does support the global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

The following is an UNEDITED VERSION of a letter to The Age, which was published on 28 June in highly edited form:

Ruth Pollard's report, "Gaza's children live and die on contaminated water" (June 23)misses a number of key points for understanding why Gaza's water situation has deteriorated so badly.  Firstly, when she writes that "the UN considers Israel's land and sea blockade of Gaza to be a denial of basic human rights and a contravention of international law", she ignores the fact that last year the Palmer Commission, convened by the UN Secretary-General, found the blockade to be legal under international law.

Secondly, she alsoignores Hamas responsibility for the water contamination and energy crisis in Gaza.Hamas has held exclusive power in Gaza since 2007 and has severely neglected the water situation there. This is despite Israeli willingness to cooperate in efforts to bring necessary equipment into the region.The IDF Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (CoGAT) reports that at least 27 projects to deal with water and sewage purification are currently in place in Gaza - all of them facilitated by Israel, and not a single one of them funded by Hamas.  

Finally she could have mentioned the reason for Israel's blockade -  the rockets fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip, with Hamas' support or participation. More than 100 were fired last week alone,yet somehow this did not make it into the story.Hamas' preference for weapons directed against Israel over welfare and water for Gazans is the real root of Gaza's highly unfortunate predicament

Sharyn Mittelman, Policy Analyst

Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

A letter from the Anglican Friends of Israel, 20 June 2012:

Dear Friend,

URGENT Appeal for your help and prayers

At the next Synod in July there will be a motion tabled on behalf of Exeter+ endorsing the Ecumenical Accompaniers Programme in Palestine/Israel (EAPPI).

EAPPI is a very one sided organization which, by focusing only on criticizing Israel and highlighting Palestinian Muslim grievances, seriously neglects the goal of the Arab regimes to destroy Israel. The motion is unbalanced and if passed could destroy Anglican and Jewish interfaith relations.

It is causing deep pain in the Jewish community and would undermine the great achievement of Archbishop Rowan's joint statement with the two Chief Rabbis of Israel. Is this really a suitable retirement present for our Primate who has had to contend with so many divisive and difficult issues during his tenure?

We need you to download and print out our letter of appeal and present it to your Bishop and Synod members. Please write and speak out.

This is a most serious test of the usefulness of our network.

Write, pray and lobby and please email us a copy of any replies you receive.

With blessings from us all at AFI,

Simon McIlwaine

Text of the letter of appeal:

A PLEA FROM ANGLICAN FRIENDS OF ISRAEL

We who are faithful Anglicans, Clergy and laity, Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical, urge Synod members to REJECT the current motion calling upon the Church of England to “adopt” the Ecumenical Accompaniers

Programme in Palestine and Israel. (EAPPI)

As on many issues, members of the Anglican Church hold a wide variety of views on conflict in the Holy Land - as friends of Israel, as friends of Palestine, as friends of Peace. As a church we should be extremely careful to maintain an environment within our Communion where people of different viewpoints can make a contribution towards Peace and Reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs.

Why is EAPPI's a dogmatic and extreme view?

The ideal of international observers accompanying vulnerable Israeli and Palestinian civilians to monitor and where possible ease the impact of Conflict on their lives is admirable. However, the way the EAPPI programme has been implemented and the uses to which it is put is far from admirable! Accompaniers often spend less than one day in Sderot, an Israeli town of 24,000 inhabitants which has taken the brunt of over {8,000} rocket attacks from Gaza. Entire communities in Israel's southern cities have to live within 15 seconds of a bomb shelter - that is the maximum time given of an impending missile strike. Bomb shelters exist in every school, nursery and hospital - even at bus stops. Missile and rocket attacks happen on almost a daily basis.

The decade-long bombardment by extremist groups in Gaza, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, has paralysed economic life, traumatised children and led to thousands of Israelis moving to other parts of the country. It is an obscene reflection of our commitment as Christians to bear witness and ease the suffering of civilian populations of all faiths in this conflict that EAPPI's engagement with the people of Sderot is so minimal as to amount to no more than a token gesture.

What is EAPPI's approach?

EAPPI focuses almost entirely on the "evils of Israeli occupation”. This is presented as the exclusive cause of oppression and injustice in the region. This is an entirely partial reading of the complex causes of conflict and our Church should not endorse- even indirectly - what is clearly an incomplete and one-sided analysis.

Sadly, when many Palestinian groups call for the end of the Occupation they mean the destruction of Israel:

“… We do not recognise the Israeli enemy, nor his right to be our neighbour, not to stay on the land, nor his ownership of any inch of land…..”- Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas ‘foreign minister’, from an interview with Palestinian TV, reported by Newsday.

“We want all of Palestine from the Mediterranean sea, to the Jordan river” – Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas leader and “foreign minister”, quoted in London-based Al-Hayat. (Hamas is reputed to be the largest Palestinian political party).

If the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the main or only cause of conflict, why was Israel invaded by surrounding Arab countries, threatened with elimination and its civilians the victim of endless terrorist attacks BEFORE THAT OCCUPATION OCCURRED IN 1967?

The PLO was formed in 1964 with the principal aim of destroying Israel - three years BEFORE the occupation.

Why today in this country do supporters of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign {-many of whom are EAPPI supporters} demand one Palestinian Arab state from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea.

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"

EAPPI ignores the THREAT TO ISRAEL'S existence from the Islamic Republic of Iran which is an aspiring nuclear power, and its acolytes, Hamas and Hezbollah, which operate on Israel's borders - suicide bombers, rocket bombardment on civilians, aspirations to commit genocide against Israelis and Jews everywhere are downplayed in EAPPI analysis to an unacceptable extent.

EAPPI ignores the impact of Islamic extremism on Christian communities, blaming all injustice on Israeli occupation. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a growing Christian community. Surely we should be bringing Palestinian Christians and Israel TOGETHER, not driving a wedge between them.

If Peace and Justice is solely about the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and checkpoints, why was Israel's withdrawal from Gaza followed by importation of Iranian missiles, an intensified bombardment of Israeli civilians and an injust, repressive regime in Gaza itself? If our position is that of EAPPI, that the Occupation must end now, are we really saying that the Golan Heights, strategically dominating northern Israel, should be returned immediately to the SYRIAN REGIME IN DAMASCUS, which is currently slaughtering its own citizens?

EAPPI's exclusive focus on the "evils of Israeli occupation" as the fundamental cause of conflict and injustice in the region, is at best naive. At worse it comprises a wilful part of the deliberate denigration of Israel's legitimate security concerns, the integrity of her entire Defense Forces-a people’s army- and the demonisation of Israel itself.

THE CULTURE OF INCITEMENT AGAINST JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES

We are concerned that EAPPI simply ignores the culture of hatred and incitement in the Palestinian authority, its schools and official media (such as this http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=6957 )

PROTECTING CIVIL RIGHTS

The Supreme Court of Israel stands ready to protect the civil rights of Palestinians if they are unfairly treated by Israeli actions and will order compensation and the rectification of injustice, including rerouting of the security fence. There is thus ALREADY a peaceful and effective alternative to boycotts and demonization. The work of the Israel Defense Force Humanitarian Officers should be welcomed and supported

PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The Israeli Government and a majority of Israelis accept a Palestinian State as part of a comprehensive Peace agreement with the Palestinians. Israel without the West Bank is only 9 miles wide. Israel is fully entitled to expect the establishment of a Palestinian state to be accompanied by cast iron security guarantees. The complexity of this political situation and the pressures which Israel faces is entirely ignored by EAPPI. EAPPI volunteers are required to make presentations on their return to the UK. They do so equipped with only one narrative and promote an extremely narrow point of view. We do not believe this serves well the interests of ordinary Palestinians. We believe its partiality is of deep concern to the Jewish community in the UK.

The one-sided narrative of EAPPI is undermining the confidence of the British Jewish community in inter faith dialogue. We need to address the very real concerns of the British Jewish community regarding the EAPPI programme. We must also remember that disparaging the Jewish claim to a sovereign homeland in Israel is to undermine our own Christian connection with the Land.

Many ordinary Anglicans want to play a part in creating an environment for Peace in the Middle East, but that doesn't require the Church to take sides, as EAPPI does. Instead our Church should encourage all in building bridges between Jews and Arabs, whether they are friends of the Palestinians, friends of the Israelis or friends of both. There are ample opportunities for this- wonderful progammes such as “Save a Child’s Heart”, One Voice, Rotary and the Abraham Fund. A motion supporting EAPPI is unnecessary, counter productive and deeply divisive in our Church and damaging in our relations with other faiths. Demonization of Israeli democracy as an “apartheid system” and glib talk of “stolen land” are something which, as Christians, we must reject, for these are falsehoods. In the Middle East, careless talk costs lives.

From The Drum, 37 June 2012, by Josh Frydenberg*:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4093844.html?WT.svl=theDrum

In 31 days' time we celebrate the Games of the 30th Olympiad in London.
Two weeks of intense competition and interstate rivalry is sure to provide a lifetime of memories and, in many cases, a lifetime of friendships.
But unless the International Olympic Committee has a change of heart, there is likely to be in London something significantly amiss.
Some 40 years ago, at the 20th Olympiad in Munich, West Germany, the world was shocked when 11 Israelis - six coaches and five athletes - were murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September.
Since that time the international Olympic movement has refused calls to devote one minute of silence before the start of every Olympics to remember the tragic events of 1972.
This Olympics in London is the perfect opportunity to right the wrongs of the past. Indeed, the slogan for the 2012 Olympics is 'Inspire a Generation'. Now it is time to live up to these words.
Plaques and memorials only go so far. What is now needed is a minute of silence. To deny this commemoration is to deny the reality of what happened and the urgency of ensuring it never happens again.
The IOC needs to understand that the terrorists who carried out the attacks of September 5-6, 1972 took more than the lives of talented Israeli athletes and coaches, devoted fathers and husbands.
They also took with them the innocence of the entire Olympic movement, a movement which from its origins at Athens in 1896 was known as a noble sporting competition devoted to the goal of 'citius, altius, fortius' - faster, higher, stronger.
Thereafter it became the scene for a bloody act of political violence wreaked by those with no regard for the innocence of sport and the sanctity of international competition.
It was also in Germany, at the Berlin Olympics of 1936, that an ascendant Hitler turned his back on the victorious American black athlete Jesse Owens, but the events of Munich were of a different scale and nature, with the loss of so many lives.
This is what the IOC must understand and acknowledge in the appropriate way.
The Olympic Charter itself states emphatically in its first paragraph:
The goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised in accordance with Olympism and its values.

Those values are clearly outlined as the rejection of discrimination and the preservation of human dignity.
The act of terrorism was a direct repudiation of these values and of the Olympic Charter itself, thereby making it incumbent upon the IOC to step up and do more than it has been prepared to do to date.
It must be remembered there are precedents which have seen the Olympic Movement acknowledge tragedies of the past. In 2010, at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, there was a minute of silence following the earlier death of an athlete in training, and at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, there was a special tribute to the victims of September 11.
The question therefore has to be asked of the IOC: what is it that makes commemorating the events of 1972 so different?
If indeed it is a fear of antagonising countries that are not friendly with Israel, then this is even a greater reason for the IOC to take a stand.
Sport must be above politics and divorced from political violence of any kind.
A minute's silence at the London Olympics for the 11 Israelis and one German police officer killed at Munich will send a strong message to the world: never again.
That is why the decision by the Australian Parliament to pass a motion in a bipartisan manner, Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition alike, calling on the International Olympic Committee to pay a proper tribute to the innocent lives lost at the Munich Games in 1972 is so significant.
Joining with the parliaments of the United Kingdom, Canada, Israel and the United States Congress, Australia is clearly saying to the IOC that now it is time. Time to ensure the world does not forget the innocent victims of Munich. Time to observe a minute of silence.
My heart goes out to the families of those lost, particularly to Mrs Ilana Romano and Mrs Ankie Spitzer, whose husbands, weightlifter Yossef Romano and fencing master Andre Spitzer, were killed at Munich. Together, those two women have worked hard to promote this important cause.
To them and all the families affected by the tragedy of Munich I say that we in the Australian Parliament feel your pain, and we will do all we can to promote the memory of those who so deserve their one minute of silence.

*Josh Frydenberg is the Federal Member for Kooyong. He seconded the motion moved by the Member for Bradfield calling on the IOC to observe a minute of silence at the London Olympics.

From Israel Hayom, Friday June 15, 2012, by Dore Gold:

The crisis over Syria is the third major case of mass murder in the last 20 years in which the U.N. has completely failed to halt the continuing bloodshed. The inability of the U.N. to intervene in the previous crises in Rwanda and Srebrenica (Bosnia) caused many commentators to charge that the U.N. was becoming a bankrupt organization, that was not fulfilling one of its main original purposes.

After all, the U.N. was established in 1945, when the horrors of the Holocaust were on the minds of its founders. One of its most critical early documents, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, spoke of the "barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind." It was clear that the U.N. was founded to prevent this sort of mass murder from ever recurring. In that spirit, the U.N. General Assembly also adopted the Genocide Convention at the same time.

However, in the 1990s, the U.N. proved to be completely ineffective in halting the very acts of genocide it was intended to prevent.

In 1994, the commander of the U.N. forces in Rwanda, Gen. Romeo Dallaire, sent a cable to U.N. headquarters in New York saying that he had information from an informer that the country's Hutu leaders were planning to massacre Rwanda's Tutsi population. Dallaire wrote that he planned to destroy the Hutu militias' weapons depots. The head of U.N. peacekeeping, Kofi Annan, cabled back instructions to Dallaire to refrain from interfering. In the months that followed, some 800,000 Rwandans were butchered. The U.N. Security Council debated what action should be taken but ultimately did nothing; the Rwandan regime in fact sat on the council as a legitimate diplomatic partner.

The failure of the U.N. to stop mass murder continued. After the outbreak of the Bosnian War, the U.N. Security Council created a "safe area" for Bosnian Muslims in the area of the town of Srebrenica. The U.N. commander declared to the Muslim population that had fled to Srebrenica: "You are under the protection of the United Nations." He added: "I will never abandon you." Yet, in July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army assaulted the Srebenica enclave and began systematically killing 8,000 Muslims who lived there.

When tested, the U.N. peacekeeping force did not protect the Muslims. Its Dutch battalion fled. The Dutch press reported that while the massacres were underway, the peacekeepers held a beer party in the Croatian capital of Zaghreb. The U.N. launched an internal investigation about Srebrenica. The report concluded by saying that "the tragedy of Srebenica will haunt our history forever."

Last year, when President Barack Obama looked at the offensive operations of Libyan President Moammar Qaddafi's forces near Benghazi, his advisers said that if the West did not stop them the result would be "Srebenica on steroids."

Now the U.N. has the new Srebenica it wanted to avoid. The Syrian uprising began in March 2011. While the U.N. Security Council debated over a period of months, more Syrian civilians died. A draft resolution proposed in October 2011 was vetoed by the Russians and the Chinese. At the end of May this year, the Security Council finally condemned Syria after the killing of 108 civilians in Houla. But it did not pass a resolution with any concrete measures.

Another failed U.N. initiative involved former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was appointed as a special envoy to deal with the Syrian crisis by the U.N. and the Arab League in February. A month later he announced a six-point plan that went nowhere. As long as the Annan mission persisted, the West could say that it supported his efforts and had an excuse to wash its hands from taking any measures against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by itself over the last three months.

In the meantime, so far more than 14,000 Syrians have been killed. Yet again, the U.N. is failing to fulfill one of its original purposes: preventing the mass murder of innocent civilians.

The reason why the U.N. fails time and again to halt mass murder and even genocide is because of the interests of its member states. It refuses to take a firm moral position condemning those who perpetrate massacres and then it refrains from imposing effective measures against them. In the case of the Darfur rebellion, which began in 2003, while the U.S. called the actions of the Sudanese army "genocide,” the U.N. refused to adopt the same term and adopted ineffective actions for the following eight years, while thousands died.

There are two lessons for Israel from the international response to the Syrian crisis. First, the behavior of the U.N. proves yet again that Israel must never compromise its doctrine of self-reliance when its own security is at stake by relying on the protection of international forces.

A second lesson is how Israel should relate to the constant criticism it receives from various U.N. bodies. On May 28, the Wall Street Journal called the U.N. an "accomplice" to the murder of civilians in Houla, Syria, as it was in Srebrenica, Bosnia, in 1995. This was harsh criticism but contained a kernel of truth that cannot be ignored: The U.N. raises expectations that it will offer effective protection to people facing extermination, and in the end does nothing to stop repeated cases of aggression against them, frequently with its forces standing by while innocents are killed.

If the U.N. is a paralyzed body that cannot take decisions about cases of genocide, treating aggressors and their victims equivalently, then why should Israel listen to its moral judgments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What can a U.N. with such glaring defects tell Israel about Gaza? Who exactly are its international civil servants who issue statements about Israel?

Indeed, the Syrian crisis is just the latest example of how the U.N. has lost the moral authority it had when it was founded. Israel must internalize the change in the U.N.'s status the next time a U.N. official decides to issue another politicized "condemnation" about its actions.