A self-hating Jew means ‘antisemite’. David Heilpern’s 3 July article was underpinned with lies, and hateful sentiments toward one group of Australians: the Jewish community of the Byron Shire.
90 per cent of Jewish Australians believe that the Jewish people have a right to live in peace in their homeland of 3,500 years. This is Zionism, nothing more. Many eminent Australians agree.
David thinks that claims of antisemitism in our shire are based in ‘trauma’. What would you call boycotting of Israeli businesses, people being called ‘baby killers’ in public, my own son and grandchildren being told, ‘We don’t want Jews in Mullum’, children being beaten at school, called ‘filthy Jews’ and threatened with death?
Of nine million Israeli citizens, 2.2 million are Arab/Palestinian citizens, living alongside Jewish and all other Israelis. Comprising doctors, MPs, lawyers, judges, police and more. Many serve in the IDF, with a huge increase since the October 7 Hamas massacres. Not a token number.
Israel is one third the size of Tasmania, not a religious state, but secular. Israel is surrounded by Arab Muslim religious nations 500 times larger.
Famine? The UN confirmed that Hamas is stealing food trucks and reselling food to Gazans in Hamas-run markets. A pear in Gaza costs US$10. Because of this the UN are refusing food trucks entry to Gaza.
David describes the chant ‘from the river to the sea’ correctly to mean ‘the Jewish state be dismantled’. If a call to ethnically cleanse all Jews from their homeland is not antisemitic, what is?
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
