If I wanted to increase antisemitism, I imagine I’d do a lot of really evil stuff under a Star of David flag while adamantly insisting that my actions are inseparable from the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. I’d kill children by the thousands and commit genocidal atrocities. To really help antisemitism spread I’d do Continue reading »
Religion and Faith
In December, an impressive young Papua New Guinean named Jason Siwat, the director of the refugee program for the Catholic Bishops Conference of PNG and the Solomon Islands, travelled to Canberra bearing two important documents. The first was a letter from the bishops to Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil asking the government to urgently bring Continue reading »
As the Lunar New Year approaches, many Chinese families clean the front door of their home and hang poetry around it. This is a rich and age-old Chinese tradition, both cultural and religious. Chinese couplets (duilian 对联) are a pair of calligraphed sentences written in traditional Chinese that hang on the two sides of a Continue reading »
It has never been more dangerous to be a Christian than today. According to the newly released 2024 World Watch List – an authoritative survey by Open Doors, an organisation that supports persecuted Christians – 365 million Christians, or one in seven, are at high or extreme risk of persecution every day because of their Continue reading »
Consider an ant nest in far flung outer Siberia. The significance of that nest to people walking the streets of Sydney is virtually nil. Multiply that level of insignificance a trillion times, as in almost infinitesimally insignificant. That, we know today, is a true indicator of planet Earth’s place in the universe. If the ant Continue reading »
Michael Gawenda, former editor of The Age and Walkley award-winning journalist, published his memoir ‘My Life as a Jew’ last year. Actually, it’s only part memoir, since much of it is reserved for polemics against Jews and Gentiles who are critical of Israel. The rest traces his life journey from an anti-Zionist Bundist youth to Continue reading »
Amplified by the terrible sufferings in many places, and by the divided voices, especially as regards Israel/Gaza, we have some learnings about peacebuilding that it might be timely to reflect on. ‘Cease-fire,’ of course, is just a less vivid way of saying ‘we will stop killing people we don’t know.’ We continue to pray that Continue reading »
From the first days in their Jewish day schools and youth organisations, young Jews are drilled with the lie that Palestine was ‘a land without people for a people without a land’. From its inception, the Zionist movement has sought to suppress Palestinian history and narratives. Whenever there are exhibitions or events or publications featuring Continue reading »
A Meditation for Those who are Grieving Loss during this Christmas Season, 2023 To write about grief at any time is difficult. To write about grief, as we migrate into the Christmas season, even more so. The character of Christmas as a season of enchantment, makes grief an ill fit. The character of Christmas as Continue reading »
Well, not so if they are Palestinian children that Israelis keep killing time and time again. It is part of what Israelis calls ‘mowing the grass’. I wrote the following nine years ago. At last counting there were 1,230 Palestinians killed in Gaza as a result of 3,000 or more air and artillery strikes. 56 Continue reading »