Danby slams The NSW Greens for declining Jewish invitations

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Following an articled penned by  Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian, Labor MP Michael Danby has accused the NSW Greens of bigotry in declining invitations from The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies and AUJS.

Michael Danby

Danby told Parliament: ” The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, being good Australian citizens, have outreach Shabbat dinners. Shabbat is the Friday night meal that Jewish families traditionally have. As outreach, the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies has had a wonderful program of Shabbat dinners for Liberal Party leaders, the LGBTI community, the Young Labor union, the Chinese community and the Indian community. The only group who will not accept invitations is the Greens political party. It’s really disgraceful.

The purpose of these dinners is simple yet important: ..engaging as Australians…and using the opportunity to explore our communities, beliefs and shared values. CEO Vic Alhadeff explained these Shabbat dinners were not to command agreement or to proselytise; just to speak to one another as respectful human beings. Many Jewish Australians might be drawn to genuinely green policies about the environment, but the extremist attitude of the Greens precludes engagement. It’s not tolerance; it’s prejudice.

The bigotry of the Greens has no place in Australia. The Young Greens refused to attend a conference of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students attended by all other young political parties. To boycott under the cloak of the Palestinian problem reduces all Jewish students to one political issue 12,000 kilometres away. How unjust is that? Ms Albrechtsen wrote:

‘If the Liberal Party of Australia refused point blank to engage with credible Muslim groups, we would banish its members as bigots.

If the ALP continually rebuffed efforts to engage with Christian groups, we would out its members as bigots.’

This attitude is simply unacceptable. I call on the Greens political leadership to repudiate the NSW Greens.”

In her article, Janet Albrechtsen pointed out “there are a few good people in the party. Last year, NSW Greens upper house MPs Cate Faehrmann and Justin Field said the party had fallen victim­ to “extreme­-Left ideology”. NSW Greens lower house MP Jamie Parker engages with the Jewish community too.

But even the good people have allowed the NSW party to fall into a habit of bigotry. History warns us that silence emboldens bigots and that bigotry is a necessary pre­cursor to the sort of political fascism responsible for monstrous crimes against humanity.”