ECAJ appalled by criticism of Michael Kirby
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has strongly defended former High Court judge Michael Kirby against criticisms made by the head of another Jewish organisation, the Anti-Defamation Commission, alleging that Michael Kirby had made “inappropriate analogies” between the situation of LGBTIQ people in contemporary Australia and Jews in Nazi Germany.
Michael Kirby Photo: Wikipedia
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the ADC, told J-Wire he broke the story to The Australian.
But the executive director of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry Peter Wertheim has risen to the defence of Michael Kirby.
He said in a statement: “Justice Kirby was not making factual analogies between these two situations at all”, said Peter Wertheim, the ECAJ’s Executive Director. “He was attempting to draw, in a measured and qualified way, moral lessons from the terrible events of the Holocaust and the Nazi era, not to liken other events to them”.
Peter Wertheim – ECAJ
“The moral lesson that Justice Kirby was drawing is that minority communities should not cooperate in any way with the imposition upon them by governments of discriminatory laws and other measures”, Wertheim said. “Justice Kirby has also said that the fundamental freedoms and rights of human beings should never be made subject to winning a popularity contest. These are perfectly reasonable propositions, which do not in any way involve likening any of the conditions that prevailed in Nazi Germany to conditions in contemporary Australia. We were appalled by the public attack on Michael Kirby, whose life’s work has exemplified the kind of civic courage which is the nemesis of dictatorships everywhere, and which was so conspicuously lacking in Europe in the 1930s”.
Dvir Abramovich – ADC
The ECAJ’s policy platform, as presented on its website, includes deploring “the inappropriate use of analogies to the Nazi genocide and Nazi tyranny in Australian public debate”.
“No organisation has been more forceful than the ECAJ in decrying attempts to liken the events of the Nazi era with events in Australia, but that is not what Michael Kirby was doing”, Wertheim said. “The Holocaust was uniquely evil in many ways, but the lessons to be learned from it are universal.”
Justice Kirby’s linkeage of homosexuals currently denied nothing more than a marriage certificate and Jews in Nazi Germany denied their basic humanity is odious in the extreme. You would imagine a judge would have more sensitivity. And the ECAJ’s condoning of such an outrageous linkeage is, to me, incomprehensible
The ADC has passed its use-by date.
A few decades ago it looked at all defamation issues and had former PM’s Hawke and Fraser as patrons but increasingly the ADC has turned into a mouth piece for the Zionist right.
Dvir Abramovich was perfectly correct in pointing out that Michael Kirby’s comparison of Australia’s treatment of homosexual people with the treatment of Jews by the Nazis was entirely inappropriate, even if they were qualified.
Wrong again Wertheim is trying to deflect justifiable criticism of Kirby. Kirby is being hysterical to equate the treatment of homosexuals to the treatment of Jews; even in concentration camps, homosexuals were treated much better. Kirby an Wertheim should know that. And if they don’t, they should refrain from commenting.
As a ghetto graduate, I find the appropriation of Jewish suffering for every minor hurt to the delicate egos of self-identifying victim groups – homosexuals included – to be grossly offensive. What next? An insecticide manufacturer promising that his product will inflict ah holocaust on cockroaches?
There have been other massacres, and according to the Genocide Convention’s definition, even some genocides. But for several reasons, the Shoah was unique and its use by other groups insults our martyrs and trivializes the Jewish experience.
Gays were also thrown into the gas chambers by the Nazis, don’t you know Dvir
Spot on and besides the 6 million Jews murdered 8 million other Europeans (eg) gypsies, socialists, Slavs, mentally ill, French North African troops captured in France in 1940 etc were also murdered.