ECAJ and The Hypocrisy of Selective Outrage

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry demonstrates its capacity for selective outrage, preferring to ignore Jewish victims of hate crimes when they are homosexual. They find it easier to concentrate on terrorist attacks, tsunamis, and even the occasional Christian saint.

A bomb blows up near a bus stop in Jerusalem and one woman is killed and 39 injured.  Peter Wertheim, the Executive Director of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) wrote a letter of condolence to Yuval Rotem, the Ambassador of Israeli to Australia, to convey his deepest sympathy.

In the week prior to the bombing I wrote on how the ECAJ is prolific in writing such letters when Israelis are victims of hate, or in other catastrophic situations such as the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

The ECAJ also likes to put pen to paper for more vacuous situations, such as the letter written to George Pell on the canonisation of a Catholic woman who has been purported to have performed miracles subsequent to her death.

All it seems to take for the ECAJ to write a letter of outrage, condolence or congratulation is a bomb at a Jerusalem bus stop, a devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, or the canonisation of a Christian.

Yet when Israeli youth are murdered in cold blood in Tel Aviv by an unknown gunman with unknown motives, the ECAJ turns its back on the tragedy and stays silent.  I put it that they stayed silent because this was a crime in a gay and lesbian community centre and that the ECAJ are too afraid and gutless to issue a statement of condolence for the death of gay and lesbian youth.

This silence is deeply offensive and it continues to leave a black mark on this organisation that I’m ashamed to say calls itself Australian.  It reeks of hypocrisy and double-standards and exposes the organisation for its moral bankruptcy and spinelessness.

The ECAJ still has no platform position on the welfare of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) Jews in Australia, despite it calling itself a council representing Australian Jewry.  It is clear to me the priorities of this organisation, an organisation with a penchant for selective outrage, are not with the welfare of any Jew, Australian or otherwise, who is GLBT, and if that’s the case, then that clearly makes the ECAJ a hateful and intolerant Jewish organisation.