Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

On a different scale, but in some ways belonging to the same brand of journalism, was a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald: "A sex guide from Malaysia's Obedient Wives".The article delivered, as one expert on Malaysia put it, "some richly deserved ridicule" - reporting the "Obedient Wives Club's sex

Alvin Rosenfeld is a brave man, and his new work is courageous. The book is called The End of the Holocaust, and it is not reluctant to take on the unexamined pieties that have grown up around the slaughter, and the sentimentalisation that threatens to smother it in meretricious uplift.

On Sunday, October 23, Tunisia held the first democratic elections resulting from this year's regional political upheaval, choosing a new Constituent Assembly with a vaguely defined mandate to govern the country and write a new constitution within a year. With results still coming in at press time,

Will US President Barack Obama soon be wearing a T-shirt saying:" I SPENT $3 BILLION OF YOUR TAX MONEY IN LIBYA AND ALL I GOT WAS A LOUSY ISLAMIST REGIME!"? The answer isn't clear yet, though there are worrisome portents. The main evidence of the moment is the "liberation" speech given by US-backed

Israel's new "Iron Dome" anti-rocket active defence system made its operational debut in southern Israel in two rounds of escalation in the fighting along the Gaza strip (April and August 2011). The development of active defence systems in Israel that started with the "Arrow" missile defence system

Four hundred and seventy seven Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel in the deal to free IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, held captive by Hamas since 2006, with another 550 to be released in November. The prisoners include some of the most notorious terrorists perpetrators against Israel including

Sukkot, the feast of Tabernacles, is the only Jewish holiday on which the Bible expressly commands the Jews to be happy. In Israel this Autumn, it turned out not only happy, but euphoric, as abducted Sergeant Gilad Shalit returned home after more than five years of unvisited and unlocated captivity

Concerns about growing religious intolerance in Indonesia have been heightened in recent weeks in the wake of violent attacks and restrictive local laws, but legislative moves appear unlikely to address the core problem. Some recent scene-setting events demonstrate the scope of the problem.More tha

The Gilad Shalit deal led to the release of many heinous murderers, and one cannot but feel enormous sympathy for the distress this caused the families of those they murdered. But if there is one individual who symbolises the incomprehensibly ugly belief system, the determination to murder at all c

Finally Gilad Shalit, who became known in Israel as ‘everyone's son', has returned home. His liberation led to what can only be called a sense of national euphoria across the Jewish state. The costs to gain his release after five years of captivity were, objectively, enormous. Among the 1,027