Executive Council of Australian Jewry

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, or ECAJ,^[1] is the officially elected representative organisation of the Australian Jewish Community. The ECAJ is the Australian affiliate of the World Jewish Congress, the worldwide umbrella organization of Jewish communities. It is also affiliated with the Commonwealth Jewish Council, the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.^[2]

Overview

The ECAJ Policy Platform^[3] covers a broad range of issues, including human rights, indigenous issues, multiculturalism, interfaith relations, refugees, education, Holocaust remembrance, racial vilification, antisemitism, religious issues, and Israel and the international community. The ECAJ website includes a pictorial history of Australia and Israel^[4] including government-to-government, commercial, cultural and people-to-people relationships between the two countries from the earliest years onward.

Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions

The ECAJ has been involved in countering and exposing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. In October 2011, the ECAJ produced an article^[5] which provides a short historical overview of BDS, the reasons for its failure and a summary of what is left of the BDS campaign in Australia.

Response to The Promise

In response to the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) screening the TV series The Promise in November and December 2011, the ECAJ submitted a 31-page complaint^[6] on to the SBS Ombudsman on 5 January 2012. This complaint provided a detailed explanation and many examples of the negative stereotyping of the Jewish people throughout the series, in particular through the portrayals of the Jewish characters.

On 1 February 2012, the Chairman of the New South Wales Community Relations Commission, Stepan Kerkyasharian, supported the ECAJ complaint and submitted his own letter^[7] to SBS expressing his concerns regarding what he considered to be anti-Jewish stereotyping in The Promise. His letter advised SBS that The Promise is guilty of "the portrayal of an entire nation in a negative light" and noted "concern that the series negatively portrays the WHOLE of the Jewish People. Such a portrayal cannot be justified in ANY context."

Australian Senator Glenn Sterle, a former trade unionist, was among the first people to lodge a formal complaint with SBS about what he believed to be racist stereotyping in The Promise.^[8]

On 14 February 2012, the Managing Director of SBS, Michael Ebeid, appeared before an Estimates Committee of the Australian Senate and was closely questioned about the relevant commercial arrangements and decision-making processes leading to the screening of the series by SBS. One of the Senators who questioned him, Senator Helen Kroger of Victoria, subsequently issued a media release.^[9]

References