Published: 17 March 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
EVE ALTMAN and BEN WYATT argue the Australian Jewish community should not be welcoming an Israeli politician associated with the controversial judicial overhaul.
Ayelet Shaked, a former minister of justice and minister of interior, is scheduled to speak at the United Israel Appeal’s upcoming Women’s Division events, named "Celebrating Powerful Women".
Shaked’s time in Israeli politics may mark her as a powerful woman, but not one that our community should be celebrating.
Throughout her career she has taken a hardline stance against refugees and asylum seekers, promoted “creeping annexation” of settlements in the West Bank, and clearly laid the foundations for the judicial overhaul, which has prompted Israel’s largest ever protests.
Australian Jewish leaders have been disappointingly slow to recognise the dangers to Israel of the current civil crisis.
Now that the Zionist Federation of Australia and Executive Council of Australian Jewry have finally done so, supporting the woman who began the process is unacceptable.
In this political moment it is tone-deaf for UIA to feature Shaked, without whom the government would not have the foundations to implement the judicial reforms.
Shaked recently explained that one of the goals of her diaspora tour is to shore up support for the government and its anti-democratic agenda.
