I no longer subscribe to the Jewish Council of Australia’s Core Principles
On May 24, I sent an email reproduced below to the Jewish Council of Australia asking them to remove my name from their list of signatories.
Today I saw that my name has been removed but no effort has been made to address my critiques or even to answer my email out of courtesy.
I am thus sharing the email I wrote, not to be difficult but because I think progressive Jewish organisations need to think very clearly about their political choices today.
Dear representatives of the Jewish Council of Australia,
When the Jewish Council of Australia launched, I signed its Core Principles in good faith and my name appears on its list of supporters.
I am requesting my name be removed because the JCA has shown itself to be an organisation that whitewashes Zionism during a live-streamed genocide being enacted by Israel against the Palestinians by lending liberal Zionism a veneer of progressivism opposed to its more overtly fascist poles.
The JCA obfuscates its positions on Zionism by presenting itself as a broad coalition and making strategic alliances with people to its left who give it cover.
The JCA upholds the carceral state by allying with other liberal organisations to rubber stamp a narrative about antisemitic ‘hate crimes’ which has seen the ushering in of draconian laws with potentially dangerous effects for Indigenous and Muslim people and those who take a principled anticolonial stance.
The JCA refuses critique from its left, using the excuse of the attacks on it from Zionists and the Right.
Lastly it engages in narratives of preemptive condemnation which results in throwing those who take a principled stance on coerced condemnations under the bus. This means it cannot be trusted by those who I, as an anti-zionist Jew, must build trust with to ensure all of our survival under the repressive conditions being imposed upon principled people.
In short, I feel neither represented nor safe as a signatory of the JCA’s Core Principles and request my name is removed.
Professor Alana Lentin
24 May 2025