Why aren't Jewish concerns addressed at the Media Inquiry?

Can someone explain why have organisations and lay-leaders of our community - especially those who regularly criticise sections of the local media for anti-Israel bias and mis/disinformation - not made submissions about this to the current Independent Media Inquiry?

Wouldn't this have been an outstanding opportunity  to publicise the frequent anti-Israel slant of the usual suspects, eg, the Canberra Times, the SMH, The Age, SBS and the ABC?

We may have missed it whilst browsing the free on-line edition of the AJN, but we cannot recall any comment or criticism by it about this bungled and missed opportunity.

Where are they all? AIJAC, ECAJ, ZFA, JCCV and all the other acronyms that claim to be representing the interests of Israel and the local Jewish community? Not sure why our fearless MP, Mr Michael Danby isn't there. Maybe being a parliamentarian has something to do with it. But where are all the others? Has there been a massive slip-up? Or what?

(At the same time, members of the Orthodox community and especially the Chabad leadership should have considered raising their concerns on the history of biased and unjust articles published in the Jewish News when reporting on the observant community.)

The ORA and ECAJ submission

Thanks to Galus Australis we can now read the submission of ORA and ECAJ to the Food Labelling Review (here).

Kosherman comments:
Having had a quick read of the submission it seems to confirm that ORA wants to be the "posek acharon" in deciding who can and who cannot offer Kosher supervision in Australia.

Seeing that quite a few of ORA's members are themselves employed in the Kashrut supervision industry (eg, Rabbi Y Sprung, Rabbis Moshe and Mordechai Gutnick, Rabbi Yanky Barber), aren't we expecting too much from them to vote for approval of new competitors?

As far as I know, the only organization mentioned in the submission whose rabbis are not members of ORA are from Adass. (Anyone know if Rabbi M Rabi and Rabbi S Silberberg are ORA members? And if not, how can they assure themselves of getting fair treatment?)

I had asked "Did ORA in their submission demand that fraudulent terms like “Kosher-style” and “Kosher-friendly” be proscribed? If not, why not?"

Reading the submission I found nothing about this. One may have thought that eliminating the use of such blatant deceitful terms would have been of major concern for our rabbis (and indeed for the lawyers on the ECAJ). Looks like we were wrong.

I am still puzzled on why there was there no public consultation with the main stakeholders, ie, Kosher consumers? Another concern expressed by commentators on GA is why were details only released to the public after the closing date for submissions?

Let’s hope that ORA and ECAJ will try and clear things up for us.

The rabbis, ECAJ and the churches - what's going on?

What's with this sudden great love between our rabbis and and the church? Have these rabbanim already solved all the problems in their own backyards that they have so much spare time to court Christian ministers?

We agree with visiting Rabbi Schochet's views on this matter - as published in the AJN.

ECAJ and the JCCV - busy with saints and Muslims

Nice to see that our major representative organisations have resolved all important Jewish problems in this country and thus can  concentrate on Muslim issues and on sending "mazel tovs" to the Catholics upon the simcha of their new saint.

Some may suggest that John Searle could've better spent his time ensuring that the pedestrian traffic lights in Caulfield/East St Kilda were switched to Shabbat mode during the first and last days of Pesach. After all, the Muslims weren’t going to fix this for us and short of another miracle by Saint Mary - neither were the catholics.