Anti-Semitism has re-emerged and is being normalised

When authors of hate speech are invited to our writers festivals, it’s time to worry and to lament.

Anti-Semitism has come out. Emerging from years of subtle innuendo, out from its various hiding places and guises, it is again showing its ugly historical face. It is again being normalised and made acceptable.

When Volodymyr Zelensky is described as a “depraved Zionist trying to ignite world war III”, it is Zelensky the Jew who is being demonised. He has never asserted his Zionism. When Zionists are accused of harvesting the organs of Palestinians and lusting after their blood, there is no mistaking the reference to age-old blood libels against the Jewish people.

I call on Louise Adler, who invited the authors of these atrocities to Adelaide Writers Week, to disinvite them. And I call on her to resign.

My book publishing companies are represented by 15 authors at this festival and I do not call on them to boycott the event – it’s their festival, not Adler’s. I hope they are all there, and I encourage my publishing staff to attend, to continue their important work, and not have it stolen from them, from the writers, nor from the reading public.

Morry Schwartz, publisher, Melbourne

Subs and sovereignty

You have to love the way Greg Sheridan cuts to the chase and clearly states the “one nation that has actively tried to compromise Australian sovereignty in the past decade is China” (“Keating turning into PM’s worst enemy”, 21/2). It is sad that someone of Paul Keating’s stature is unable or unwilling to accept this fact.

What Keating does not appreciate is that the development of a nuclear submarine fleet, via the AUKUS agreement, enhances our sovereignty. What is not publicly discussed in polite diplomatic circles, but I hope and am sure is at the forefront of our military planning, is that Australian nuclear-powered, missile-armed submarines on patrol in the North Pacific give us the full sovereign capability in these circumstances to retaliate and take the fight back to the heart of the CCP.

Mitch McDonald, Abbotsford, NSW

Families hurting

The kids are not OK. The article “Doctor scrutiny on gender clinic reveals legal, safety fears” (18-19/2) reiterates the concerns many parents have been raising with Australian health ministers for years now.

I know this because I am a member of a few support groups that have been formed by parents like me, parents who did not immediately believe irreversible hormones and surgeries were appropriate for distressed teenagers and young adults.

Parents raising concerns with health ministers and medical associations have been treated appallingly. Families have been irrevocably harmed, as medical practitioners assure children, teenagers and young adult children their distress will be alleviated by irreversible interventions – a medical pathway so many parents consider a shocking breach of medical ethics. Parents have been framed as bigoted and hateful for not accepting their child’s “new identity”. Children have been removed from their families by the state and/or have been given support from government-funded organisations so they can get away from their “abusive” parents.

The sudden, unexplained increase in teenage girls (and to a lesser degree boys) presenting with distress about their bodies should cause every doctor to ask, “What is really going on here?” Medical scandals can and have happened in plain sight, and sadly another one is unfolding before our eyes.

Judith Hunter, The Junction, NSW

Where is tough love?

On the front page of The Australian it is reported that Queensland is under siege from teenage criminals and is to introduce Austral­ia’s most lenient drug laws (“Softly, softly on hard drugs”, 21/2).

Then on page six it is reported that Facebook has banned Alice Springs community action page Action for Alice 2020.

This action group has been instrumental in highlighting the lawlessness of Central Australia’s youth, who have been drowning in drugs and alcohol abuse, but now its voice is being silenced.

It is as though those in authority with the power to change the downward spiral of our young people have put their fingers in their ears and are trying desperately to ignore the Aussie community’s desperate cries for help for our youth.

Australia’s new progressive left is taking control of our institutions and appears to be entering a new dark age of denialism, replacing conservative values of law and order with a misplaced notion of kid glove liberalism that is clearly not working.

There is still time for any remaining conservative authorities imbued with the old values of self-discipline and tough love to make a comeback, but they are leaving their run dangerously late.

John Bell, Heidelberg Heights, Vic