News Brief

An Australian Jewish community leader blasted a new Islamist magazine that describes Israel as “illegal and illegitimate.” New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff said The Idialogue: An Islamic Ideological Viewpoint was “an outrage in terms of the vicious language it uses to denigrate Israel.” The first edition of The Idialogue, a 42-page glossy quarterly publication sold on Sydney university campuses last week, has a map of Israel on the front cover with the words “Muslim land – not for sale” printed across it. Inside it reprints a 1935 fatwa warning against the selling of land to Zionists in Palestine as well as an article on the Palestinian conflict, saying “the holiest of Islamic lands is in the hands of the unholiest – the illegal and illegitimate state of Israel.” Members of the hard-line Islamist organization Hizb-ut Tahrir – which is banned in much of Europe but not in Britain or Australia – write and produce the magazine, according to a report in The Australian newspaper. But officials refused to confirm the magazine was published by the Islamic organization, which was linked to the failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow last year.

“There is one positive aspect to this publication, however: it exposes the Islamist agenda unambiguously. It defines Israel as a ‘dagger in the heart of the Muslim body,’ and it insists that ‘a state of war’ must be maintained until the entire country has been reclaimed for Islam,” Alhadeff told JTA: “We ignore at our peril the threats against Israel and democracies such as ours. This is the tenor of this heinous magazine, and this is the true nature of the campaign which western society is up against.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir has twice been investigated by Australia’s counter-terror organization, and is believed to have cells in about 45 countries.

Israel and Britain opened a strategic dialogue.

Aaron Abramovitch, director-general of the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, is this week hosting a delegation led by Peter Ricketts, permanent undersecretary of the British Foreign Affairs and Commonwealth Office, for the first round of annual talks.

Israeli officials said the discussions focused on “regional and international issues of concern to both countries.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has championed building bilateral strategic ties with nations sympathetic to the Jewish state’s concerns regarding Palestinian Hamas and Iran’s nuclear program.