The Australian Jewish News has removed an article which decried the treatment of the executive officer of the Jewish Council of Australia, Sarah Schwartz, by members of the Jewish community.

Regular AJN contributor and lawyer Nomi Kaltmann had a piece commissioned by the newspaper’s editor-in-chief , Gareth Narunsky, which said that watching Schwartz’s testimony at the royal commission was “extremely upsetting” despite their obvious political differences.

“I suspect we would disagree about almost everything when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Kaltmann wrote. “But to me, that isn’t really the point.”

In a piece headlined “Every Jew, regardless of politics, remains part of our people”, she wrote if you “call a fellow Jew a kapo or compare them to a rat, you have lost the moral high ground”.

“No matter how strongly you disagree with someone’s politics, using language like this means that you have become part of the problem,” said the article published online at the AJN on Friday 3 July.

On Monday the article was taken down without explanation, but the URL headline is still visible. Kaltmann also published it on her own website.

Kaltmann told Weekly Beast the way Schwartz has been spoken to is abhorrent: “I don’t think what I wrote for the Australian Jewish News was controversial or edgy. I think it was a much-needed message for people to remember to speak to everyone with respect. I’m sad it was pulled. I think this reflects a broader issue society is facing on the right and left about a lack of civil discourse between people who disagree with each other.”

Schwartz said her critics had used the German word Judenrat, meaning “Jewish council” and referring to the Jewish administrative bodies set up in Nazi-occupied Europe, but also said she had been depicted as a rat. Kapo is an insulting word for Jews who allegedly collaborated with the Nazis within concentration camps.

Rival community newspaper the Jewish Independent reported that Narunsky “was told to remove the........

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