In Senate Estimates They Can't Hear You Scream

The questioning of SBS's managing director Michael Ebeid on February 14 by elements of the Senate Environment & Communications Legislation Committee over the broadcaster's decision to screen The Promise is revealing of the Israel lobby's ability to deploy its federal parliamentary assets (in this instance, Senators Ryan, Kroger and Fifield) to intimidate SBS or ABC personnel for any expression of opinion or perspective that deviates from the party line of unconditional and uncritical support for the state Israel.

Here are the relevant extracts from the proceedings with accompanying commentary:

Chairperson, Labor senator Doug Cameron:

"As you are probably aware [Mr Ebeid], there has been a lot of controversy around the drama The Promise. Obviously there is a fair bit of interest here but I do not want to have the whole of estimates dealing with The Promise, so can you just give the committee your view on the controversy arising over that drama?"

The very fact that Senator Cameron, one of the rare few in federal parliament capable of independent, critical thought on the issue of Palestine/Israel, feels compelled to say that he doesn't want the whole of estimates dealing with The Promise is an important indication that, as far as the lobby's parliamentary assets are concerned, the protection from criticism of Israel's image takes precedence over any other issue, a quite incredible state of affairs, and one that passes wholly unremarked by the ms media.

Equally noteworthy is the opening sentence of Ebeid's reply, in which he reveals that, whenever SBS dares to run an item on the issue of Palestine/Israel, a ruckus is sure to follow:

"We are certainly aware that any program that we have, whether a documentary or a drama, as this was, that concerns Israel and Palestine certainly has the potential to cause a lot of controversy, as this program did."

In the case of The Promise, a ruckus sufficient, it seems, to compel the broadcaster into taking the following, quite unecessary, evasive action:

"As anticipated, the program did cause some controversy here in Australia, as it did in the UK. In a response to that controversy, after the first episode we had several discussions with some of the Jewish community affairs groups in both Sydney and Melbourne. In response to that, we tried to make sure that all of our audience members were well aware that it was a drama and so we placed a statement at the beginning of the following 3 episodes... to remind audiences that this was a work of fiction and a drama."

To Cameron's great credit, no doubt aware that Ryan, Kroger and Fifield were straining on the leash for a go at Ebeid, he injected the following welcome note of common sense and proportion into the dismal proceedings:

"I enjoyed the program. I thank SBS for sending copies of the program. Because of parliamentary committments I had not seen it. I have now managed to see it. I knew there was going to be a controversy. I enjoyed it. It has had some critical acclaim, hasn't it?"

Cameron's sweetness and light, however, gave way to Liberal senator Scott Ryan's (rambammed 2009 & 2010) assertion that the film "negatively stereotyped" Jews and Israelis:

"[S]ome of the biggest slanders in history have been works of fiction. The overwhelming majority of depictions of Jewish people in this... were of Jewish children throwing rocks at Arab children and soldiers standing by and doing nothing... You have scenes of Jewish women settlers in Hebron... calling Arab women 'whores'... In the historical part you have the clearing of Arab civilians, portraying Jews as the aggressors... I put it to you that [those scenes] represent a negative portrayal of Jewish Israelis."

Note how, in typical Zionist fashion, Ryan simply can't bring himself to refer to Palestinians as Palestinians, and makes no attempt to distinguish between Jews and Israelis. He also seems to be suggesting here that rock-throwing settler children and their foul-mouthed mothers are entirely fictional. Not so. They are, unfortunately, as real as the senator's appalling ignorance of what is going on in Hebron. (See my posts Two Uneasy Pieces (29/3/11) and The Muslim Brotherhood are Just Pussies! (15/11/11) Furthermore, in relation to the events of 1948, Ryan is ludicrously suggesting that by accurately dramatising some of the incidents of Zionist ethnic cleansing that took place at that time, such as the Deir Yassin massacre and the driving out of the Palestinian population of Haifa, the film is negatively portraying the Israelis who perpetrated those crimes. Would he, I wonder, complain with regard to any other dramatisations of war crimes that they unfairly show the perpetrators in a negative light? The mind boggles.

Ryan continued:

"The letter from SBS to Mr Wertheim does concede that people are more likely to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than the Israeli cause at the end. If the overwhelming majority of the portrayals of events is of instances like that, which are the subject of news reports and other complaints to your news service and other news services at intermittent times, if that is not reinforcing a negative stereotype, what is?"

The possibility that Israeli behaviour has for decades now been generating and reinforcing its own negative stereotypes, would obviously be lost on Senator Ryan.

Ryan's nonsense was followed by Liberal senator Helen Kroger (rambammed 2007), who wanted to know - seriously - why SBS doesn't run programs by the Israel lobby before broadcasting them:

"You can see why there is the number of people who wish to ask questions on the level of concern about this production. I will follow up with just a couple more comments, then. Firstly, when you are assessing the quality of content and quality of script that you were referring to and it is a subject based on a particular take on history, do you engage historical experts to give you input into assessing that quality?"

Ebeid: "Certainly not for a drama, but for a documentary we might consult some. I would say, on average, probably not."

"Given the controversial nature of the content of this, did you consider consulting any of the community group stakeholders and getting their feedback on it before it went to air?"

Ebeid: No. We would not normally do that.

Finally, Senator Mitch Fifield (rambammed 2010) revealed the extent of his mastery of the film and the issue it dramatised by suggesting that it was really all about religion!:

"Section 1.6 [of the SBS Code of Practice] says that SBS will not support any particular religion over any other... As this is a drama, I guess it could be construed that it was a dramatic depiction of one religion denigrating another."

Although the committee eventually moved on to lesser matters, the balm of chairperson Doug Cameron's parting words to Ebeid - "I hope tonight has helped the DVD sales for The Promise" - may well have been responsible for restoring the poor man's sanity following the hearing.

PS: Why not help fulfill Cameron's hope by buying a few copies of The Promise and distributing them among your friends. You can pick them up at any JB HiFi or Dymocks outlet.

Helen of Zion

One of the most bizarre phenomena in Australian political life is the periodic emergence of certain Australian politicians as unabashed public advocates for the state of Israel. Yet, strangely, it remains largely ignored as a matter for comment or investigation by the ms media - partly, I imagine, because so many of its representatives indulge in the same practice. What other foreign policy issue, it must be asked, elicits this degree of advocacy from so many of our elected representatives, both state and federal?

The latest to emerge in this capacity is Victorian Liberal senator Helen Kroger. Only the other day, she's lashing SBS's managing director at a Senate estimates hearing for daring to screen The Promise (See my previous post). Next thing you know she's attacking the film (and SBS) online in an opinion piece at The Punch. One wonders where she's going to pop up next.

Now I may be wrong but I seriously doubt that Kroger has a real and abiding interest in Israel per se. So who or what has activated her? Hint: Kroger went on an Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council-sponsored junket to Israel in 2007.

Could her Punch piece, SBS shouldn't be allowed to re-write history (17/2/12), to which I now turn, be the long-ripened fruit of that journey? If so, you'll need your smelling salts. The bloody thing's gone off!:

Although history is just sooo frightfully difficult to call these days, Kroger informs us, there's still, she insists, "a difference between bona fide perspective and malevolent falsehoods."

As examples of the latter she cites the Passover Blood Libel, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and - surprise, surprise - (though not quite as "sinister" as these two, she adds) The Promise!

The sheer outrageousness of the association aside, the fact of the matter here is that for Israel lobbyists The Promise, being in large part a realistic dramatisation of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe), is far and away the greater concern, undermining as it does one of Israel's key foundational myths: that Israel, declared in May 1948, was the outcome of a genuine independence struggle against the British and the miraculous survivor of a David and Goliath struggle against the Arabs.

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Israel, though atypical of the breed, is really just another colonial implant.

The plain facts are that without British patronage, collusion and cold steel, the European colonial-settler movement known as Zionism would never have been able to gain a foothold in Palestine, subject it to wave after wave of Jewish immigration (against the wishes of its indigenous Arab population), buy up much of its best land from absentee landlords (evicting Arab peasants in the process), build an armed state-within-a-state, eventually take up arms against its former imperial patron (who had finally twigged to the cock-up it'd created), and go on to ethnically cleanse Palestine's majority Arab population, steal their homes and lands, and prevent their return.

It is the final stage of the Zionist takeover in Palestine, what Churchill called the "hell-disaster,"* that The Promise so graphically lifts the lid on. And this is what Zionist propagandists, who have lied about and misrepresented the events of 1947-1949 for over 60 years now, most fear. Hence their assault on Kosminsky's film, and the conscription of one of their useful parliamentary fools to wage a campaign, both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary, against it.

Here are Kroger's key propaganda points, followed by my commentary:

1) "Many Arabs left their homes before Israel's Declaration of Independence and subsequent invasion by her Arab neighbours."

Oh! Just like that, eh? Just up and left, for no apparent reason. No fuss whatever. Enough said. And this is a "bona fide perspective"?

2) "Erin does not... encounter a single Palestinian militant, despite the prominence of groups including Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas in the Territories."

Maybe, just maybe, Helen, members of these groups aren't prancing around with the words 'Fatah', 'Islamic Jihad' and 'Hamas' in neon lights on their foreheads because they know how trigger happy Israeli troops are.

3) "Nor does Len encounter the anti-Jewish Islamic extremism inspired by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem."

And maybe, Helen, that's because Palestinian opposition to the Zionist takeover of their homeland in 1948 had nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with resisting the loss of their patrimony. Here, for example, is part of a 1921 Memorandum from a joint Muslim-Christian delegation to a visiting Churchill:

"Had Zionists come to Palestine simply as visitors, or had matters remained as before the war, there would be no question of Jew or non-Jew. It is the idea of transforming Palestine into a home for the Jews that Arabs resent and fight against. The fact that a Jew is a Jew has never prejudiced the Arabs against him. Before the war Jews enjoyed all the privileges and rights of citizenship. The question is not a religious one. For we see that Christians and Moslems alike, whose religions are not similar, unite in their hatred of Zionism..." (Palestine Papers 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict, Doreen Ingrams, 1972/2009, p 118)

4) "No attention is given to the mainstream Jewish paramilitary Haganah (later the Israel Defence Force), who like the British engaged in counterinsurgency against the minority Irgun."

Pull the other Helen! But don't believe me. Read this:

"On the day [Operation Agatha (29/6/46), involving the search of Jewish settlements,] was launched Chaim Weizmann, playing his role of injured innocence to perfection, and with chutzpah, told Sir Alan Cunningham that the British reaction to Jewish violence was a battle against world Jewry. Not all Jews would have agreed. In any case, the following day Ben-Gurion called a meeting of X Command, the existence of which was well known to Weizmann. Palmach, the offensive wing of Haganah, had prepared a plan to destroy the building in which government offices were housed in the south-west wing of the King David Hotel, Jerusalem. At the meeting were representatives of Palmach, Haganah, Irgun and Stern. It was decided the operation should be undertaken by Irgun. X Command issued written instructions. On 1 June, Menachem Begin, the Irgun terrorist leader, began planning the King David Hotel outrage." (A Captain's Mandate: Palestine 1946-1948, Philip Bruton, 1996, p 36)

And this:

"On the margins of the main Jewish military power operated two more extreme groups: the Irgun... and the Stern Gang. The Irgun had split from the Hagana in 1931 and in the 1940s was led by Menachem Begin. it had developed its own aggressive policies towards both the British presence and the local population. The Stern Gang was an offshoot of the Irgun, which it left in 1940. Together with the Hagana, these 3 organisations were united into one army during the days of the Nakba, although as we shall see, they did not always act in unison and coordination." (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pape, 2006, p 45)

5) "I am particularly troubled by the character of Clara Rosenbaum, who alleges to be one of many Jewish women 'paid by the city' to seduce British soldiers. Her inclusion is a smear against all Israeli women."

Troubled eh? Better shield your wide, innocent eyes from this then, my dear:

"'The Jewish Agency set up special clubs for the purpose of propaganda', said Motti Golani, a historian of the British Mandate at Haifa University. 'There were dancing parties, clubs with lectures, dinners. The [Jewish] Agency pushed young girls, of around 18 or 20, to have relationships with British soldiers. It was a kind of spying." (Dances & dalliances: legendary Jerusalem bars opens once more, Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian, 13/11/11)

6) "Statements such as 'the Jews want it all - all the land', 'we found Jews living in our houses', or 'that's what the Jews want' have no place on Australian television."

What intolerable nonsense this is. Here it is, 2011, almost a century since the perfectly idiotic Balfour Declaration was issued by the government of Lloyd George, with Israel in control of 100% of historic Palestine, with the majority of Palestinians in exile and the rest under occupation, losing homes and land on a daily basis, and Kroger's telling us that to say the above is offensive! She's certainly no Lord Curzon. Here's the British Foreign Secretary's frank assessment of Zionist aims in a 1920 letter to Zionist arch-dupe, Balfour:

"As for Weizmann and Palestine, I entertain no doubt that he is out for Jewish Government, if not at the moment, then in the near future... On December 17th, he [Weizmann] telegraphed to Eder of the Zionist Commission at Jaffa: 'The new proposal stipulates first that the whole administration of P. shall be so formed as to make of P. a Jewish Commonwealth, under British trusteeship, and that the Jews shall so participate in the administration as to secure this object'. Further 'The Jewish population is to be allowed the widest practical measure of self-government and to have extensive powers of expropriating the owners of the soil, etc'. What all this can mean except Government I do not see. Indeed a Commonwealth as defined in my dictionary is a 'body politic' a 'state' an 'independent community' a 'republic'. I feel tolerably sure therefore that while Weizmann may say one thing to you, or while you may mean one thing by a National Home, he is out for something quite different. He contemplates a Jewish State, a Jewish nation, a subordinate population of Arabs etc. ruled by Jews; the Jews in possession of the fat of the land, and directing the Administration. He is trying to effect this under the screen and under the shelter of British trusteeship." (Palestine Papers 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict, Doreen Ingrams, 1972/2009, pp 57-58)

That Kroger apparently has nothing better to do than peddle this kind of propaganda - and that at taxpayers' expense - is a scandal which cries out for serious investigation.

[*See my 5/2/10 post Hell-Disaster.]

The Offended

Christian Kerr's at it again. No, not Lee Rhiannon this time. You can only flog a topic so many times without tedium setting in. This time it's The Promise:

"SBS screened the controversial drama The Promise in the knowledge it would offend the Jewish community, Liberal senators have claimed." (SBS knew Israel drama would offend Jews, Lib senators insist, The Australian, 16/2/12)

Got the buzz word? The Promise is controversial.

Controversial is a code word at The Australian. Its special application there might be explained by one of its operatives thus: 'Whoever (or whatever) deviates from the Zionist party line is anathema to us here at The Australian, and one of our resident witch-finders - Kerr, Saluszinsky, Neighbour - will be given the task of beating him/her/it up in article after article, thus allowing us to slap on the warning label, controversial, designed specifically to distance the reader from the abhorred deviation and its perpetrator. Works wonders!'

Now you'll notice that not only did SBS dare to screen something controversial, but it knew that in doing so "the Jewish community" would be offended! That of course means the Jewish community in its entirety, not just the Zionist ideologues and propagandists of the Israel lobby for whom toeing, defending, and promoting the party line on Israel is the alpha and omega of their existence, and for whom The Australian is their mouthpiece of choice.

"Under questioning from Victorian Liberal senator Helen Kroger in estimates..."

Ah, Helen Kroger, rambammed into service back in 2007 (See my 30/3/09 post I've been to Israel too).

"... SBS managing director Michael Edeid [sic: Ebeid] said the broadcaster entered into a pre-sale deal with the producers of The Promise knowing the subject matter would be controversial." (ibid)

So here we go from the fantastic allegation that SBS deliberately set out to stick it to the entire Jewish community to SBS simply knowing, both from the hue and cry which accompanied The Promise's screening in the UK, and decades of Zionist pressure to bend SBS to its will, that any film on Palestine that flouts the Zionist party line is ipso facto controversial, let alone one which dares to shine the light on the bloody Zionist takeover of Palestine in 1948.

Senator Kroger opined that "SBS appears to have put a business decision ahead of independent assessments, which determined that it was offensive to the Jewish community." (ibid)

Independent assessments... determined that The Promise was offensive to the Jewish community? Rich comedy indeed! The extraordinary premise here is that media outlets should refer all items pertaining to Palestine/Israel to one or other branch of the Israel lobby (the Executive Council of Australian Jewry in this instance) for an independent (!) assessment of the item's offensiveness to the Jewish community (!) before they are published or broadcast. Or, IOW, the Israel lobby decides what we read and see.

Thank God SBS's Ebeid had the gumption to say to Kroger, "SBS accepts that it will, from time to time, broadcast programs that offend some individuals or groups." (ibid)

How I'd love to see a debate between the rambammed Kroger and The Australian's also-rambammed (2008) columnist Janet Albrechtsen, who once wrote a column called The freedom to be offensive (20/4/09). In that essay, Planet Janet pronounced that: "You are either for free speech - whoever exercises it - or not. Freedom of expression is simply meaningless if it does not include a right to be wrong and a right to be offensive." Maybe Christian Kerr could chair the debate.