Why Aren't Australian Journalists Backing Julian Assange?

First, the latest shocking news on the fate of WikiLeak's Julian Assange:

"Julian Assange will face a five-day US extradition hearing in February next year, a judge has ruled. [He] faces an 18-count indictment, issued by the US Department of Justice, that includes charges under the Espionage Act... Ben Brandon, representing the US, formally opened the case, a day after an extradition request was signed off by the [UK] home secretary, Sajid Ravid." (Julian Assange to face US extradition in UK next year, Haroon Siddique, theguardian.com, 14/6/19)

The following letter of concern over Assange's fate, naming Australian journalist Peter Greste, appeared in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald:

"Andrew Fowler's article was excellent in its balanced reporting of the facts ('Raids a wake-up to journalists who left Assange swinging', June 12). This was in stark contrast to Peter Greste's article several weeks ago, written with a certain callousness. Assanges's treatment does not reflect well on other journalists or on our successive governments. Fowler is correct that what has occurred to Assange may well occur to other journalists if they do not toe the line." (Virginia Robison, Killara, letter to the editor in Sydney Morning Herald, 14/6/19)

In addition, full page ads placed by journalismisnotacrime.org appeared in both the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian yesterday signed by 38 Australian journalists, including Greste, Alliance for Journalists' Freedom. The ad is billed as an "Open letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Leader of the Opposition Anthony Albanese, Members of the Parliament of Australia," and is headlined "JOURNALISM IS NOT A CRIME".

Part of the text reads: "A healthy democracy cannot function without its media being free to bring to light uncomfortable truths, to scrutinise the powerful and inform our communities. Investigative journalism cannot survive without the courage of whistleblowers, motivated by concern for their fellow citizens, who seek to bring to light instances of wrongdoing, illegal activities, fraud, corruption and threats to public health and safety. These are issues of public interest, of the public's right to know. Whistleblowers and the journalists who work with them are entitled to protection, not prosecution. Truth-telling is being punished."

There are reference in the text to "whistleblowers Richard Boyle, David McBride and Witness K," but, significantly, not to Julian Assange.

The failure to include Assange in the ad would seem to have a lot to do with Peter Greste's 12/4/19 SMH/Age opinion piece, Julian Assange is no journalist: don't confuse his arrest with press freedom:

"As someone who has been imprisoned by a foreign government [Egypt] for publishing material that it didn't like, I have a certain sympathy for Assange. But my supports stops there. To be clear, Julian Assange is not a journalist, and Wikileaks is not a news organisation... Journalism demands more than just simply acquiring confidential information and releasing it unfiltered on the internet for punters to sort through. It comes with responsibility... We at the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom are committed to restoring public trust in in journalism, which can only happen if its practitioners work with responsibility and respect. I has never been about opening up a hosepipe of information regardless of the consequences."

Parenthetically, has Greste, I wonder, taken the trouble to read The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire (Verso, 2015). It contains an extensive introduction by Julian Assange and contributions by a range of journalists on the various regions covered by the files?

Understandably, aware readers - especially in Melbourne's Age - bridled at Greste's piece. John Wallace, for example, director of the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre, and a former member of the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) judiciary committee Victoria, had this to say in the Age's letters pages:

"In Australia MEAA journalist code of ethics offers a less rigid view of journalism, one that allows departures from its standards under certain circumstances. The code's preamble states, in part, that 'Respect for truth and the public's right to information are fundamental principles of journalism'. In its guidance clause, the code recognises that sometimes there will be a conflict in its standards, and that in cases of 'substantial advancement of the public interest' it may be appropriate to override any particular standard. If one accepts the Wikileaks disclosures did substantially advance the public interest, Assange's work can certainly be seen as journalism."

Commented another, "Greste's commentary is especially churlish, given the wholehearted support he enjoyed from the Australian community during his own ordeal. A little less pomposity, please." (Nicholas Grey, Kent Town, SA)

One of the most pointed and relevant comments critiquing Greste's piece came in the form a tweet by an Australian journalist of Palestinian origin, Jennine Khalik: "thinking of being a white male journalist and getting arrested in egypt so people think everything I have to say once im out is relevant and insightful." (May 25)

Greste's assessment of Assange as 'not a journalist' cannot be allowed to stand. In fact, a retraction of his 12 April commentary and an apology seems to me to be in order.

The Emails are IN! 3

Anybody else notice that, despite Fairfax journalist Tony Walker flinging down the gauntlet on Monday - "What a smashing victory in 1967 did not entitle Israel to was to be a permanent occupier of territory and its people and settlers of land seized in defiance of international law" - The Age has published NO angry/obfuscatory letters from pro-Israel mob, either yesterday or today?

After all, the Sydney Morning Herald published two yesterday, one of which came from... Melbourne.

Is this a first?

Is this a case of The Age, at least, finally standing up to THE LOBBY?

Is THE LOBBY, which has always relied on the oxygen given to it by an ignorant and spineless press, finally losing its clout?

The Real Julie Bishop

Age columnist Sarah Gill, although beginning to have her doubts following Julie Bishop's recent meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines ("At this juncture, what's called for is not an expression of 'concern'... but a point-blank repudiation of Duterte's drug war - its mission and its methods."), has obviously been a great fan of our sleek and stylish foreign minister:

"Underneath it all, I think Bishop cares a great deal about human rights. I believe in the authenticity of her desire to eradicate the death penalty globally - although it's not clear the matter was broached with Duterte, who is on the verge of reinstating it. I also believe in her sincerity when she speaks of fundamental freedoms, or argues passionately for democracy, or insists that human rights are inextricably linked to prosperity and regional stability." (We turn blind eye to regional atrocities, Sydney Morning Herald, 3/4/14)

Frankly, foreign ministry press releases can only take us so far with these professional politicians. It's the unscripted, on-the-hop, quip which best takes us to the "underneath it all." As in:

"I would like to see which international law has declared [Israeli settlements] illegal." (Julie Bishop, quoted in Israeli lawyers caution Bishop, John Lyons, The Australian, 27/1/14)

Zionist Hypocrisy Alert

"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying employment for it in our country." Theodor Herzl, Zionist Godfather, 1895

I really don't know which is the more revolting: the hypocrisy of Zionists who speak out for refugees, so long as they're not Palestinian refugees (or indigenous people, so long as they're not indigenous Palestinians), or the alacrity with which opinion editors give them a platform to do so in our newspapers - which is precisely what opinion editor Paul Austin has done in today's Age:

Under the heading Stop the ugly politicking: this is a matter of life & death, tax lawyer and national chairman of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) Mark Leibler claims that "[i]t chills me that we have come to a point where we are denying refugees reaching Australian waters any prospect of ever being settled in this country."

At various points, he refers to "vulnerable refugees fleeing persecution [who] while deserving of our empathy... are instead left degraded and dehumanised"; "[Australia's] record as a nation that embraces a 'fair go' for refugees fleeing persecution"; "our moral obligation to contribute to the global refugee crisis"; and the fact that "most refugees would want to go home if it was safe to do so."

Leibler's piece is replete with noble sentiments and oozes humanitarian feeling. But there's only one thing wrong. He just happens to be one of Australia's foremost apologists for Israel, a colonial-settler state with a Jewish majority only achieved by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and the creation of over 750,000 Palestinian Arab REFUGEES, who are still refugees today, 65 years later.

That's right, Palestinian refugees. Remember them, Mark?

Just to remind you, the following account, by Swedish photo-journalist Per-Olow Anderson, was published back in 1957. Anderson's concluding questions are as relevant today as they were in the 50s:

"Human suffering is nothing new to me. As a photo-journalist I have encountered it many times during the newspaper and magazine assignments that have taken me to 74 countries in the past 20 years. But none of my experiences was more shocking to me than my introduction to the plight of the more than 1 million Palestine Arab refugees in the Middle East, whom I first saw in April, 1956, on my arrival at Gaza on an assignment for my Swedish magazine.

"The Palestine Arab refugees exist in misery and despair in crowded camps in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip - in caves in Palestine, squatters' rows near large Arab cities, and the slums of the cities themselves. I have seen the squalor of their tents and mud huts sprawled on rocky hillsides and in bone-dry, dust-blown valleys. I have felt their grief and suffering, heard their bitter memories and frustrations, and their tense and emotional cry: 'Justice, justice! All we ask is justice!'

"What is justice in their particular case, and why has it been denied them for so long? When the United Nations sanctioned the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, it did not intend that the Arab population of the territory given to the Jews should be expropriated, expelled or forced to flee. But this is what actually happened. Nearly a million Arabs whose ancestors had lived for countless generations in Palestine lost their lands and homes and became penniless refugees, to make way for Jewish refugees, who had themselves been forced by Nazi persecution to flee their homelands.

"The world has extended its help and sympathy to the Jewish refugees. Everything possible was done for them and the conscience of humanity was so stirred that it approved of their being given a Jewish state of their own. Ironically and tragically, however, the world in attempting to right an injustice to one people sowed the seeds of injustice to another. The Palestine Arabs, whom the Jewish refugees displaced, also became victims of war and terror. For them, the world set up only a relief agency to hand out a dole and to carry out a plan for resettling them in other Arab lands, against the wishes of both themselves and of the countries to which they were to be assigned. Nothing has been done to answer the desire of the Palestine Arabs for repatriation to their former homes, or to compensate them for the loss of their property, or to enforce the UN-imposed boundaries that would have divided Palestine almost equally between Jew and Arab.

"I cannot see why - after 9 years - the world still has not solved this problem. I cannot understand how the world at large came to forget these people who, in terms of human suffering, are paying an agonizing price for a mistake for which all of us are responsible." (From the Introduction to They are human too...: A Photographic Essay on the Palestine Arab Refugees)

Flogging Rubbish at The Age

Far out! The opinion editor of today's Age seems to think that Jeffrey Goldberg's latest bout of Zionist flatulence is just what those seeking enlightened opinion on Palestine's bid for observer status in the UN need to make sense of it all. Actually, I doubt the silly bugger even bothered reading it first.

How else to explain why a piece, originally titled How Palestinians can finally achieve independence, was retitled in the Age Palestinians doomed by intransigence when the only intransigence referred to in the text is Israeli intransigence?

Any masochist bothering to sniff Goldberg's emission at once enters that strange parallel world of the Zionist propagandist, where words you thought you knew the meaning of take on a whole new meaning, and history is replaced by mythistory, the reverse of what actually happened.

Did you know for example that the word resistance means indiscriminate murder? No? Read on:

"The Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza said, in a televised speech last week, that his group remained committed to a policy of indiscriminate murder. He gave the policy a different name, of course. 'Resistance,' he said, 'is the shortest way to liberate Palestine.'"

Did you know that "Arab nations... invaded the nascent state of Israel"?

He's referring, of course, to Palestine in 1948, but what he asserts happened there at the time bears not the slightest resemblance to historical fact. Far from invading 'Israel' Arab forces were engaged in resisting - in the usual sense of the word - an attempt by Zionist forces to overrun as much of the country as possible, regardless of who was assigned what by the UN.

Here, for example, is the testimony of the man who commanded the most effective of the Arab forces engaged in trying to stem the Zionist offensive, the Arab Legion's John Bagot Glubb:

"The claim that, on 15th May, 1948, the Arab states attacked Israel has already been disproved. We have seen that the Zionists attacked the area allotted by the UN to the proposed Arab state several weeks before the 'Arab Invasion'. Apart, however, from the time factor, no Arab army attacked Israel, except the Egyptian, which crossed from Sinai into an area allotted to the Jewish state in the partition plan. The Jordanians only entered the Arab state, which they found had already been invaded by the Israelis. All the battles fought between the Arab Legion and the Israeli army took place on the territory of the Arab state or in the Jerusalem international area, both of which had been attacked by the Israelis before the Arab Legion arrived. Jordan never, on any occasion, attacked Israel. Of the other Arab states, Lebanon took no part in 1948. Syria fought one border action at Samakh and then withdrew. She did not invade Israel. The Iraqi army sent a token force of 3,000 men, which engaged the Israelis across the Jordan at Jisr al Mejama. It then withdrew through Amman and joined the Arab Legion in defending the Arab state in the Nablus-Jenin-Tulkarm triangle. When holding Jenin, it was attacked by an Israeli force which tried to seize Jenin (a town allotted to the Arab state) but was repulsed. The Iraqis, throughout all the fighting, remained on the defensive inside the Arab state. They also did not attack Israel." (Peace in the Holy Land, 1971, p 309)

Then there are the ludicrous premises that underpin Goldberg's proposed 'strategy' for Palestinians wishing to acquire an independent state of their own. These are:

a) American Jews are so enamoured of civil rights in the US that they would clasp the Palestinians to their bosoms if only they'd drop both their guns and their demand for independence and call instead for the right to vote in the Knesset;

b) Given a), Israeli Jews would be so terrified of Israel being called an apartheid state, and so eager to avoid the attendant pariahdom, that they'd present an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza ("with security caveats," of course) to the Palestinians on a platter. In which case, problem solved, the Palestinians would have a state of their own!

What a genius!

Frankly, any opinion editor who thinks that kind of nonsense suitable fare for readers deserves nothing less than a public flogging with rolled-up copies of his paper.

Fairfax Is All Yours, Gina 3

"Journalists are not entitled to be naive or ignore reality," says Martin Flanagan of The Age in his latest homily Why editorial independence must never be sacrificed (23/6/12).

He's correct, of course, but a simple perusal of my 'Flanagan File' (simply click on the label below) reveals a Fairfax journalist who fails - again and again - to practice what he preaches.

And Speaking of Duds...

Why does The Age see fit to inflict the inane nonsense of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on its readers?

Inanities such as these from Go tell it to the people: lead, follow or get out of the way (12/5/12):

"Every one of these awakening [Arab] countries needs to make the transition from Saddam to Jefferson without getting stuck in Khomeini."

"Who will tell the [Arab] people that, for the past 50 years, most of the Arab regimes squandered their dictatorship moments?"

"Arab dictatorships... used their authority to enrich a small class and to distract the masses with 'shiny objects' - called Israel, Iran and Nasserism to name but a few."

"Who will tell the [Arab] people that... Islam... is not 'the answer' for Arab development today? Maths is the answer."

"The new generation royals in Morocco, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, who do have the legitimacy to pull people together and drive change, are probably the most effective leaders in the region today."

Some questions of my own:

Who will tell the opinion editors (Paul Austin/Sushi Das) of The Age what colonial crap this is?

And, more important: Why do they even need telling? Isn't it bloody obvious?

Publishing Poison

After 8 years of murder, mayhem, pillage and plunder in Iraq, you'd think a paper like The Age would be wise to the kind of journalistic propaganda barrage that preceded that particular Crime against Humanity. But no, today's Age sees nothing wrong in peddling more of the same, designed to soften up the public for yet another round of shock and awe, this time against Iran.

Is the editorial memory so short these days that good old-fashioned USraeli neoconservative sabre-rattling, masquerading as scholarship, passes under the radar?

Check out just the concluding lines of Michael Rubin's The West should hand Iran's leadership a chalice of poison:

"While no Australian, American, or European wants to pay more at the petrol pump, the status quo is unsustainable. Should the Islamic Republic develop nuclear weapons, Tehran will have a free hand to lash out indiscriminately, feeling secure behind its own nuclear deterrent."

That didn't remind the Age's opinion editor of a certain other Middle Eastern regime with a track record of lashing out?

"A limited conflict in the Persian Gulf might add $20 to the price of oil for a month, but a nuclear Iran could permanently add $100 a barrel."

Gee, wasn't Iraq supposed to be a limited conflict?

"History can be a guide. Twice, in the Islamic Repulic's history, revolutionary authorities have sworn no surrender. In 1979, they said they would not release their American hostages until Washington met revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini's demands."

What has that to do with the present situation? And why, since history's been invoked, would Khomeini have bothered releasing said hostages given that "Reagan Republicans were eager to derail [President Carter's promise to airlift arms and spares already purchased under the Shah in return for the hostages] and had already met Iranian officials to agree not to release the hostages before the election, but to do so afterwards in return for the direct supply of arms." (The Iran-Iraq War, Rob Johnson, 2011, p 91)

"Then, they said they would accept no end to the Iran-Iraq war until Saddam Hussein was in Iranian hands. In both cases, however, isolation and sanctions took their toll. When Khomeini announced a ceasefire with Iraq, he likened it to drinking a chalice of poison but said the cost of continuing to fight gave him no choice. When it comes to Tehran's nuclear program and its Hormuz threats, it is time to hand Iranian leaders such a chalice, not to relieve the pressure."

Notice how slippery Rubin's history is? To read him you'd think the "isolation and sanctions" faced by Iran during the Iran-Iraq War (1979-1988) were identical to those imposed against it today. But Khomeini's drinking from the 'poisoned chalice', that is, reluctantly agreeing to a ceasefire with Iraq in 1988, bore no relation to today's USraeli-inspired, anti-Iranian sanctions. Here's the context in which Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq in 1988: "[T]he cost of the war could not be sustained any longer. According to an Iranian source, Iran's war costs had reached $1,000 billion, but its estimated oil income over 80 years (the longevity of its industry from first discovery to the outbreak of war) was $260 billion. In essence, Iran had spent 4 times its actual oil income and, like Iraq, was mortgaging its future. Iran was also losing the military campaign in the southern theatre. It had too few armoured vehicles left, was losing ground rapidly, and there were signs that the military personnel had reached their limit." (ibid pp 175-176)

One really has to wonder about the circumstances in which such tripe was given the nod at the Age. Did the opinion editor (or editors - I believe there are two) bother checking Rubin's background beyond the following snapshot supplied with the piece: "Michael Rubin is an author and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC"?

If he/she had, they might've unearthed the following:

"Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) who worked as a Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq during the first George W Bush administration. An outspoken and contoversial proponent of hardline US foreign policies, Rubin is closely associated with neoconservatism. His track record includes working for a number of groups associated with the US 'Israel lobby' (including AEI, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Middle East Forum), championing the US invasion of Iraq, suggesting assassinating foreign leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, allegedly misrepresenting translations of statements by Iranian officials, serving as a consultant to the heavily criticized Pentagon Office of Special Plans, and consulting for the PR firm the Lincoln group, which was accused of planting propaganda in the Iraqi press." (rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Rubin_Michael)

And how about this from the same source?

"Gregory Djerejian sums up Rubin's time working for the Bush administration...'Rubin was part of a group associated with Doug Feith at the Pentagon that were, in the main, [Ahmed] Chalabi-cheerleaders, and swallowed with alacrity the kool-aid that the 'liberation' would be swift and welcomed by the Iraqis and that the US government would be able to hand off the governance quickly and without much pain to Chalabi & Co."

Seems like it's either a case of any old rubbish goes at the Age these days, or else the paper rather likes the prospect of yet another Middle Eastern war. Either way, by publishing neocon propaganda such as Rubin's the Age will be as complicit in the coming slaughter as any Murdoch rag.

The Peace Team: Politics & PR

"In order to disseminate an image [of itself], a government can employ what was originally labeled as propaganda. Following the harmful yet effective propaganda that was in circulation throughout the Second World War and the following Cold War, such image-shaping efforts have now been renamed in order to avoid the negative connotations. Governments now talk about 'public diplomacy'. Public diplomacy can affect the foreign policy of another country and thus influence their treatment towards one's own country. While this can be done through diplomatic, economic and military means, it can also be achieved through 'soft power'. Therefore governments target civilian audiences whose opinion has a bearing on the government's policy... In this way, outside governments began to realise that they can have a positive effect on the opinion of civilians and, in turn, on that country's foreign policy through carefully grooming their public image and explaining their actions to the rest of the world through information... The Israeli government takes the role of public diplomacy very seriously and as such devotes a number of resources to educating and influencing foreign audiences, particularly those in the United States. The Israeli government has its own word that has been used since the 1970s in relation to their own public diplomacy work. Hasbara is roughly translated as 'explanation' and is used in the context of Israeli policy and actions." (Israel: Propaganda, public diplomacy & soft power, Harriet Straughen, paltelegraph.com, 10/5/11)

One Israeli practitioner of 'public diplomacy', the so-called Peres Centre for Peace (PPC), has hit on the PR tactic of fielding joint Israeli/Palestinian sporting teams designed to mask and obfuscate the brutal reality of the Israeli occupation and colonisation of Palestine's indigenous inhabitants.

Its Australian representative, Tanya Oziel, who breezily talks of bringing together "athletes from the two war-torn nations" (one of whom is a tad more war-torn than the other) and "breaking down barriers" (apartheid walls and checkpoints notwithstanding) has been busy since 2008 in promoting tours to Australia by an Israeli/Palestinian AFL 'Peace Team'. The Peace Team not only played in the 2008 AFL International Cup, but, for maximum public exposure, it became the subject of a film, Tackling Peace, screened on Channel 10 in 2009. (See Tanya Oziel honoured, sportingpulse.com)

This year, the promotion of the Peace Team - which is to say Israel - in the Australian press has become the pet project of Age sports journalist Martin Flanagan, who has so far produced at least 4 promos on the subject.

Flanagan is an interesting case, apparently atypical of so many of our Israel-bound journalist junketeers. One is reminded of Humbert Wolfe's cheeky little rhyme: "You cannot hope to bribe or twist/Thank God! The British journalist/But, seeing what the man will do/Un-bribed there's no occasion to."

In his first piece on the Peace Team in June, Flanagan was at pains to explain just how pure his motives were:

"A few months ago I had reason to reflect on my own mortality and realised that the cause which interested me most... is peace. I realise, to some people, peace is an empty word. Perhaps it is best understood by considering its opposite - war, particularly as it is fought nowadays, with lots of civilian casualties. Children with limbs blown off, that sort of thing. I think war is hell. I'm not a pacifist, but do think there are people who carry peace with them through the world and they have my undying respect. I've gone to Israel for 10 days. I'm part of a delegation led by Tanya Oziel, the woman who organised the Palestinian-Israeli football team that competed in the AFL International Cup 3 years ago and is preparing to return. For the record, I am paying my airfares but my accommodation is being sponsored by the PPC..." (Peace is more than just a word, 25/6/11)

As you can see, Flanagan's bought into the PPC's propagandist notion of a 'war' between two 'sides', akin to a game played between two evenly-matched football teams. It may be the case, to adapt the adage that to a hammer everything looks like a nail, that to Flanagan, the blinkered sports journalist, every conflict from World Wars I and II on down looks like a football game, including the utterly asymmetrical struggle between Israeli coloniser and Palestinian colonised. So, whatever his illusions about promoting the Peace Team, he's well and truly party to the PPC's monstrous misrepresentation of reality.

Flanagan further compounds this misrepresentation with such faux profundities as: "I know I'm going to a deeply troubled region. I also know I'm going to a powerful land. Three great religious dreamings emanate in one way or another from there."

Israelis and Palestinians, he'd have us believe, are really just kids with 'issues' from a tough neighbourhood. So don't bother your boofhead with the actual, ongoing colonial dynamic of Israel's relentless campaign of dispossession and ethnic cleansing, just bring the lads "from two of the most violently conflicted groups on earth" together as a team, watch them get whipped by Nauru (which, incidentally, routinely votes for Israel in the UN), and finally have coach Robert 'Dipper' DiPierdomenico farewell them with these edifying words: "'I'll miss you f...ing blokes. We gotta stay in touch. When you play footy with someone, you might not see 'em for years. Then you see 'em walking down the street and say, 'F..., what are you doing?'." After that you can go home, pretending you've brought peace in the Middle East just that little bit closer when all you've really done is slap a bit of lippy on Israel's apartheid pig.

I'd like to think that some readers of Flanagan's often maudlin drivel can see through it, but if the following response is anything to go by, the PPC will have gotten its money's worth. It comes from the notreallyaustralian blog:

"Read editorial written by Martin Flanagan. After reading it, I was curious [as] to who Flanagan was. So I asked Lord Wiki. He's a journalist who writes a sports column. He's also the brother of Richard Flanagan, the Tassie author. I should have suspected that. The editorial was about the Palestinian-Israeli football team. Flanagan and some others are going to Israel to meet the players. Flanagan is impressed with the whole business, and so am I. I don't often have a lot of understanding about why Palestinians and Israeli's [sic] hatefully and violently fight over a tiny piece of land. Flanagan is more understanding than me. 'I know I am going to a deeply troubled region. I also know I am going to a powerful land. Three great religious dreamings emanate in one way or another from there'. Flanagan uses the term power of place. I think for some Jews and Palestinians, there IS a power of place. For others, I think the power of place comes out of the animosity towards the other group. It reminds me of the time that Jack came to the lake house with fake cat vomit. He showed it to his cousins, and they played together. Then suddenly, there was a huge tearful fight over the cat vomit. My sister and I were dragged into the drama. Suddenly, we realised that this was cat vomit we were talking about; and it all seemed so silly. No, I am not saying that Israel is like cat vomit. I am just saying that sometimes we cling to something simply for the fact that other people are clinging to it as well. I'd say for many Jews... they hate Palestinians more than they love Israel. And for many Palestinians, I bet they hate Jews more than they love their land of Palestine. I think the Palestinians and Jews who reach out to each other and try to make peace... I think they're the ones who truly love the land of Israel." (That weird American who's obsessed with Australia: Peace, Ministry of Magic, Clergymen, & Age, 26/6/11)

You can see the kind of damage Flanagan's folderol is doing out there.

Now I wish I could say that his June piece was a one-off, but I can't. In July he was at it again, telling us that:

"I went to Israel to find peace. People I told said, 'Funny place to go'. Our Tel Aviv hotel was on the beach across the road from the nightclub blown up by a suicide bomber in 2001; 21 died, one as young as 14. In front of the wreckage is a sculpture, rough-hewn from steel. It has two shapes, one male, one female, and in Hebrew the words: 'We will never stop dancing'." (Finding peace in an unlikely place, 2/7/11)

Except that Israelis are not dancing in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Shooting, raiding, arresting, imprisoning, torturing, bulldozing, evicting, dispossessing, and colonising, yes, but definitely not dancing.

In August came an account of a PPC event which brought together students from Melbourne's Bialik College and "youths" from Newport Mosque. Flanagan, of course, regaled them with the story of St Tanya ("the woman who had this crazy idea of taking Australian football to the Middle East as a peace initiative") and 'her' Peace Team. After which they all sat back and watched the film Tackling Peace and listened to a nice policeman discussing such things as "empathy" and "respect" and "seeing things from other people's viewpoint as well as your own." Flanagan concluded, naturally, with a paragraph advertising the next public appearance of the Peace Team. (Saturday Reflection, 20/8/11)

Finally, in September, came another round of applause for the "brilliant" Tanya and this glowing tribute to the Peace Team's Israeli members:

"When I told my Jewish dentist that some of the Israelis in the Peace Team were great blokes, he smiled and said, 'Why wouldn't the Israelis be great blokes?' to which I replied, There are blokes, good blokes and great blokes. I'm saying there were some great israeli blokes in the team'. They were the men I admired because to me they had a full consciousness of the reality in their country and were trying to find a new approach to it. One of them, Nimrod, the son of an Israeli female lieutenant-general, had fought in two wars. He was a very smart young man with inner composure who was concerned about the morality of the conflict. When the Peace Team had its first internal dialogue, Nimrod said to the Palestinians: 'Let's do a deal. We're going to do one some day. Let's do it now'." (Without politics, Peace Team is peaceful, 24/9/11)

Top blokes all! But the Palestinians? Why, it's enough to break Flanagan's heart:

"It is no secret that Palestinians generally did not support the Peace Team, believing it masked the reality of their political situation. A number of Palestinian players were threatened. One was under cyber attack the whole time he was in Australia. The attacks continued after his return to his home in the West Bank. This week he pulled out of the Peace Team."

Maybe, just maybe, Palestinians know something our PR man doesn't. But, of course, Flanagan doesn't want to go there:

"Personally," says he, "I don't want to get involved in the politics of the Middle East."

Martin, maaate, don't pee on our legs and tell us it's raining, ok?

Related posts: Sport Rots the Brain (19/8/11); Foul Play (17/6/11)

The Age: Enough Already!

What is going on at The Age?

This month, it's been one Zionist propaganda piece after another on the opinion page:

15/8/11: Why Australia should back creation of a Palestinian state, Harold Zwier & Larry Stillman (Don't be misled by the title - I'll be returning to this one later in the post.)

18/8/11: Tent city is a beacon of social justice & optimism, Robin Margo (See my 22/8/11 post 114 Years of Zionist Bombast.)

22/8/11: 'Virtual' Palestinian state could lead to actual disaster, Colin Rubenstein

While the 2nd and 3rd are obvious examples of the ZPP genre, the 1st sneakily adopts a pro-Palestinian (state) veneer: "Next month, the Palestinian delegation to the United States is expected to ask the General Assembly to recognise a Palestinian state. We believe Australia should support such a move."

Zwier and Stillman, however, described grandly in their bio as "on the executive of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society," quickly reveal themselves as Zionistas, albeit of the 'soft' variety, by perpetrating the following false equivalence: "Israel is more entrenched than ever in its territorial expansion through settlements in the West Bank, and Palestinians are more strident than ever in asserting their right to return to their original homes in Israel."

Get the picture? Z&S attempt to con the reader with a supposed balance of extremists: on the one hand, Jewish settlers taking Palestinian land in the West Bank; on the other, Palestinian refugees stubbornly determined to return home to - shock! horror! - Israel.

Anyone with even the haziest understanding of the conflict, however, will see through Z&S's subterfuge, knowing that while Israel floods the West Bank (and East Jerusalem) with settlers in defiance of international law, namely the Geneva Convention's ban on the occupier transferring "its own civilian population into the territory it occupies," Palestinian refugees have the full weight of international law on their side in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UNGA resolution 194. In short, there can be no equivalence whatever between those involved in a criminal enterprise and its victims.

Z&S's sleight of hand brazenly continues with:

"Palestinians will also be aware that recognition of Palestine will be a significant move towards dealing with the Palestinian refugee issue within their state and with compensation, rather than solely through the 'right of return'. It diminishes the credibility of a Palestinian government to insist that Palestinians should be able to live in the state next door in preference to their own state."

Run that past us again: A Palestinian government that doesn't ditch the fundamental right of all refugees, including Palestinian refugees, to return to their homes and lands loses credibility!

And, as if the above weren't Zionist chutzpah enough, were you to read Z&S's piece in its entirety, you'd see that nowhere does this pair of prestidigitators even suggest pulling Jewish settlers out of the West Bank to make way for the refugees they wouldn't want in what they - despite being Australian citizens - outrageously believe, as Zionists, is their state.

Breathtaking, isn't it?

PS 24/8/11: Letter in today's Age: "We've had views on Palestinian statehood from the Jewish left and now the Jewish right. Is it asking too much for The Age to publish a Palestinian perspective, or doesn't it count?" Shane McCartin, North Fitzroy

We Seriously Have to Talk About the Herald

Today's contrasting opinion pieces on the terror in Norway in Melbourne's Age and Sydney's Herald reveal both the heights and the depths to which the Fairfax press can rise or sink (unlike the Murdoch press, of course, which only ever plumbs new depths).

The Age appropriately chose a Norwegian voice to best reflect on this week's terrorist outrage in Oslo. It chose well. Aslak Sira Myhre's lucid and intelligent analysis, Home-grown terror forces us to face ugly truths, is especially strong on essential historical context and insight into the Islamophobic mindset cultivated over the past decade in Norway, and, by extension, the rest of Europe. For Myhre, Anders Behring Breivik, the Christianist terrorist, is very much a case, to adapt Philip Roth's expression, of the indigenous European Islamophobic beserk:

"The terror of Norway has not come from Islamic extremists. Nor has it come from the far left, even though both these groups have been accused time after time of being the inner threat to our 'way of living'. Up to and including the terrifying hours in the afternoon of July 22, the little terror my country has experienced has come from the far right. For decades, political violence in this country has been almost the sole preserve of neo-Nazis and other racist groups. During the 1970s they bombed left-wing bookstores and a May Day demonstration. In the 80s, two neo-Nazis were executed because they were suspected of betraying the group. In the past 2 decades, two non-white Norwegian boys have died as a result of racist attacks. No foreign group has killed or hurt people on Norwegian territory since WW II except for the Israeli security force Mossad, which targeted and killed an innocent man by mistake in Lillehammer in 1973.

"Even with this history, when the devastating terror hit us we instantly suspected the Islamic world. It was the jihadis. It had to be. It was denounced as an attack on Norway, on our way of life. In Oslo, young women wearing hijabs and Arab-looking men were harassed as soon as the news broke. Small wonder. For at least 10 years we have been told that terror comes from the east. That an Arab is suspicious, that all Muslims are tainted. We regularly see people of colour being examined in private rooms in airport security; we have endless debates on the limits of 'our' tolerance. As the Islamic world has become the Other, we have begun to think that what differentiates 'us' from 'them' is the ability to slaughter civilians in cold blood.

"There is, of course, another reason why everybody looked for al-Qaeda. Norway has been part of the war in Afghanistan for 10 years, we took part in the Iraq war for some time, and we are eager bombers of Tripoli. There is a limit to how long you can partake in war before war reaches you. But although we all knew it, the war was rarely mentioned when the terrorist hit us. Our first response was rooted in irrationality: it had to be 'them'. I felt it myself. I feared that the war we took abroad had come to Norway. And what then? What would happen to our society? To tolerance, public debate and, most of all, to our settled immigrants and their Norwegian-born children? It was not thus. Once again, the heart of darkness lies buried deep within ourselves. The terrorist was a white Nordic male; not a Muslim but a Muslim hater.

"As soon as this was established, the slaughter was discussed as the deed of a mad man; it was no longer seen as primarily an attack on our society. The rhetoric changed, the headlines of the newspapers shifted their focus. Nobody talks about war anymore. When 'terrorist' is used, it is most certainly singular, not plural - an individual rather than an undefined group which is easily generalised to include sympathisers and anyone else you fancy. The terrible act is officially a national tragedy. The question is, would it have been thus if the killer was a mentally ill man with an Islamic background? I also believe the killer was mentally ill. To hunt down and execute teenagers on an island for an hour, you surely must have taken leave of your senses. But just as with 9/11 or the bombing of the London Underground, this is madness with both a clinical and a political cause. Anyone who has glanced at the web pages of racist groups or followed the online debates of Norwegian newspapers will have seen the rage with which Islamophobia is being spread; the poisonous hatred with which anonymous writers sting anti-racist liberals and the left is only too visible. The July 22 terrorist has participated in many such debates. He was an active member of one of the biggest Norwegian political parties, the populist right party, until 2006. He left it and sought his ideology instead among the community of anti-Islamist groups on the internet.

"When the world believed this to be an act of internationalist Islamist terrorism, state leaders from Obama to Cameron all stated that they would stand by Norway in our struggle. Which struggle will that be now? All Western leaders have the same problem within their own borders. Will they now wage war on home-grown right-wing extremism? On Islamophobia and racism?"

The Sydney Morning Herald, however, was having none of this, running instead with what can only be construed as an apology for the right wing Islamophobic poison condemned by Myhre. Incredibly, Norwegian massacre is wrong, not far right was penned by its international editor, Peter Hartcher:

"Much media reaction to the tragedy has conflated the incident with the rise of far-right paties in Europe. The coverage implies that Breivik's attack is an extension of the trend and a frightening portent. This is exactly wrong. His use of violence to pursue a 'crusade' to halt the 'Islamicisation [sic] of Europe' has discredited his cause, not advanced it. This is the worst thing that has happened to the far right in western Europe in years. Breivik wrote in his rantings, which, for some reason, most media are dignifying with the title 'manifesto', that he admired Europe's standout Muslim-baiting politician Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands. Wilders opposes Muslim immigrants and wants the Koran and face-covering banned. His party won 15% of the vote in last year's election, making it the third biggest in the Dutch parliament. But Wilders knows that any association with the mad butcher of Oslo is poison. He issued a statement on Breivik on Saturday: 'I despise everything he stands for and everything he did'."

Such concern for the far-right! Just why Hartcher should portray "Muslim-baiting" Wilders as somehow innocent of the the racist Islamophobic culture that spawned Breivik is a mystery. For some reason best known to Hartcher, the man who has spewed forth such gems as "Islam is the ideology of a retarded culture," "The Koran is a fascist book," and "I've had enough of Islam in the Netherlands; let not one more Muslim immigrate," escapes being labelled a ranter like his admirer, Breivik. Nor does Hartcher question the rank absurdity inherent in Wilders' statement, "I despise everything [Breivik] stands for."

"There has been a rising tide of anti-immigrant, pro-nationalist sentiment in Western Europe in recent years [which has] mobilised in opposition to Islam and Islamic immigrants and Islamic emblems but this is part of a wider theme about identity," writes Hartcher, without any suggestion that this phenomenon is in any way disturbing or sinister.

According to Hartcher, Europe simply "has to work out its problems but not Breivik's way. He might have known that 'once you decide to strike', you damage the cause you are supposedly advancing. But then again, how do you explain common sense to the criminally deranged?"

One can only assume that, for Hartcher, these "problems" are perfectly understandable, and that as long as Europeans vent their racism and bigotry at the ballot box, rather than follow Breivik's example, everything's OK. And notice how, in Hartcher's analysis, Breivik is merely "criminally deranged," not one who is merely putting the Islamophobic rantings of the likes of Wilders, Geller, and Pipes, who all get the thumbs up from Breivik, into practice.

Add Hartcher's worrisome take on Breivik to the occasional Islamophobic ventings of Paul Sheehan, and the Sydney Morning Herald seems increasingly indistinguishable from the Murdoch press.

The Herald's editorial of the previous day likewise gives little cause for optimism: "If [!] right-wing rage against migrants, refugees and Islam does turn out to have driven this rampage it will inevitably raise calls to tone down the strident political rhetoric and conspiracy theories in vogue when debating even petty [!] issues. However, a considered assessment will require more time and investigation, and it would be premature to rush to judgment until more of the facts are known." (The shockwaves from Norway)

How lame is that?

The Age... Again!

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Work at Monash University (and co-author of Jews & Australian Politics) Philip Mendes writes in The Australian Jewish News that "Whatever the final outcome, the 2010 election campaign confirmed beyond doubt that Australian Jews are very fortunate to live in a country where both major political parties are so favourably disposed to their key concerns."

He does, however, have a bone to pick: "The low light of this election was arguably the continuing obsession of The Age newspaper with Tim Mathieson's employment by Jewish communal figure Albert Dadon, and the associated inference that Jewish fundraisers have unduly influenced Prime Minister Julia Gillard's views regarding Israel. In reality there is no evidence that wealthy Jewish political donors act differently to other wealthy political donors. Many are almost certainly driven by business and ideological agendas, rather than by specifically Jewish motives. That is hardly a news story." (Jewish voters the winners, 27/8/10)

From which one may deduce the following:

1) If The Age investigates a potential or actual conflict of interest not involving a Jewish communal figure, it can safely be regarded as a legitimate journalistic investigation. If, however, it does involve a Jewish communal figure, it's definitely an obsession.
2) That Albert Dadon is (i) an Israel lobbyist (ii) creator of the Australia-Israel Leadership Forum and (iii) has form in ferrying Australian politicians to Israel and Israeli politicians to Australia is an entirely irrelevent consideration.
3) Given Israel's obvious charisma and sex-appeal, it would be churlish to suggest that money has anything to do with Gillard's hots for the place.
4) By ideological agenda it should be assumed that it is Labor's deep and abiding commitment to peace, justice, human rights and the environment that attracts Jewish political donors, certainly not - heaven forbid! - its cute habit of humping Israel's legs.

The Nerve...

... of The Age!:

The Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) and the Zionist Council of Victoria (ZCV) are reportedly angry at The Age for sub-editing a story from the UK Daily Telegraph - about Israel's illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank - which changed "Jewish settlements" to "illegal Jewish settlements" and "West Bank" to "occupied West Bank." (Community anger over The Age, jewishnews.net.au, 25/8/10)

Burning Questions

"Palestinians are the only people on Earth that use, as their national day, someone else's independence day. Tomorrow is Nakba Day. 'Nakba' means catastrophe in Arabic, and the 'catastrophe' they commemorate is the establishment of Israel." (Palestinians architects of their own misery, Bren Carlill*, The Age, 14/5/10)

[*Bren Carlill is an "analyst" at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)]

Excuse me, Bren, mind if I ask you a few questions?

First, a shortie: can you perhaps shed any light on the Palestinians having a "national day," but not a nation?

Second, when you say the "Palestinians are the only people on Earth that use, as their national day, someone elses's independence day" - by which you mean, I take it, Israel's Independence Day - I have a problem. Allow me to explain. You see, when I think of independence days, I think of people winning their independence from the rule of some oppressive foreign power. To cite but three examples: the Algerians from the French; the Indians from the British; and the Indonesians from the Dutch. You get my drift? You with me? Yes, I'm coming to the point. Just what oppressive foreign power did Israelis win their independence from?

And no, don't say Britain. Face it, without Balfour, Wingate, Churchill and the British army, without the British Mandate over Palestine, there'd be no Israel today. So please, if you wouldn't mind, tell me what Israel's Independence Day is all about.

Finally, there's that bit about the Palestinians commemorating the establishment of Israel as a catastrophe. Do you think it might have something to do with their being the "architects of their own misery" as you put it? I mean, and I'm sure you'd be the first to agree, didn't the Palestinians, in 1948, for reasons best known to themselves (or maybe not), mysteriously, inexplicably, incomprehensibly just walk away from their homes? You know (who better?), the full Marie Celeste. The air of enchantment. The porridge still warm on their breakfast tables. The fruit fairly bursting on the trees in their orchards. The money stashed away in their bank accounts. The goods going nowhere on the shelves of their shops. But, amazingly, no Palestinians! And then there's their Jewish neigbours, distraught and in tears at their going. I mean, the Palestinians just upped and went walkies, right? Probably, and I've got the uncanny feeling here you'd be in complete agreement with me, in response to those Arab Alan Jones's of the day in Damascus and Cairo and Baghdad persuading them to drop whatever it was they were doing at the time and go. I mean the likes of you and I would just tell Alan to shove it, right? OK, maybe not you then, but you know what I'm getting at - unlike your Palestinian klutz, normal white folks like us, we'd just stay put, now wouldn't we?

Sorry to burden you with so many questions, but hey, your an expert, an analyst, right? Even better, an AIJAC analyst. Which explains the appearance of your learned treatise, Palestinians architects of their own misery, in one of Australia's very best papers, The Age.

My ears are fairly itching to receive your pearls of wisdom. Please don't disappoint.

PS: Of the 54 readers of Bren's little diatribe who bothered to comment before The Age quickly closed off discussion, only 14 gave it the thumbs up. Oh dear!

A Different Kind of Newspaper?

Graham Perkin (1929-1975), the editor of The Age (1966-1975), is credited by Eric Beecher (of crickey.com) in his review of Ben Hills' biography, Breaking News, with transforming The Age into "the gold standard of modern Australian journalism over the past half century"; inventing "the paradigm for investigative journalism in Australia"; and creating "an open, ideas-infested newsroom atmosphere." (Tribute to editor who inspired a newspaper's golden age, Sydney Morning Herald, 8/5/10)

Beecher also quotes Perkin as saying, in 1969, "We are trying to produce a different kind of newspaper. A popular newspaper of great quality and breadth. Our paper will look at the whole world, at all people. It will attempt to spread understanding and encourage decency, discourage inhumanity and attack prejudice." (ibid)

Admirable sentiments, of course, but when it comes to the Palestine/Israel conflict, Perkin and his kind all seem to suffer from Achille's heel.

Speaking of which, it just so happens that another, contemporary sufferer, Phillip Adams, was interviewing Ben Hills on ABC Radio National's Late Night Live recently when this little exchange took place:

Adams: Let's look at some of the dark side of the Perkin's moon... I think it's fair to say that there was a lack of balance in Middle East coverage which made the Israelis quite happy.
Hills: Yes, certainly he took a couple of sponsored trips to Israel but... those were the days the '67 war was coming up. It was plucky little Israel against the Arab world. And the Arabs had done themselves no favours by hijacking aeroplanes and blowing them up so... it is quite understandable that public sympathy and the sympathies of The Age were completely with Israel at that stage and that the Arab point of view didn't really get a look in in The Age for many years. (Graham Perkin & the Golden Age of Journalism, 6/5/10)

Seems that even an editor's editor can go weak at the knees under the influence of Israeli pheromones. And just look at our talking heads. When is Adams going to admit to the number of free rides he's given to Zionist propagandists over the years? And here's Perkin's protege, Ben Hills, rushing to the great man's defence with the lamest of excuses.

Interesting too that for Murdoch's Australian it is still, 35 years after Perkin's death, "plucky little Israel against the Arab world."

Backman & the New Anti-Semitism

As you will know from my post The Backman Beat-Up (23/1/09), journalist Michael Backman's opinion piece in The Age (17/1/09) has been attacked in The Australian as anti-Semitic by elements of Australia's Israel lobby. Unfortunately, the allegation has also surfaced at crikey.com.au/contentmakers with media commentator Margaret Simons naively taking such talk at face value and labeling Backman's article "anti-Semitic," "racist," "offensive to Jews," and "pretty vile". The lobby's smears are standard and predictable, as are The Australian's role as a vehicle for them. What is surprising, however, is the capacity of a media specialist such as Simons to fall for them, and her failure to recognise that the lobby's real target is not so much anti-Semitism as criticism of Israel, and in this case The Age's relatively balanced coverage of Israel's war on Gaza. (See my 22/1/09 post Overwhelming Pro-Israel Bias)

Intriguingly, the lobby's campaign against Backman was exposed as a fraud by none other than The Australian itself, which, in its editorial Apologists for Evil (21/1/09), failed to repeat the lobbyists' accusations of anti-Semitism: "There is no evidence that Backman hates Jews, but people who do will endorse his arguments and continue to cloak their anti-Semitism in a faux concern for the Palestinians." The furthest the editorial went was to describe Backman's column as an "anti-Israel rant." That the editorial's failure to follow through with the campaign's key allegation didn't register with Simons is concerning, and suggests that some (many?) in mainstream media land may in fact be clueless as to the elementary distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel, as well as to how Israel lobbyists routinely conflate the two. This ignorance and confusion may indeed go some way (apart from threatened loss of advertising) to explaining why confrontations with Israel lobbyists often result in a grovelling apology from this or that journalist or editor, as was the case this time.

The Australian Jewish News reported the inevitable lobbyists' meeting with The Age's editor, Paul Ramadge, thus: "[AIJAC chair Mark] Leibler said... 'We spent well over an hour with [Ramadge] and with Age opinion editor Roslyn Guy, talking about the problematic news coverage of the Gaza incursion [!!!]... headings, photos, editing... We think there was an issue of lack of balance..." (The Age under fire over anti-Semitic article, 23/1/09). It is obvious from this account that The Age, with its relatively critical coverage of Israel's Gaza onslaught, was the lobby's main concern, the false allegations of anti-Semitism against Backman serving more as a pretext for its intervention.

In Simons' opening piece on the subject at crikey, Weird & unpleasant happenings at The Age (21/1/09), she wrote that "[Backman's column] makes the classic logical error of the racist - generalising from the particular deeds of an individual or group to the race as a whole. It manages to blame Jews for Muslim extremism and violence..." If she'd read Backman with care, she'd have seen that he refers to Israel, not Jews. Her continuation of this sentence, "... talks carelessly about that classic of anti-Semitic hate speech - that Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus..." is perhaps her only valid point, but even here it's merely a matter of carelessness, rather than an endorsement of that view. In the final part of her sentence, "... and leaps bizarrely from what is happening in Gaza to the alleged rude behaviour of Israeli tourists trekking in Nepal," it has to be said (and has been by Israeli commentators themselves - see my 4 & 8/12/08 posts Zionist S & M and A Blight Unto the Nations) that Israelis often travel overseas after military 'service' taking their 'baggage' with them. It surely does not take much to imagine, for example, how the troops who scrawled "Arabs need 2 die/Die you all/Make war not peace/1 is down, 999,999 to go"* on the walls of homes in Gaza might behave at home or overseas. Such psychopathology will likely follow those afflicted wherever they go. Linking Israeli behaviour in war and occupation with Israeli behaviour overseas is in no way "bizarre."

[*Amid dust & death, a family's story speaks for the terror of war, Rory McCarthy, guardian.co.uk, 19/1/09]

It is also worth a look at the contribution to the anti-Backman campaign of letter writers to The Australian Jewish News of 23/1/09. Of the 3 letters on the subject, not one mentioned Simons' "classic of anti-Semitic hate speech - that Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus." One was happy to dispense with the distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel, and mutter darkly about Backman's supposed "encouraging [of] anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment." Another accused him of "disingenuous recounting... inversions and omissions." And the third of "deliberately and perversely distorting the facts." Unsurprisingly, the sole concern of these correspondents was Israel: "Backman has blamed Israel for the London bombings, the Bali bombings and even the loss of the World Trade Centre..."; "Why does Backman put all his expectations on Israel?"; "Hamas has no objective other than the extermination of Israel." Even Jamie Hyams in his accompanying AIJAC-sponsored Media Week column banged on about - surprise - Israel: "Backman ludicrously claimed that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is 'at the nub' of the 9/11, Bali and London terror attacks and solely responsible for Muslim enmity for Israel." All were offended, of course - but not because of any anti-Semitism on Backman's part. It was his candid criticism of Israel that they found offensive. For them, and the professional lobbyists of AIJAC, criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. This false equation has been dubbed by Zionists the 'new anti-Semitism'.

The leading authority on the 'new anti-Semitism', American scholar Norman Finkelstein, dealt with the phenomenon in his typically brilliant study Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of anti-Semitism & the Abuse of History (2005). His analysis contextualises the Backman beat-up wonderfully:

"The latest production of Israel's apologists is the 'new anti-Semitism'. Just as Palestinians renewed their resistance to occupation and Israel escalated its brutal repression of the revolt, there was a vast proliferation of books, articles, conferences, and the like alleging that - in the words of Anti-Defamation League (ADL) national director Abraham Foxman - 'we currently face as great a threat to the safety and security of the Jewish people as the one we faced in the 1930s - if not a greater one'. As it happens, the allegation of a new anti-Semitism is neither new nor about anti-Semitism. Thirty years ago, ADL national leaders Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein published to great fanfare a study entitled The New Anti-Semitism, and less than a decade later ADL national leader Nathan Perlmutter... put out The Real Anti-Semitism in America, alleging yet again that the United States was awash in a new anti-Semitism. The main purpose behind these periodic, meticulously orchestrated media extravaganzas is not to fight anti-Semitism but rather to exploit the historical suffering of Jews in order to immunize Israel against criticism. Each campaign to combat the 'new anti-Semitism' has coincided with renewed international pressures on Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab territories in exchange for recognition from neighbouring Arab states." (pp 21-22)

"[T]he new anti-Semitism actually incorporates 3 main components: (1) exaggeration and fabrication, (2) mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, and (3) the unjustified yet predictable spillover from criticism of Israel to Jews generally." (p 66)

Of the first, Finkelstein demonstrates that "[t]he evidence of a new anti-Semitism comes mostly from organizations directly or indirectly linked to Israel or having a material stake in inflating the findings of anti-Semitism... These organizations stand in the same relationship to their respective host countries as Communist parties once did, except that they view Israel rather than Stalin's Russia as the Motherland... Many claims of anti-Semitism prove on investigation to be wildly overblown or fabricated." (p 66-67)

Of the second, he stresses that "... it is precisely this causal relationship [between the emergence of the new anti-Semitism and the latest flare-up in the Israel-Palestine conflict] that Israel's apologists emphatically deny: if Israeli policies, and widespread Jewish support for them, evoke hostility towards Jews, it means that Israel and its Jewish supporters themselves might be causing anti-Semitism; and it might be doing so because Israel and its Jewish supporters are in the wrong... If it's 'obscene' [as the ADL's Abe Foxman labeled George Soros' contention that "'anti-Semitism in Europe' was largely due to Sharon's policies and the behaviour of Jews"] for a Jew to say that Jews might be causing anti-Semitism, for a non-Jew to say it is - surprise, surprise - anti-Semitic." (pp 78-79)

Of the third component, he notes that "[i]n some quarters anger at Israel's brutal occupation has undoubtedly spilled over to an animus toward Jews generally. But however lamentable, it's hardly cause for wonder... Should it really surprise us if the cruel occupation by a self-declared Jewish state engenders a generalized antipathy to Jews?... if many Jews themselves repudiate any distinction between Israel and world Jewry, indeed, if they denounce such a distinction as itself anti-Semitic; if mainstream Jewish organizations lend uncritical support to every Israeli policy, however criminal, indeed, abetting the most virulent tendencies inside Israel and muzzling principled dissent outside Israel; if Israel defines itself juridically as the sovereign state of the Jewish people, and Jews abroad label any criticism of Israel anti-Jewish - the real wonder is that the spillover from antipathy toward Israel to Jews generally hasn't been greater." (pp 81-82)

Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah should be required reading for all who work in or study the media and its ways.

The Backman Beat-Up

"Alan Kennedy writes: In all her pieces on Michael Backman's column in The Age, a column the thought police have now eradicated from our cyber memory banks, Margaret Simons proceeds from the position that the column should not have run. Her proposition is that inexperienced people allowed it to run and they should have censored it. Now, if you don't accept that central proposition, you see the matter in a different light. I, unlike many, have read the column and apart from some clumsiness about Israeli backpackers, which he never fully explained - although on her blog Margaret Simons was able to provide a possible source for his views - it was a well constructed column. It was not anti-Semitic and all the anti-Semitic constrictions placed on it by the Jewish lobby in Australia and cheered on by The Australian are in their heads only. The controversy here is that it is controversial that the column ran. It was just past of the tapestry in this big issue. The controversy is that The Age felt pressured to apologise and that it pulled the column from its archives. Backman's own website which contained the column was cyber attacked and he had had to pull the column down. This is the obscenity in all this." (crikey.com.au, 23/1/09)

One fine day out in newspaper land a business journalist named Michael Backman was sufficiently moved by the bloodbath in Gaza, unlike so many in newspaper land who couldn't give a shit or even find Gaza on a map of the world for that matter, to put his thoughts on paper. They duly appeared as an article, Israelis are living high on US expense account, in The Melbourne Business Age of 17 January.

An impressionistic and commonsensical piece, Backman noted that Israel has become "very expensive to the US, which subsidises and arms it." The bleeding obvious, of course. Mearsheimer & Walt in their indispensible The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy point out that US largesse to Israel translates into a subsidy of $500 per capita per annum. (p 26)

But that, according to Backman, was only half the story, because, he suggested, we're all really paying for Israel: "We have paid for Israel's failure [to transform the Palestinians from enemies into friends] with bombs on London public transport, bombs in bars in Bali, and even the loss of the World Trade Centre Towers in New York." He went on: "It is not true that these outrages have occurred because certain Islamic fundamentalists don't like Western lifestyles and so plant bombs in response. Rather, it is Israel - or more correctly the treatment of the Palestinians - that is at the nub of these events... Pictures of distraught Gazan mothers beside the mutilated bodies of their children are circulating right now among Muslim communities worldwide. It is pictures like these that make them want to do something."

More of the bleeding obvious. As bin Laden himself said of 9/11 on 26/11/01: "The events of...[September 11] are merely a response to the continuous injustice inflicted upon our sons in Palestine, Iraq, Somalia, southern Sudan, and other places, like Kashmir." (from Nineteen Students in Messages to the World: the Statements of Osama bin Laden, edited by Bruce Lawrence, 2005, p 148) Or as Gabriel Kolko observed more recently: "... one thing is certain. Israel has killed at least 100 Palestinians for each of its own claimed losses, a vast disproportion that has produced horror in much of the world, creating a new cause which has mobilised countless numbers of people - possibly as strong as the Vietnam war movement. It has made itself a pariah nation - save in the United States and a few other countries. Above all, it has inflamed the entire Muslim world. As Bruce Riedal, a 'hawk' who has held senior posts in the CIA for nearly 30 years and is now one of President Obama's many advisers, recently wrote '...the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the central all-consuming issue for al-Qaeda', and 'Muslims feel a profound sense of wrong about the creation of Israel that infuses every aspect of their thinking and activities and has become the rallying cry used to convince the ummah of the righteousness of al-Qaeda's cause'. That was before Gaza. Much of the world now detests Israel's atrocities but most of it will live for many years to come with the consequences of Israel's atrocities. Muslim extremists will now become much stronger." (How to inflame the entire Muslim world, antiwar.com, 22/1/09)

Backman then delved into some historical background: "The enmity which many Muslims now feel for Israel has nothing to do with religion. The historical persecutors of the Jews have been Christians - their punishment for the death of Jesus. Jews and Muslims have lived in peace for hundreds of years in many parts of the Islamic world. When Catholic Spain and Portugal expelled its Jews, the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul invited them in. It is the Palestinian issue that has ruined all this." And those rockets - Palestinian of course, there are no others out in newspaper land - how are they to be explained? "Constantly slapping an opponent in the face, kicking him down to his knees, and watching him struggle in the dirt will not teach him to love or respect you. It teaches only hatred." "Hamas did not enjoy the support of all the people of Gaza. It does now. Why does Israel keep getting it wrong?" As I said, commonsensical.

Backman then drew a link between Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians and the behaviour of Israeli backbackers in Nepal, citing Nepalese claims of rudeness, arrogance, and a tendency to "argue over trifling amounts of money even though they clearly have means." This is hearsay, of course, but even worse claims have been made by Israelis themselves (see my 4/12/08 and 8/12/08 posts Zionist S & M and A Blight Unto the Nations). His conclusion: "Israel needs to change." And, in terms of how to interact with others, Backman suggested that Israelis might have something to learn from the good works of India's Parsees.

Well and good, another piece in the bag, Backman must have thought as he read his article on The Age's website. But others out in Israel lobby land, Zionist hawks who watch the scribblings of journalists - well, like hawks - lest a few home truths about the apple of their eye emerge into print, saw an opportunity and swooped. I say opportunity because, with the slaughter in Gaza, the Israeli apple has been looking decidedly wormy of late to all but Zionist hawks, and Backman's plain-speaking provided an excuse to both draw attention away from Gaza and target The Age for daring to deviate from the rigidly pro-Israel line laid down by the lobby. The technique? Smear Backman, and by implication The Age, as a purveyor of anti-Semitism, albeit in its supposed modern-day guise of criticism of Israel. And where better to do so than in Rupert's rag.

It was a highly orchestrated affair: "The Jewish community is considering legal action against The Age newspaper over 'poisonous' anti-Semitic commentary published over the weekend" (Jews slam 'racist' newspaper article, Angus Hohenboken), asserted a 'news' report in The Australian of 20 January. What, the entire Jewish community? And where was the adjective 'alleged', as in 'alleged poisonous anti-Semitic commentary'? Welcome to the wonderful world of The Australian. Read on and you find that "the Jewish community" reduces, in the body of the report, to John Searle (Jewish Community Council of Victoria), Danny Lam (Zionist Council of Victoria), Michael Danby (MP, Melbourne Ports) and Vic Alhadeff (Jewish Board of Deputies). IOW, the organised Israel lobby.

Lamm "condemned the article, saying it encapsulated 'centuries of hate speech against Jews in a few hundred words'." This because "the article stated that the historical persecution of Jews constituted punishment for the death of Jesus..." Backman's words ("The historical persecutors of the Jews have been Christians - their punishment for the death of Jesus") may have been a little bald - 'who claimed that it was' might have been preferable to the dash - but to suggest that he was somehow endorsing this Christian view is really stretching it. The stretch was followed by a sleight of hand: "... and suggested Israelis and Jews were disinterested [sic] in the welfare of others..." Backman used the word Israelis, not Jews: "Israel needs to change... the Parsees have peace and the Israelis do not." Danby "called on Backman to apologise for 'using the blood of 80 Australians for his bigoted theories'." His premise, of course, is that Backman approves of the Bali outrage. There is no evidence whatever for this. Positing a motive for such a terrorist outrage other than that approved by Zionist/neocon propagandists (that the Bali bombers were motivated solely by hatred for our western lifestyle) is clearly a flagrant breach of the party line and cannot be tolerated. Danby also took umbrage at "stereotypes in the article about young Israelis not paying bills in Nepal [feeding] into primitive prejudice about 'penny-pinching' Jews'." In doing so he misrepresents Backman who was merely quoting the Nepalese: "... they [Nepalis] say that the young Israelis are rude, arrogant, and argue over trifling amounts of money even though they clearly have means."

Hohenbeken's report was followed by an excerpt from Backman's piece in the Cut & Paste section of The Australian's letters page (The song remains the same: it's all the fault of Israel: Michael Backman, in the business pages of The Age, blames Islamist terrorism on arrogant, penny-pinching Israelis). Also in Cut & Paste was A letter in online publication Issues of Concern for Justice & Society which likened Backman's piece to the content of Der Sturmer , invoked Hitler's blaming of the Jews for Germany's losing of WW1, and spoke of "people like Backman who are too cowardly to say that they hate Jews, so they vilify Israel." Again, the smear: criticism of Israel is merely classical anti-Semitism in contemporary dress. But there was more: Tim Blair in his Daily Telegraph blog, contra Backman, felt obliged to point out that Hamas was lobbing rockets on Sderot because its "charter simply demands [Israel's] obliteration." And more: The Australian Jewish News reports "The Age's coverage has been the most problematic. Even worse was The Age's opinion balance." That, however, let the cat out of the bag as to what was really eating the Zionists - not Backman, but the more balanced Age coverage of the Gaza bloodbath (see my previous post). Finally, Cut & Paste quoted Mark Steyn in the National Review Online on the act of Jew-baiting, then and now to the effect that the Jew-baiting Mosleyites of the 30s had re-emerged in London as today's anti-Israel protestors.

The Australian was back at it the next day: "A former editor-in-chief of The Age [and one-time editor of the AJN Michael Gawenda] has accused the paper of 'journalistic failure' [Yes, that's right, Gawenda accuses The Age of journalistic failure in The Australian of all places!], blasting the newspaper for printing an 'inadequate' apology after it published a column espousing racist views... The apology said [it] was 'published in error. The Age does not in any way endorse the views of the columnist, apologises for the distress the column caused to many readers, particularly in the Jewish community and regrets publication of the column' it said." (Paper's apology over anti-Semitic article 'inadequate', Angus Hohenboken) But not even an apology from Age editor Paul Ramadge was enough for Gawenda (who'd earlier been sacked as an Age columnist for criticising Fairfax management). He wanted The Age to "tell its readers how it would prevent the publication of racist material in the future," and suggested that Ramadge initiate a "cultural" revolution at the paper.

The Backman beat-up was getting bigger than Ben Hur. There was also an editorial, Apologists for evil: Blaming Israel for terrorism completely misses the point, which suggested, like the AJN quote above, that The Age was really the problem ("... no amount of apologising can disguise the obvious: if Blackman's [sic] beliefs are not held by senior staff at the paper, why did his piece appear?"), rather than Backman ("There is no evidence that Blackman [sic] hates Jews, but people who do will endorse his arguments and continue to cloak their anti-Semitism in a faux concern for the Palestinians.").

Hello? Let's look at that again: there is no evidence that Backman hates Jews. That is, nothing he has written can be characterised as anti-Semitic, right? So he's not an anti-Semite, right? But didn't Hohenboken's report the day before refer to Backman's " 'poisonous' anti-Semitic commentary," weren't Searle and Lamm quoted as saying the article "encapsulated 'centuries of hate speech against Jews...'," and didn't Alhadaff say it "reflected 'the bigotry of rank anti-Semitism...' "? Didn't Cut & Paste conjure Der Sturmer and Hitler? I'm afraid they did. And, in the same issue as the editorial declaring that Backman was not an anti-Semite, isn't Gawenda banging on about "racist material"? Yep, afraid so. Basically, the editorial reduces to the contention that, while sometimes real anti-Semites may masquerade as pro-Palestinians, Backman is not in that category.

Should that not have been the end of the matter? But there's always more in The Australian, the special mission of which is the shielding of Israel from legitimate criticism and analysis by smearing it as anti-Semitism. Under the hypocritical title (this is The Australian remember), Broadsheet no place for narrow minds: anti-Semitism is a monster that will be difficult to stamp out globally, but it hopefully isn't too much to expect that it can at least be eliminated from the pages of The Age, one of the lobby's mates, Liberal senator Michael Ronaldson, accused Backman of "dredg[ing] up the most venerable of anti-Jewish biases," and "appear[ing] to endorse [the New Testament Book of Thessalonians in accusing] the Jews of murdering Jesus... " The remainder of Ronaldson's opinion piece is the usual Zionist filler ("Zionism, the national movement for Jewish sovereign self-determination") having nothing to do with the Backman beat-up.

To summarise: Neither Backman nor his article are in any way anti-Semitic. The article was, however, opportunistically seized on to peddle the false Zionist dogma that Judaism (a faith) and Zionism (a political ideology) are essentially one and the same (and that by extension Jews, all Jews, are Zionists), such that criticism/opposition to Zionism and its political embodiment, the state of Israel, is really just classical anti-Semitism in modern form. The general aim, of course, being to divert the public's attention from Israel's crimes in Gaza and blunt criticism of same. The problem for the Israel lobby, which effectively controls coverage of the conflict at The Australian, is the relative even-handed approach to the issue of its Fairfax rival The Age. The Age's independence of the lobby in this respect has long been an anathema and an affront to it, and Backman's imaginary crimes have been used in an attempt to put pressure on The Age's editorial line on Palestine/Israel.

But that was not the end of the matter. It was taken up on crikey.com by author and media specialist Margaret Simons. In The Michael Backman column: weird & unpleasant happenings at The Age (21/1/09), she faithfully echoes the lobby's inflammatory discourse, stating that "it's all about an anti-Semitic column by... Michael Backman... and about the bizarre 'apology' The Age had on page 2 yesterday." "How did such a racist column come to be published?" she asks. The absence of the qualifier 'allegedly/alleged' is glaring, and indicates that on matters of what constitutes anti-Semitism/racism, Simons naively relys on her Zionist lobbyist contacts. What I find bizarre in all this is that in Simons we seem to have a media expert who evinces little or no awareness of the fact that false allegations of anti-Semitism (or the threat of same) are often wielded by Israel-firsters to mute or curb criticism of Israel in the corporate media*. It is hard to believe she does not have some inkling of this state of affairs?

[*As the American journalist Harold R Piety put it: "The ugly cry of anti-Semitism is the bludgeon used by the Zionists to bully non-Jews into accepting the Zionist view of world events, or to keep silent." (They Dare to Speak Out: People & Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, Paul Findley, 1985, p 296)]

Simons writes that "part of the background [to the apology] is the instant action by the Jewish community, and in particular the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council and its chairman Mark Leibler and executive director Colin Rubenstein [who] spoke to... Ramadge on Monday morning, and he and Leibler met Ramadge face to face that afternoon. Rubenstein told me this morning that Ramadge 'happily agreed' that the column was offensive and outrageous, said its publication was due to a 'breakdown in editorial procedures' and promised that he had the affair 'under the microscope'. He also promised an unreserved apology." What is noteworthy here is Simons' unquestioning assumption that "the Jewish community" and AIJAC are one and the same. Does she mistakenly believe that the AIJAC heads are somehow elected by 'their' community? Does the ability of Leibler and Rubenstein to get a same day, face to face meeting with the editor, and an 'on the spot' apology not pique her interest as an objective observer of the media scene? Does she not wonder at Ramadge's reported 'Yes, sir, no, sir, 3 bags full, sir' response? Does she not feel the need to question the assumption that, if Ramadge really did concede that Backman's article was "offensive and outrageous," then it must have been offensive and outrageous? Does it occur to her that there are real implications for the right of free speech in all this?

Simons goes on to examine the process by which the article ran and finds that at the time some among the Age staff "argued strongly in favour of [Backman's] publication" on the grounds that "pieces critical of Muslims often got a run" and that "The Age should not be seen to be frightened of the 'Jewish lobby', and Israeli treatment of Palestinians and actions in Gaza were legitimate topics of debate." Frightened of the 'Jewish lobby'? What a revealing insight into the pressure that those trying to report and comment on the Palestine problem are under. Why doesn't Simons explore this?

But no, she has no doubts: "Here's what I think. The column is clearly offensive, and also weird... It makes the classic logical error of the racist - generalising from the particular deeds of an individual or group to the race as a whole. It manages to blame Jews for Muslim extremism and violence [I repeat, Backman is not talking about Jews as such, but Israelis], talks carelessly about that classic of anti-Semitic hate speech - that Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus [Zionist conflation of Jews with Zionists is not careless talk?] - and leaps bizarrely from what is happening in Gaza to the alleged [her first and only use of this invaluable qualifier] rude behaviour of Israeli tourists... I think the Backman column shouldn't have been published. It's a pretty vile and silly piece." There really is only one word for this - bollocks!

Overwhelming Pro-Israel Bias

Just how pro-Israel is the Australian print media? In a word, extremely. But don't take my word for it, examine the evidence. Tendentious reporting aside, what follows is a list of the opinion pieces (inc. editorials) on Israel's murderous frolic in Gaza from The Australian (News Ltd/national), The Sydney Morning Herald (Fairfax/NSW), and The Age (Fairfax/Victoria) from 29/12/08 - 21/1/09. The opinion pieces for each paper are divided into pro-Israel items and those of a more critical bent. The list for each paper is followed by a summary comment:-

Pro-Israel opinion pieces in The Australian (29/12/08 - 21/1/09)

29/12: Hamas betrays the Palestinians (editorial)
30/12: Crush Hamas & brave the backlash (Michael Oren)
31/12: Global activists defend terrorists by condemning Israel (Ralph Peters); Sound & fury... & it still signifies nothing (David Aaronovitch)
1/1/: Lessons for us all in Gaza bloodshed (Mirko Bagaric); Don't stop until Hamas is destroyed (Martin Peretz)
3/1: Israel is not the cause of terror (editorial); An honourable warrior against despicable tactics (Alan Dershowitz); Common ground riven by cultural gulf (Philip Mendes)
5/1: Hamas has the power to stop the shooting (editorial); Sorry history beyond today's violent images (Colin Rubenstein); Stopping the rockets a strategic necessity (Greg Sheridan)
6/1: It's about peace, not destruction of Hamas (Yuval Rotem); Failure is not an option for Israel this time (Shmuel Rosner)
7/1: West must guarantee resolution with Gaza (editorial); A sadly familiar case of with us or against us (Assa Doron)
8/1: Stay the course & bust the Hamas balloon (Bret Stephens); BBC parrots UN-Hamas as Palestinians kill their own (Melanie Phillips)
9/1: Diplomacy can stop the shooting in Gaza (editorial); Propaganda does nothing for peace (Niv Horesh); Quote from Spectator website (Melanie Phillips)
10/1: Israel just wants to live in peace (Daniel Finkelstein)
12/1: Empathy for sale (David Burchell)
15/1: Critics of Israel giving voice to anti-Semitism (Frank Furedi)
16/1: Hamas in a state of denial (Bret Stephens); The real Mid-East conflict is between nationalists & Islamists (Barry Rubin)
19/1: Lasting solution for Gaza must be found (editorial)

Total: 27

Opinion pieces critical of Israel in The Australian (29/12/08 - 21/1/09)

31/12: The injustice of Israel's heavy hand (Amin Saikal)
3/1: Disaster of Israel's making (Sonja Karkar)
5/1: Middle East bullies on road to nowhere (Joseph Wakim)
12/1: Quote from Wall Street Journal (George Bisharat)
13/1: Israel's war queers the pitch for peace (Neil Clark)

Total: 5

Comment: With 32 opinion pieces over 24 days, you can see the extent of The Australian's fixation on the issue. And with 84% of its opinion pieces in favour of Israel, you can see the overwhelming pro-Israel bias on its op-ed pages. It is reasonable to assume that the remainder were included only by way of lip service to a more balanced coverage.

Pro-Israel opinion pieces in The Sydney Morning Herald (29/12/08 - 21/1/09)

30/12: Israel, Gaza & Huntington (editorial); A lasting peace needs more than slogans (Con Coughlin)
2/1: Throw away the moral blinkers (Mirko Bagaric)
6/1: Israel crosses the line (editorial)
8/1: Israel is entitled to respond (Vic Alhadaff)
10/1: Breaking the cycle of violence needs a different intelligence (editorial); Rebuild the ruins: America's role in the Middle East (Martin Indyk)
13/1: It's too easy to blame Jews (Paul Sheehan)
19/1: Obama is walking a high wire (Paul Sheehan)

Total: 9

Opinion pieces critical of Israel in The SMH (29/12/08 - 21/1/09)

8/1: And now who would trust Israel? (Sara Dowse)
12/1: Israel must abide by international law (Izzat Abdulhadi)

Total: 2

Comment: Of the SMH's 11 opinion pieces over 24 days (only 1/3rd of The Australian's coverage), 82% were pro-Israel. It is fair to assume that the remainder constitute only a token attempt at balance.

Pro-Israel opinion pieces in The Age (29/12/08 - 21/1/09)

31/12: The tragedy when a regime uses its citizens as tools of war (Fania Oz-Salzberger)
2/1: Inadvertent martyrs to the cause of Hamas (David Bernstein)
7/1: Gaza: the great divide 2 (Shai Hermesh)
16/1: A free press comes with responsibilities (Yuval Rotem)
21: Negotiating with terrorists is impossible (Mark Leibler)

Total: 5

Opinion pieces critical of Israel in The Age (29/12/08 - 21/1/09)

30/12: I dream of another Israel (Uri Avnery)
1/1: The deadly consequences of the games that Israel plays (Michael Shaik)
3/1: Killing civilians will not make Israel safer (editorial)
7/1: Gaza: the great divide 1 (Khalid Meshaal)
16/1: Israel's actions foster extremism (Malcolm Fraser)
17/1: Israelis are living high on US expense account* (Michael Backman) [*Actually in The Melbourne Business Age]

Total: 6

Comment: The Age's opinion coverage (11) was almost 50/50.

The SMH: Puerile & Pusillanimous

Is the position of letters editor at The Sydney Morning Herald reserved for the especially clueless? Listen to this Postscript from Mike Ticher commenting on letter writers' responses to the carnage in Gaza: "As ever most letters focused on moral rights and wrongs: who did what 40 or 60 years ago, who had or had not broken international law and was or was not justified in certain actions. Those certainly should be debated, but it would make a change to have a more pragmatic debate about what might realistically work to change the situation." (17/1/09)

Ah yes, right and wrong, history, international law - so boring, so yesterday. And yet some letter writers actually took the bait - no doubt allowing Ticher to bin other writers who likely had more of a grasp of the moral, historical, and legal background to the issue. (I do not, of course, include the Fishmans, Lewis's and Burds in this category.)

Don Brown of Narrabeen tried his best to descend to Ticher's challenge, grumbling relevantly that neglecting the history of the conflict was "as difficult as discussing US-Muslim relations without mentioning the twin towers." His letter climaxed with "The power imbalance, both militarily and diplomatically, is so great that Israel believes it is impervious to any criticism, let alone any punitive action. It has developed nuclear weapons, bombed Syria, built walls and settlements and ignored the claims of the Palestinians for all the long years of the occupation." So far, so good, but Ticher's puerile terms of reference reduced Don to this nonsense: "Perhaps if the immense military aid to Israel were to be totally replaced by a program of building schools, clinics and sporting facilities to be shared by the people of both Israel and the occupied territories, some progress could be made." (19/1/09)

Bruce Weatherlake of Bli Bli, Qld wrote relevantly about the need for Israel to allow the Palestinian right of return, but, nobbled by Ticher's terms of reference, plunged into irrelevance with "All Australians... have been heartened to see the great camaraderie among different members of the South African cricket team; something unimaginable 25 years ago," and concluded with this inane Obamarism: "Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game." (19/1/09)

Guys, guys, this is so not a game! Don't allow yourself to be diverted by know-nothings like Ticher. Here are the kinds of things you could have written about, courtesy of Australian academics John Docker & Ned Curthoys' newly formed Committee for the Dismantling of Zionism: Statement of Aims:-

1) In the Ghandhian tradition of non-violence, the committee stands for the peaceful co-existence of Israeli Jews and Palestinians within a unified democratic state where everyone is a full citizen irrespective of religion or ethnicity.
2) The committee supports the view of Sir Isaac Isaacs, a Jewish jurist and former Governor General of Australia in the 1940s, that the very idea of a Jewish state is absurd, unjust, and untimately untenable, since it makes all the non-Jewish citizens necessarily and inevitably second-class citizens.
3) In the Gandhian traditon of non-violence, we support the cultural and economic boycott of Israel.
4) The Jewish Right [sic: Law] of Return is a weapon in the Zionist colonization and occupation of Palestinian lands. Accordingly, we urge that the world wide Jewish diaspora should renounce the Right of Return.
5) We urge support for UN Resolution 194 which declares the unconditional right of the Palestinian refugees expelled from Palestine in 1948 to return to their homes.
6) We observe that Zionist Israel is guilty of genocidal policies as defined in Article II (c) of the Genocide Convention, in that it intends to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic group by "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." By "physical destruction" we mean that Zionist Israel transparently seeks to destroy Palestinian society and remove Palestinians from their ancestral lands in order to Judaize those same lands.
7) The world wide Zionist organisations are also guilty, in terms of the Genocide Convention, Article III (e), of "complicity in genocide." (From antony loewenstein.com/blog/ 5/1/09)

To add insult to injury, the SMH (along with its Ziocon rival, The Australian), on the same day as the above letters, failed to cover the third and largest of Sydney's massive anti-Israel demonstrations. Contrast this with the excellent coverage in Melbourne's Age - Thousands march in Melbourne against Gaza war, Andra Jackson, 19/1/09 - a piece, moreover, which actually quoted some of those who spoke at the rally, and, in a revolutionary new journalistic development, even one of the demonstrators!

By turning its back on the thousands of Sydneysiders who flooded the streets of Sydney's CBD for block after block to express their solidarity with the victims of Israeli genocide in Gaza, the SMH reveals itself yet again to be more of a media firewall acting to block and deflect, rather than a serious newspaper in the business of reporting and investigating contemporary trends and developments. Whether this failure to report arises out of cowardice or conviction, the SMH as currently configured, deserves our contempt.

Another indication of the strength of popular feeling against Israeli war crimes emerged in The Sun-Herald of 18/1/09. In response to that publication's airing of the views of federal Labor MP Julia Irwin (one of the tiny minority of Australian politicians with the courage to speak up for the Palestinians) the week before, columnist Kerry-Anne Walsh wrote as follows: "Ms Irwin's article generated a greater flood of correspondence in The Sun-Herald than any issue in recent years, the overwhelming majority in support. What emerged - strongly - in their views was a yearning for politicians to break ranks and voice opinions." (Toe the line, don't step on any) Walsh followed this with a selection of these emails. Needless to say, the Israel lobby, in the person this time of Robert Goot of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), had obtained a right of reply - Just defence despite death toll. What a pity that his space on the paper's Comment page wasn't given over entirely to that "flood of correspondence."

World public opinion is turning decisively against the rogue state of Israel, and rightly so. The bulk of the Australian corporate media (with the possible exception of The Age), however, still hasn't got it.