Pearls and Irritations

The Palestine/Israel narrative in Australia is skewed by the influence of underground forces.

Pro-Israeli forces are powerful in attempting to shape the narrative in favour of Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide and quash opposing views. In its failure to robustly report the plight of Gaza, the legacy media is also adding to the manipulation of the public debate.

Despite the fact that for 11 months the horror of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza has been exposed daily on social media, the majority remains ignorant of the more than 40,000 mostly women and children who have been slaughtered and the nearly 100,000 who have been injured.

There are few pictures of beheaded and maimed children in our papers or on our screens. Similarly, the mainstream media does not highlight international pictures of the one million people who marched against the genocide in London recently, nor of the tens of thousands in Israel demonstrating, calling for a ceasefire.

Those active in opposition to the genocide have become alert to the limitations of democracy at home – the hopeless tapping at unyielding political doors, the lack of coverage of the orderly, weekly pro-Palestinian marches, the government’s late-to-the party call for a ceasefire and mealy-mouthed words of concern, the upending of the playing field in favour of Israel’s spokespeople.

Together with the frustration of powerlessness is a growing concern about the power of the pro-Israeli lobby working to suppress voices crying out on behalf of Palestinians. The lobbying runs the spectrum from a WhatsApp group to covert threats to withdraw patronage from arts funding, to influence on employers and, more recently, to a frontal attack on the independence of universities. We do not see who these advocates meet, though we do know some are instrumental in invites to Australian politicians and journalists to visit Israel for duchessing.

In the US and in Britain, the reach of the pro-Israel lobby ranges from funding political campaigns, to disrupting conferences, to bringing pressure to bear on pro-Palestinian journalists. In Australia, we can follow the breadcrumbs of numerous pro-Israeli actions that have been influential in keeping the lid on the pressure cooker of dissent. Examples are many. In Australia, writing in Pearls and Irritations in August, Stuart Rees and Greg Barnes said: “Zionist bullying in Australian politics is apparent in accusations of antisemitism against those who might dare to criticise Israel’s death and destruction in Palestine…”. The accusation of antisemitism in the public debate is like a magic light sabre used to suppress criticism of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, a light sabre that wrongly conflates opposition to Israel’s slaughter with support for Hamas.

In the arts threatened withdrawal of patronage from wealthy benefactors seems to be a key piece of ammunition.

• The Adelaide Writer’s Festival was the canary in the coal mine in February 2023, long before Hamas’ attack on Israel. Two Palestinian writers had been invited to attend. As the well-respected Louise Adler said in an ABC interview, the Israeli lobby didn’t approve. There was a barrage of letters to the board, letters to newspapers and demands on sponsors to withdraw.
• Fast forward to the Sydney Theatre Company. In December 2023, three actors in the company’s production of Chekov’s The Seagull wore the Palestinian keffiyeh at curtain call. Members of the Jewish community were outraged. There were resignations from the STC board and withdrawal of donor support.
• More recently, in August 2024, the managing director of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra quit after a vote of no-confidence from musicians. It followed the controversial cancellation of pianist, Jayson Gillham, because he wanted to devote a piece of music to the memory of 100 journalists slaughtered in the Gaza war.

Examples of people losing their jobs are not so clearcut – direct or perceived pressure could be the trigger.

The fact that in a few instances “safety” is given as the reason for termination would indicate that fear of dissent could be a motivator.

• In March 2024, authors Omar Sakr, Alison Evans and Jinghua Qian, all of whom had all been vocal critics of Israel’s war on Gaza, were surprised when they were informed their youth workshops had been cancelled by the State Library of Victoria a week before they were due to give them. Safety of participants was given as the reason.
• In August 2024, Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi said in the House that senior management of the Human Rights Commission viewed the Palestinian identity of lawyer Sara Saleh as a risk, and leaked information about her resignation from the commission to a right-wing shock jock. Saleh, who was employed as a legal researcher at the commission, was one of at least seven staff in that previous quarter to quit alleging concern over the commission’s treatment of staff who expressed support for Palestinians, Faruqi said.
• Michael West Media, an independent news source, reported in August that Stella Latham, a Jewish support worker was terminated from her position at Sacred Heart Mission in St Kilda after four years. She was accused of “serious misconduct” and of posing a “serious and imminent risk to the health and safety of others” based on her expressions of solidarity with Palestine. Her photo collecting donations for Gazan children was posted in a Facebook group of more than 11,000 members of Victoria’s Jewish community. Zionist lobbyist Dvir Abramovich reposted the photo on his Facebook page, identifying Stella as a Sacred Heart Mission employee. Abramovich’s page often calls for Zionists to take action against those who support Palestine.
• What lay behind the sacking of two staff from Black Star Bakery for wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh is unknown.

Media commentators aren’t ring-fenced either

• In December 2023, Antoinette Lattouf had her casual contract terminated by the ABC because of pro-Palestinian social media posts, the ABC management received strong undisclosed representation to terminate her. WhatsApp messages from some members of a 156-strong group called Lawyers for Israel emerged detailing the constant pressure on ABC management to deal with Lattouf. The group coordinated a letter-writing campaign calling for her to be sacked and hinted at legal action if she was not.
• In March 2024, at a meeting about the ABC’s coverage of the conflict, staff claimed coverage displayed a pro-Israel bias, such as by accepting “Israeli facts and figures with no ifs or buts” while questioning Palestinian viewpoints and avoiding the word “Palestine’”itself. They especially cited the bias in language used to describe each party’s actions.
• Mary Kostakidis is a former SBS journalist. She is active in posting on social media about the atrocities being wrought on Palestinians, their homes, schools and hospitals in defiance of the international rule of law. In July this year Alon Cassuto, CEO of the Zionist Federation of Australia, a dual citizen of Australia and Israel, lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission against Kostakidis alleging support for the ethnic cleansing of Jews contained in two retweets said to contain ‘extreme propaganda and hateful material’.

Universities too are under the gun.

• In June this year, Julian Leeser MP introduced a Bill to establish a Commission of inquiry into antisemitism at Australian universities. The Bill asks the commission to “consider whether universities have adopted and implemented an appropriate definition of antisemitism for all purposes such as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition”. The highly contested IHRA definition conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism.

While the MSM here quibble over whether it is actually a genocide and fail to interrogate history, even Israeli daily Haaretz is tougher on the abuse of human rights and destruction wrought by the Netanyahu regime than we see here. It details the illegal assaults in the Occupied Territories, the prisoner rapes in Israeli prisons, Netanyahu’s games, and the anger of so many Israeli citizens.

While good journalists in Israel bring attention to the brutality of the Zionist regime, here in Australia the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese quietly invited the staunchest of the Zionist supporters, the Leibler father and son, stalwarts of the Zionist Federation of Australia, to dinner with him at the Lodge on 4 June.

He, who once spoke against the oppression of the Palestinian peoples, appointed an antisemitism ambassador who is busy staffing-up on the public purse – four so far. Many await the promised protector of Muslim interests with growing cynicism.

He, who knows that recognition of the Palestinian state is part of Labor policy, has been complicit in a mealy-mouthed statement that all that is contingent on a ceasefire agreement which Netanyahu continues to delay giving his troops time to massacre more children and spread their violence illegally to the West Bank.

The Israeli lobby is active from the top down. Its reach in countering dissent is quiet and effective. Democracy would be served better if the reach and actions of the pro-Israeli lobby were visible for all to see.

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