The ABC’s new flagship forum failed to interrogate key claims and perspectives on antisemitism, leaving major gaps in a critical national debate.

The inaugural program of the much-heralded successor to ABC TV Q&A, the _ABC National Forum_, on 9 March was a sad damp squib.

While a program focusing exclusively on antisemitism in the wake of the atrocity at Bondi was not unreasonable, the intense political attention singling out antisemitism as the most significant of the varieties of racism in Australia remained unexamined. The over-the-top weaponisation of antisemitism to silence Palestinian voices and experience and suppress our democratic rights was ignored.

The program was a bland rehearsal of the tired narratives of eternal Jewish suffering and entitled return to the ‘historic Jewish homeland’ without the differences among Jews being represented. Only varieties of Zionist views were included.

Where were the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews who condemn Zionism as blasphemy? Where was the Jewish Council of Australia which has made such inroads into the public discourse since its inception just two years ago?

Even the most liberal view represented, that of the New Israel Fund, referred to Israel’s founding document which calls for equality for all. This ignores the facts of Israel’s history – the discriminatory legal system, the massacres, the ongoing dispossession, ethnic cleansing, discrimination and oppression and now genocide.

The moderator, David Speers, failed to probe or challenge the dark silences and the actual misrepresentations in the discussion. There was no questioning the claim that antisemitism had ‘skyrocketed ‘in the two years since the Bondi massacre. Clearly there has been a rise in both Islamophobic and antisemitic incidents since that horror, but the constant elision of anti-Israel or anti-Zionist statements or actions with antisemitism distorts the whole discussion and grossly amplifies the extent of antisemitism.

The tired claim by the academic Avril Alba that ‘anti-Zionism is the New Antisemitism’ is straight out of the Israeli propaganda handbook to deflect criticism of Israel and silence the Palestinians and their advocates. The claim that 1200 Israelis were murdered by Hamas on 7 October 2023 was not challenged. Many of those killed were Israeli military and many were victims of Israeli large scale firepower. The IDF was willing to sacrifice Israel’s own citizens in order to kill the Palestinian insurgents, just as they were were willing to sacrifice Israeli captives to obliterate Gaza.

Speers didn’t challenge the Executive Council of Australian Jewry Co-CEO Alex Ryvchin’s definition of Zionism as the ‘self-determination of the Jewish people’, as if it didn’t involve the dispossession, massacre and ongoing oppression of the Palestinians in a state privileging Jews over all other citizens.

The program was riddled with these dark silences. When Speers asked if criticism of the Netanyahu government was antisemitic, he completely ignored the fact that the root of the conflict is the Zionist project itself – a project to dispossess and subjugate the Palestinians to retain Jewish supremacy in Israel. It is deemed antisemitic to criticise or question that.

It is notable that the Comments section on the ABC National Forum page is switched off. No doubt ABC management is aware of the rage it’s pallid, irresponsible programme would provoke.

When will the ABC learn that the obligation of good journalism, especially public journalism, is not just to present all ‘sides’, but to get at the truth? It should not give a platform to falsehoods, distortion and propaganda without challenge. The cowardice of the ABC in the face of the Israel lobby and the Murdoch press is shameful and fails us all.