The peace activist the Jewish News rejects
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Dr Jeff Halper is an American born, Israeli-based professor of anthropology, author and co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). This 2006 Nobel Peace Prize nominated group resists the Israeli policy of demolishing Palestinian homes in the illegally occupied West Bank. It uses non-violence and civil obedience. In 2008 Halper sailed as the only Jew on a protest boat from Cyprus to Gaza to highlight Israel’s collective punishment of the Strip. He told an audience in Canada in January that, “The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is not because there was a hurricane. There are [Western] countries that are creating starvation in Gaza”. Halper has just arrived in Australia for a two-week national tour, appeared on yesterday’s Radio National Breakfast and ABC Radio PM, with much more media to come, and will be speaking at universities and public meetings across the country. But you won’t be reading about his Sydney events in the Australian Jewish News (AJN). The publisher has refused to run ads by Jews Against the Occupation (JAO) that simply inform people of Halper’s schedule. The group was given no reason for the decision except that the publisher had instructed the paper not to allow the ads to appear. Crikey has seen the ad and it only contains titles and locations of the lectures and contact phone numbers. Today’s Sydney Morning Herald also confirms that a planned talk at a leading Sydney liberal synagogue was cancelled due to pressure from the Zionist lobby. I contacted the AJN’s National Editor, Ashley Browne, to shed more light on the decision to block the ad. He said that the paper was not obliged to run the ads and refused ads all the time. When pushed, he acknowledged that he supported the publisher, Polaris Media’s Robert Magid — who recently claimed in the paper that the late English playwright Harold Pinter was a “political extremist” for daring to criticise Israel — to cut ads that would “offend significant members of the community, especially subscribers”. I asked him how an ad that simply listed a handful of events would be “offensive”, but he gave no further information. Magid told the Herald that he rejected the ad because he didn’t “like the crowd who are bringing him out.” He went on: “I am familiar with them. They use their Judaism to bash other Jews and issues associated with the Jewish community.” I queried Browne why the paper seemed happy to run irregular ads from the fundamentalist, West Bank settler movement. “Nobody has ever complained about those ads,” he replied. Clearly the message of the colonial project in the West Bank — a recent EU report found yet more evidence of illegal development around East Jerusalem — is less “offensive” than a mild-mannered Jewish peace activist. This latest example of censorship follows a long history of the mainstream Jewish establishment being fearful over honestly debating Israel/Palestine (something we’ve seen over the last days in the US over the forced resignation of Israel critic Charles W Freeman from the post of Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Read more here. It’s hard to disagree with leading British Jewish thinker, Antony Lerman, who wrote in last week’s London Independent that until Jews stop always seeing themselves as victims, peace in the Middle East is impossible. It’s a shame the AJN doesn’t take its democratic responsibility seriously. Debate over the Middle East is raging overseas and new, more moderate voices, are emerging. Such perspectives are largely absent from the country’s only national, Jewish paper. Instead, the AJN ran a piece last week by novelist Alan Gold, arguing against the UN’s upcoming anti-racism conference, Durban II: “And now that the storm clouds are gathering over Geneva, we can only look on in horror, and feel as our parents or grandparents must have felt in 1933.” Memo to the AJN: Hitler died in 1945. Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based journalist and author |
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9 Comments
Thanks Anthony for providing more clear evidence of the intellectually & morally corrupt Australian neocon Zionist movement.
They are a disgrace to their Australian citizenship.
Free speech was also banned in Nazi Germany.
The British Medical Journal, hardly radical or left-leaning, ran into an orchestrated campaign after publishing an article about the perils of being critical of Israel. For those interested, read the BMJ editorial at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/338/feb24_2/b500
‘Kevin Charles Herbert’ - The article appeared on page 3 Sydney edition, page 1 Melbourne edition. Obviously Lowenstein just assumed without doing any fact checking.
’ Brian Mitchell ’ : or whomever you are…if you don’t understand the bitter irony attached to Antony Loewenstein’s sign off, then I’m afarid you’ll never understand where he’s coming from.
I wonder where you’re ’ coming from ’ ?
One word describes the attitude of successive Israeli governments and, apparently, the AJN: “arrogance”. So long as the US continues its discreditable policy of support for Israel, no matter if it demolishes Palestinian homes or continues with unabated and illegal theft of Palestinian land, Israel will continue to act arrogantly and with impunity. But in the long run both the US and Israel will regret this.
’ Ted McPhee ’ : so are you confirming that the said article appeared in the printed version of AJN?
“But you won’t be reading about his Sydney events in the Australian Jewish News (AJN)”.
What’s this then? http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=7185.
Best to do a bit of basic checking first mate.
Without commenting on the substance of the article I’m intrigued by Lowenstein’s “Memo to the AJN: Hitler died in 1945” which follows the AJN’s report that German Jews felt horror in 1933.
Hitler was elected Chancellor (Prime Minister) of Germany in 1933 on an anti-semitic platform. Before long the Reichstag (parliament) had mysteriously burned down, Jewish shops were being destroyed and Jews bashed in the streets by brown shirts, the National Socialists’ private militia.
Of course German Jews would have looked upon Hitler’s 1933 eletion with horror.
Hitler’s death in 1945 would, conversely, have been reason for celebration.
So why the smart-arse “Memo to the AJN”?
It makes you want to pewk when you read in the following excerpt by Charles Freeman, explainingthe evil campaign by the US Far Right Pro Israel lobby to discredit his appointment as Chairman of the US National Intelligence Council:
” It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.
The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.
There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. “
How much longer will Frank Lowy et al support these evil criminals who undermine US democratic institutions, & threaten Israel’s existence?