Intense lobbying work by right-wing operatives in Australia is giving false impressions about how Jewish people are thinking. Dr Lee Duffield finds out some facts instead.
ARE AUSTRALIAN JEWS baying to shut down debate on the Middle East, so that only the radical right-wing Netanyahu Government in Israel can be believed in and supported?
If gullible enough, you might have got that idea, from the way “Jewish” interests have been getting represented in news media across the board.
Except that 500 Jewish Australians have come forward, taking a full page in the Sydney Morning Herald, on 25 February, to denounce “ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip.
Checking some of the names there on a search engine suggested a broad base, several from business, professions and arts, a common enough profile for Jewish Australians: an anthropologist, novelist, pianist, psychologist, a psychoanalyst, social worker, some lawyers, a theatre director, union organiser, research chemist, medical researcher, accountant, public servant, funding administrator and a practitioner of alternative medicine, among many others.
It is plainly not a lobby run by communications professionals and maybe not so ideologically driven; they straightforwardly interpret the devastation of Palestine territories as ethnic cleansing on the way and object to it.
Working on mainstream media
Others, definitely ideological in approach, are the ones featuring much more in mainstream media, managing and manipulating in a professional way, to build, even enforce support for the Netanyahu campaign.
There are media outlets, especially in the News Corp press who deliberately seek out a radical right-wing view in any event. In other cases including the ABC, required to be fair, the problem may be a certain journalistic incompetence, getting taken in by lobbyists who purport to be “community spokespeople” and failing to know, or tell audiences, exactly who those “spokespersons” are.
So we get, so far, mainly a one-story treatment that easily could come from Likud, the government party in Israel, and its radical religionist partners.
Attentive media users would see how it works, where a well-organised and highly partisan lobby within the Jewish community, likely linked up with Likud in Israel and the Liberals in Australia, has been pushing the only-one-story option. Certain organisations seek influence, to get themselves quoted as representing the whole community and they will introduce individual supporters to journalists, to be interviewed on television as typical plain folks.
Three-point media line
What is the line they want followed?
There is one chief angle, on the bombardment of Gaza and Israeli incursions into Lebanon and the West Bank, being that these are necessary to clean out Islamist terror groups and make the state of Israel safe.
One other project is to vilify and harm perceived opponents including members of the Labor Government. A third project is to demand especially draconian measures against any “Jew-baiters” who are found, as measures that may be intended as preventive and definitely will be vengeful.
Gaza campaign — worse than the Blitz
As the storyline goes, the outrage of the border incursion and pogrom on 7 October 2023 is registered as a self-denunciation by degenerate “Arabs”, reviving terrible memories of cruel persecution in the Jewish soul, a situation demanding that Israel, the state depicted as incorporating all Jews who ever lived, should settle it with “them” once and for all.
The resultant bombing of Gaza has been worse than the German Blitz against England in 1940, in terms of civilian deaths, over 35,000 civilians and destruction of homes. Unlike London, the area had no air defence and they had not been able to evacuate the children.
Attack politics
There has been the staged denunciation of the Australian Government voting with 156 other states for a United Nations resolution last December, supporting the International Court of Justice, that Israel should now withdraw forces and not attempt ‘demographic or territorial change’ — no ethnic cleansing.
Israel and the United States were two out of eight “no” votes; seven abstained. The Australian Government said the resolution would support peace, through a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine — for many years the bipartisan position of Australia. The lobbying reached its most partisan stage, accusing the Government of “selling out” Jewish Australians, so Labor could get Arab votes in Sydney.
Cannot ignore civilian deaths
The lobby – Likud, Liberals, selected or ostensibly representative community organisations – is silent on the civilian deaths in Gaza and more recently the West Bank. In any humanitarian reckoning, these lost souls and personal tragedies must count. In all logic, no position can be justified, unless these are owned up to, fully taken into the equation, discussed and evaluated.
Attacks on individuals
Certain controlling actions have been forcefully attempted. In the case of Antoinette Lattouf, the radio announcer suspended by the ABC, lobbyists got, or exploited access to senior managers to get her removed.
Similarly, when Randa Abdel-Fattah, the Islamic Australian writer, had a novel set in Gaza in 2021 accepted by the University of Queensland Press, the parent university came under pressure from well-placed lobbyists to block its publication.
The targeting was done because both women had previously called the Gaza campaign a genocide against Palestinians. It was not about what Lattouf was currently saying on air, but about her being on air at all; it was not about censoring Abdel-Fattah’s new book, it was about blocking her altogether. They wanted to stop these women from getting work.
Firebombing, graffiti, harassment on Australian streets
On the antisemitic outbursts – firebombings, graffiti, insults and harassment in the streets, convoys of goons driving through Bondi – the lobby groups’ main demand is to have exceptional and separate crimes, carrying very heavy penalties for vandalism or assault with an anti-Jewish inspiration and extra-judicial deportation of offenders who are migrants.
It is standard easy-solutions fare used in populist campaigns, that does not get to the causes of the problem. The trouble being very serious, it demands more work to stop it. It is evidently from two sources stirred up by social media: embittered and disaffected young Moslems defying Islamic community leaders who speak against it and right-wing gangs parading as Nazis.
Diversity of community bodies — not just one loud voice
Three Jewish organisations have been getting heard in the news media at different levels of success, none subscribing to the idea of genocide. Violent ruffians in Israel, there are many, would not care about the mass killing of Palestinians, but it is not state policy to destroy a whole population.
On the other hand, a second Nakba looks very possible, the forceful driving-out of Palestinians from the land of Palestine, as in 1948, to become a diaspora — encouraged by the wild musings of the American President, Donald Trump. What might the Israeli Government do with more of a free hand, once all the hostages are accounted for?
Australian Jewish Association
The Australian Jewish Association is the partisan right-wing one making the most noise, speaking the loudest, for “all Jews” in the right-wing media. It mixes religion into politics, self-described as ‘guided by authentic Torah values, as well as centre-right, conservative Australian values’.
The AJA gets more radical right than centre right, lining up with the Netanyahu Government, working on the notion that that government, the state of Israel and being Jewish are more or less the same thing. Adherents are prone to use the cheap shot employed by Netanyahu himself, where critics get called antisemitic.
Networking and getting access to people at the top is a hallmark. The association’s podcast presenter is an indicative figure: South African-born Teneille Murray as a new graduate ‘began her career in the Sydney Jewish Community after spending time furthering her education in Israel’, held positions with the Zionist Council and Israel Business Club, and is a board member of Liberal Friends of Israel.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry is the long-standing and recognised representative body.
The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies is an important constituent, made up of 55 community organisations with an elected plenum of 162 members. Judging from its publications, its approach while recognising the seriousness of the crisis, definitely not “soft” on Jewish defence, is dignified not hysterical — not so narrowly partisan.
The Board has organised an online service for reporting and documenting acts of antisemitism. It appoints spokespersons to comment on the news, but it appears stopping short of campaigning on radical agendas. It has condemned attacks on Moslem Australians.
Jewish Council of Australia
Third is the Jewish Council of Australia, which has broken ranks with the idea of looking away when Israel puts itself in the wrong.
Its statement in part:
We are committed to the values of tikkun olam (repairing the world), calling out injustice... and promoting debate.
We reject the assertion that Jews and the State of Israel are one and the same, or that all Jewish people support, without criticism, the actions of the Israeli government and military.
Pro-Israel Jewish organisations, that do not recognise the diversity of views among Australian Jews, do not speak for us.
We are opposed to the Israeli occupation and the prioritisation of the rights of Jewish people over the rights of Palestinians.
We reject any claim that this call is racist or antisemitic, or that it is antisemitic to criticise Israel’s conduct.
The only way to effectively fight antisemitism is by committing to work in solidarity with other groups facing bigotry and discrimination...
This Council, formed last year by one thousand academics, lawyers, writers and teachers, provides the left-wing side of the equation, proving its point that it comes from a diverse community within Australia, not some juggernaut of uniform thought. Several of its members are signatories to the petition published on 25 February, where others also have joined, spreading the base.
Amongst Dr Lee Duffield’s vast journalistic experience, he has served as ABC's European correspondent. He is also an esteemed academic and member of the editorial advisory board of Pacific Journalism Review and elected member of the University of Queensland Senate.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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