In the wake of Mike Carlton’s removal as a Sydney Morning Herald columnist, it’s worth recalling another instance of Zionist lobby power. Here’s the chapter by Antony Loewenstein in Not Happy, John! featuring an interview with Bob Carr. First, my scene-setting introduction to the story.
I'm hearing there's considerable pressure at #Fairfax board level for action against @MikeCarlton01 over his #Israel comments. Passing it on
— Hugh Riminton (@hughriminton) August 5, 2014
After a fortnight of being called Nazi,Jew-hating slime, I told a few people to fuck off. We do that in this country occasionally.
— Mike Carlton (@MikeCarlton01) August 6, 2014
Updated with Carlton: “The immense pressure from News Limited has got to them, and that is the worst part of it". http://t.co/Yatr9SKn5Q
— amanda meade (@meadea) August 6, 2014
.@MikeCarlton01 same happened to me, Mike. Pushed out for political reasons. Anything goes on the Right while progressives are shut down.
— Margo Kingston (@margokingston1) August 6, 2014
.@MikeCarlton01 when I published Cohen & @antloewenstein on Ashwari 2003 Prize @smh deleted – 'anti-Semitic' claim http://t.co/9taSLcJeDm
— Margo Kingston (@margokingston1) August 6, 2014
.@MikeCarlton01 when I queried @smh take-down, told auto unpublish if anti-Semitic complaint – republished when read piece! @antloewenstein
— Margo Kingston (@margokingston1) August 6, 2014
.@MikeCarlton01 in 2004 @smh editor Robert Whitehead ordered me to delete Webdiary's archive for @antloewenstein without telling readers.
— Margo Kingston (@margokingston1) August 6, 2014
Mike Carlton leaves.. huge loss for the SMH
— Alan Moir (@moir_alan) August 6, 2014
*
I had coffee with George Brandis after his ‘Greens are Nazis’ speech to Parliament, and said a number of my Jewish friends were very upset by his remarks. He looked startled. He said that after he’d made it he’d rung Colin Rubenstein, head of the privately – and secretly – funded think-tank, the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), who’d endorsed it. On Lateline the next night Brandis said Rubenstein had contacted him to say “he supported it and he was pleased it had been given”.
“Colin Rubenstein doesn’t represent mainstream Jewish opinion,” I replied, appalled, “and many Jewish people vote Greens”. George Brandis’s mouth fell open.
I’ve avoided participating in debates on the Israel–Palestine question for the same reason that most journalists and politicians in Australia and the United States have. History professor Juan Cole of Michigan University put the reason succinctly: “Most people in public life have frankly been intimidated into just being quiet about it (including every single sitting member of the US Congress, not one of whom ever criticises any action of the Sharon government and survives the next election); this is an incredible degree of political intimidation.”
This intimidation, and the internal pressure on those in the Jewish community who do not support Zionism or the Sharon government in Israel to shut up about it outside the community, means people such as Colin Rubenstein and AIJAC chairman Mark Leibler dominate the media and politics on the matter, purporting to speak for the Jewish community. There are, however, elected community groups in each state, which join together in the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, established in 1944. The Jewish spokesman for the Council had condemned Brandis’s comparison of the Greens with the Nazis.
At the time, debate was raging about the powerful behind-the-scenes lobbying led by the Rubenstein–Leibler crowd to force NSW Premier Bob Carr not to present the Sydney Peace Prize to Palestinian Dr Hanan Ashrawi.
A Jewish friend cried out in conversation with me: “I feel ashamed to be Jewish!”
“No. Please don’t be ashamed, please,” I said. “One of my heroes is Ron Castan [who before his death ran the Mabo case for Aboriginal land rights in the High Court]. His is the true Jewish way – to struggle for human rights for all. Don’t be ashamed – get involved!”
So I gulped three times and asked the only Jewish member of the NSW Parliament, the Greens’ Ian Cohen, to write a piece for Webdiary on how he felt about the Brandis attack and the Ashrawi furore. I published it and one by my colleague Antony Loewenstein supporting Ashrawi, to find that a Jewish reader called my editor demanding immediate removal of the whole entry from the website.
However, once attempts to censor two Jewish-Australians were out of the way, the door opened to a fantastic Webdiary dialogue that included Jewish, Muslim and other Australians on both sides of the debate anxious, even relieved, to participate.
The night Kerry O’Brien interviewed Hanan Ashrawi on the 7.30 Report, I suggested to the Sydney Morning Herald ’s Canberra intern that she have a look. ‘I’ve never heard the Palestinian view before,’ she said. ‘I never knew there was another side to the story”. I then commissioned Antony Loewenstein to research the Ashrawi saga for this book.*
By the way, I sought Colin Rubenstein’s comment on George Brandis’s claim that he’d endorsed the Greens and Nazis speech. He repeatedly refused to answer my question during a lengthy email exchange. And I copped this in an article on AIJAC’s website: “Probably the worst accusation came from Margo Kingston, web diarist for the Sydney Morning Herald. She claimed on November 14 that Jewish backers of Sharon ‘seem to have the power, money and clout to dominate public debate and wield enormous political and financial power behind the scenes. The Ashrawi debacle has exposed this secret power’. A more clearly-stated racist conspiracy theory I have never seen in the mainstream media in Australia.”
* Antony Loewenstein’s subsequent book on the Israel–Palestine conflict, My Israel Question (MUP, 2006), generated much discussion and was short-listed for the 2007 NSW Premier’s Literary Award. He writes a column for the online magazine New Matilda and Crikey, and his articles regularly appear in local and overseas newspapers and journals. His website is http://antonyloewenstein.com/.
If someone can be sacked for being impolite; what would be the appropriate action for those who defend the blowing up of women and children?
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The American way ……………………………………………………………………………………. is to give them 5,000 more hellfire missiles.
What is this I don’t even
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Knowing just how much and how many disgusting emails those who write columns receive from the many demented morons out there in Australia …. i'm surprised Mike Carlton was so gentle with them.
No surprise that Fairfax Media didn't go in to bat for him ….. by writing an Editorial saying exactly what I am saying.
People have to understand that the media is in the same position as industry …. closing down all over the place.
Pretty sure Gina etc etc will be OK.
Patently, the Twitter responses were an excuse. No guts to say it was the article thrust.. The cartoon, though ‘clever’, I thought just handed them superfluous ammo. Could have been construed as anti-Semitic; but, again, debatable. Of course, that’s what it’s about; debate, and whether there’s a forum to have it.
I think the SMH is painting itself into a corner. They could have said that Carlton’s Twitterverse is his, no theirs, but the Boardroom obviously thought otherwise. So, he follows in Ackland’s footsteps. Fairfax heading in the wrong direction. The ‘net gives the Crikeys, Guardians, and sites like this an increasing reach. Why would they want to look like Murdoch Lite, as one quipper has Tweeted. Only Mr Goodsir knows that at the moment, by the looks.
I thought the cartoon of hill sitting Israeli cheering The Bombing of Gaza realistic. Copied from a Picture, the Israeli lobby is Big mr Murdock..
A hard one this. I’m not Jewish. My wife is. My wife says her mother quite upset by the cartoon, though the content of the column she was OK with, though maybe not entirely agreeing with. She is elderly, so doesn’t follow social media and was no doubt not aware of the images that le Lievre based it on.
As a non-Jew, I find myself self-censoring quite a bit when commenting. The
Likud Lobby’, to use Carlton’s term, is pretty powerful. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that the cartoon pressed buttons/gave an excuse. The supposed intemperate responses made by Carlton were the secondary excuse. Conjecture only…
But we’ve lost an oppositional voice on other matters as well in seeing the demise of his column; a wider issue when there is so much obfuscation by the LNP.
It’s this assertion that there’s an all powerful “Jewish lobby” that’s part of anti semitism. Basically, it’s said with much hatred, for some reason, everyone else is allowed to have a lobby group, but not the Jews.
Carlton was anti-semitic. If you say to someone that you’re being a “typical Jewish bigot”, then you’re anti-semitic. It would be the same if you said someone was a “typical black bigot”. That’s racist.
Much of the anti-Israel crowd are absolutely vile. They are pure anti-semitism dressing themselves up as something far more socially acceptable. The Greens party are some of the worst anti-semites around. There are also some horribly anti-semitic Jews, just the same as there are homophobic gays and lesbians.
The media have a responsibility to not feed hatred and only print and report facts. This they don’t. If you all only printed facts, that are completely verified. The gratuitous use of the word “genocide” by Carlton and the anti-Israel crowd is bunk. What has been happening in Gaza is not genocide. Syria is genocide. ISIS is genocide. The wiping out of almost every Jewish community in the Middle East is genocide. The desire for Hamas to wipe out every single Jew, not only in Israel, but around the world, is genocide.
It’s time that the media stopped picking sides, wake up to themselves and only start printing clear facts.