David Schulberg was effectively expelled from Facebook

By David Schulberg

Facebook is a social-networking behemoth that has more than 800 million active users worldwide. I am a relatively recent convert, having been curious for a long time as to what the hype was all about. I have seen people swapping trivial snippets of information about what they might be doing at moments in their lives, stuff to any outsider that seems rather banal.

Recently, I came across a Facebook event called ‘You can’t sweeten Israeli apartheid. Protest against Max Brenner’, which was a planning base for Students for Palestine to organise their BDS (Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions) campaigns against the Max Brenner chocolate shops in Australia.  The BDS protagonists have drawn a connection between Max Brenner, which is a completely independent business franchise, and their parent, the Strauss group, of companies that are deemed guilty of supporting Israeli soldiers. Of course, nobody bothers to mention the public support that the Strauss group provides for The Jasmine Organization for the Promotion of Arab Women in Employment which has been endorsed by Cherie Blair.[i]

After each rally a new Facebook group event is convened; while writing this article it was called ‘Protest against Max Brenner: Say no to Israeli Apartheid’. On the group’s site I responded to comments and discussions in order to make the BDS supporters answerable for their comments and actions.  I strongly disagree with the BDS movement and have been motivated to ensure that people are properly informed about the fallacies behind the BDS initiative.

The BDS group, moderated by its own members, was open to all comers to make comments. They would wilfully purge any information that opposed their anti-Zionist party line.  If they really wanted to keep communications to the party faithful then Facebook provides them the facility to do so. However they wanted to attract new supporters and so kept their site unrestricted.

In responding to the material that was constantly posted on Facebook I had to redouble my efforts to address unsubstantiated statements from the BDS activists. Occasionally there are others who arrive on the scene and get frustrated with what they perceive as propaganda.  Very few of these like-minded individuals stayed, concluding very quickly that their responses and counter arguments were falling on deaf ears.

Often there were assertions made about links between Zionism and Nazism, hero worshipping of Palestinian terrorists who had been imprisoned in Israel, anti-Zionism degenerating into full blown anti-Semitism and a good assortment of straight out abuse and personal slander. My own children were falsely accused of having been Israeli soldiers and I was attacked for supposedly having worked for companies that advanced American imperialism.

Facebook has guidelines that prohibit a lot of the material that appeared on this group’s site. Whenever anything particularly offensive is posted, there is a mechanism to report it to Facebook administrators. A lot of what is in clear breach of the guidelines is allowed to stay. Only when there was an absolutely blatant infringement is action taken by the administrators to remove offending material.

One day I was fighting tooth and nail to have an anti-Semitic cartoon removed that drew parallels between those who oppose the pro-Palestinian position and Holocaust deniers. There were counter attacks made by one particular group member Bill to eliminate me by flooding the Facebook administrators with a heap of reports on wall postings that I had submitted.

Figure 1 - Banned for saying nothing

These are the contents of the wall-postings that I made that were subsequently removed by Facebook:  I encouraged Bill to “Go and read ‘The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs’ by David Pryce-Jones before jumping to conclusions,” (Refer fig 1).  To a discussion about the use of art from children in Gaza, which had been started by the same person, Bill, I wrote “He had paraded art supposedly created by children”. I then reiterated that “I didn’t bring up the subject, it was there lurking like a wolf in sheep’s clothing”.  I suggested that Bill was prattling on about some topic by remarking, “When Abbas has declared that no Israeli Jew would live in a new Palestinian state and that was something to be concerned about.”

Somehow the Facebook administrators drew the conclusion that I was misbehaving. By no means could they have come to such a decision on the basis of the content of my posts. They must have received a torrent of abusive complaints and ended up being influenced to hang, draw and quarter me for saying  nothing offensive compared to the extreme material posted by the other side.

The first two warnings I received on Facebook were to exclude me for 3 days and 7 days but had no effect. They arrived in a flurry in response to reports from the BDS group intent on getting rid of me.  When the 30 day ban advice arrived I found myself unable to post on my own wall or anybody else’s wall for that matter. Very draconian measures indeed!

In the end I was expelled while on the other hand the people who lurk around the dark alleys of the ‘Protest against Max Brenner: Say no to Israeli Apartheid’ group could continue spreading their misinformation, lies and deceit with impunity. I faced real abuse from these people and have kept the transcripts of the ugly conversations that have taken place to prove it.  Facebook contributed to the sequence of events in an insidious and scandalous fashion.

Reading the Facebook Help revealed that I had absolutely no recourse in the situation that I now found myself in. Free speech, democratic principles, honesty and integrity were thrown by the wayside; there had been a brief battle between opposing forces on the internet; I was the loser, judged guilty with no right of appeal.

In their corporate cyber towers sit a bunch of powerholic gods overseeing this massive community of Facebook users, content to frolic about in this free e-playground that Mark Zuckerberg has provided for them. That is all well and good as long as people follow the rules and behave themselves, but when they try to use Facebook for something controversial the guidelines prove totally inadequate and are open to arbitrary interpretation.  This is reminiscent of how infamous autocratic government judiciaries meet in camera and pass verdicts on dissidents without giving them right of appeal.

With the next Max Brenner protest rally fast approaching I wanted to revisit the Facebook BDS site.  I was greeted by this screen  on my computer (refer fig 2)

Figure 2 - Blocked completely from viewing the BDS site

Logged on to Facebook as another user on another computer I could see the event. I was flabbergasted realising they had blocked me not only from commenting on Facebook, but they had also managed to block me from viewing their BDS site. More than that, the message delivered to me by Facebook was totally spurious, Facebook was giving the false impression that the Committee of Hate had shut down shop.

It would be improper for Facebook to have unleashed this gigantic social networking system without having an appropriately managed and fair operational framework in place.  In the uprisings that sprung up during the Arab Spring, Facebook played an instrumental role in assisting the protesters to draw attention to their plight. One would think that Facebook would have a responsibility to our society to assist in establishing communication channels that help people to enhance their lives. It is not enough for Facebook to just provide the mechanisms for information to travel across its networks; Facebook must be morally mindful to how their network affects the human condition.

Facebook professes to ban hate speech—but allows the proliferation of Holocaust-denial pages, stating it recognizes ‘people’s right to be factually wrong about historical events.   Facebook has developed a set of principles that it does not properly abide by. Many people who inhabit the pages of Facebook and the BDS group in particular have false identities, which is in flagrant violation of Facebook policy. When I have reported a person with obviously false names like Evan McAweSome or Mel Content, the powerholics in the corporate cyber tower have done nothing. I was banned for posting innocuous comments, while affiliates of the BDS group who made very extreme false remarks got off scot-free.  Facebook is very inconsistent in implementing its own guidelines.

Facebook has obviously had a major influence in the social networking world, but if it cannot stick to the principles of social justice that it professes then it may find that it has failed the test of the community standards that it is obligated by its policy guidelines to uphold.  We trust organisations like Facebook to provide us with reliable, safe access to our personal information. They must be held accountable for when their social network goes haywire, causes harm and spreads lies and deception. It is incumbent upon Facebook to make the way they manage their users more open and transparent.

[1] Cherie Blair and Ofra Strauss provide inspiration to Jewish and Arab businesswomen at Jasmine’s annual conference.

[2]Facebook’s Holocaust Problem.

West Dunbartonshire Coat of Arms

Previously, we’ve seen Buycott Israel as  a response to the BDS against Israel. However, some Jewish organisations have responded with counter boycotts. Simon Morawetz reports on a recent example in Australia.

In 2009, West Dunbartonshire Council (WDC) approved a boycott of all Israeli made and produced goods. The attention that this relatively small Glaswegian council’s decision got was remarkable, sparking outrage from Jewish communities across the globe.

In response, many Jewish communities initiated a counter-boycott of all goods made in West Dunbartonshire. As any reputable Scottish region would insist, this includes several whisky distilleries. One of the products of these distilleries is a staple in kosher households around Caulfield: Glenlivet.

Yeshiva Shul is one entity that decided not to purchase Glenlivet this year and instead explore other options. It went with Glen Moray this year. Eli Belfer, the man responsible for alcohol purchases (among other things) at the Shul, was in contact with WDC, who were unwilling to resurrect any discussion on the basis for the policy. However, they were willing to clarify any misconceptions regarding its application. WDC are aware of the counter-boycott, but Yeshiva will formally write to them in the coming weeks to confirm the action and put pressure on them to remove the policy.  The Council did say that they may reconsider it in future, though they gave no reason to believe that it would be reversed.

For the record, Glenlivet did not respond to my email offering them a comment on the matter.

It is important to note that not all distilleries in West Dunbartonshire agree with their council’s policy. Auchentoshan is one example of a distillery that has continued to support Israel and Judaism, and produces a range of kosher whiskies. Nevertheless, the council’s policy remains in place and shows no immediate signs of moving. Hence the retaliatory counter-boycott.

Which begs two questions. The first is: what impact, if any, will the retaliation have? Although Yeshiva’s standard order is indeed a significant one, in the grand scheme of things, it is little more than a drop in the ocean. Whether its impact will be felt strongly enough to prompt a swift reconsideration of the council’s policy is doubtful at best, a pipedream at worst.

Generally, boycotts are more symbolic than financial in their impact. Just as Yeshiva’s order will hardly be felt by Glenlivet, who manufacture millions of bottles of whisky every year, West Dunbartonshire’s boycott of Israeli made or produced goods will hardly make an impact on Israel’s Balance of Payments.

The second question is: does that render the action negligible?

Of course, it doesn’t. It was not the financial ramification for Israel that people got worked up about when the WDC made its decision. Rather, it was its anti-Semitic nature, and the threat of a domino effect spreading the boycott of Israeli goods across Scotland, the UK, Europe, or perhaps the world.

Similarly, although WDC may not feel the counter-boycott in its hip pocket, the mere fact of the action may be enough for it to hasten its reconsideration of the policy. Hopefully, when that day comes, they have the sense to abandon it.

Boycotting Max Brenner may not only be offensive to the Jewish community, it may also be offensive to the bald community. Image: passionatefoodie.blogspot.com

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) today issued the following statement concerning the debate about the campaign for Boycotts Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and the targeting of the Max Brenner chain in Australia.  We feel this would be of particular interest to our readers:

Criticism of the BDS Campaign

There has been widespread criticism of the recent BDS protests against Max Brenner outlets in Sydney and Melbourne. The criticism has come not only from Labor and Coalition members of parliament, Federal and State, but also from some of their Greens colleagues. The ECAJ thanks all of them for their efforts in opposing and speaking out against the Australian arm of the global BDS campaign against Israel.

The Max Brenner chain is a legitimate, privately owned business that operates in accordance with Australian law. It provides employment to approximately 750 Australian workers and pays taxes that contribute to the public revenue. Its alleged ‘crime’ is to be connected in some way to a company that supplies chocolate and other food products to the Israeli army.

Recently, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) was asked by the Victorian government, with the near unanimous support of the Australian Senate (excluding the Greens), whether the BDS campaign against Max Brenner outlets constitutes a secondary boycott in contravention of section 45D of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. The ACCC concluded that thus far there has been no contravention because the BDS campaign is unlikely to have had the effect of causing substantial loss or damage to the business of Max Brenner, as would be required to constitute a breach of section 45D.

Whilst in some respects that conclusion is disappointing, it highlights how ineffectual and unsuccessful the BDS campaign has been in persuading the Australian public not to patronise Max Brenner shops. Indeed, the BDS campaign has, if anything, succeeded in alienating broader public opinion in Australia and engendering sympathy and support for the target businesses.

Racist rhetoric employed in the BDS campaign

The ECAJ is, however, concerned about some of the rhetoric that has been deployed by both sides of the public debate concerning BDS. On occasions, some of those supporting BDS have lapsed into both overt and implicit antisemitism, and some of those opposing BDS have inappropriately likened Greens leaders to “Nazis”. Neither infraction excuses the other. We note that no members of parliament, Federal or State, on either side of the debate, have engaged in these extreme forms of rhetoric.

All expressions of antisemitism are repugnant not only to the Jewish community but also to the vast majority of Australians. An ancient and pernicious form of antisemitism is known as the “blood libel”, a vicious and revolting smear to the effect that Jews as a group habitually shed and consume human blood. (In point of fact, this is the exact opposite of Jewish teaching, which holds human life to be sacrosanct, a belief that has been inherited by both Christianity and Islam). In the BDS campaign against Max Brenner, the ancient blood libel is revived in the protesters’ chants:

There’s blood in your hot chocolate.

You support genocide.

Max, Max murderer.

It is of course ludicrous to describe someone who merely sells chocolate products as a “murderer”. Yet in our view, it is no accident that the BDS protesters choose to make their points in these specific ways, which tap into an historical reservoir of anti-Jewish tropes. They could make their points in other ways. True moral leadership requires our political representatives to repudiate this sort of deeply racist rhetoric, regardless of where they stand on the BDS issue.

One aspect of the BDS campaign that is particularly troubling is that the boycotts are aimed at businesses with Jewish owners. Thus, Max Brenner is targeted, but Intel or Microsoft or any other similar company, which operates significantly in Israel and supplies the Israeli Defence Force, is not targeted. It is entirely legitimate to draw attention to this disparity and to question the motives of BDS leaders.
There is further antisemitism in the implied denial of the Jewish people’s right of national self-determination. Another frequent anti-Israel chant is:

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

This implies that all of the land situated between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea is “Palestine”. Of course, part of that land consists of Israel. What is thereby advocated is the end of Israel as a sovereign State and its replacement by “Palestine”.

Distinguishing between political comment and inappropriate rhetoric

The ECAJ does not suggest that all criticisms of Israel are antisemitic.  Israel is a vibrant pluralist democracy and its citizens (Jews, Bedouin, Palestinians, and Druze) are often its most incisive critics.  But it is also false to suggest that no criticisms of Israel are antisemitic.   There is clearly an overlap, as the foregoing examples illustrate.
The existence of an overlap was also acknowledged in the Working Definition of Antisemitism developed by the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), which monitors racism and xenophobia in the 31 countries and candidate countries of the European Union, in collaboration with key NGOs and representatives of the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

The EUMC, now called the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), adopted the definition in 2005 and distributed it to all its national monitors. In September 2006, the definition was adopted by the United Kingdom All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism.  It is also employed by units of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), representing about states. The definition has been translated into 33 languages including Arabic and Turkish. In February 2009, it was adopted in the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism.  The working definition includes the following:

Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the state of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:

• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.
• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
• Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

Inappropriate Holocaust Rhetoric

The way to combat these more contemporary and subtle forms of antisemitism is not, in our view, to fight fire with fire. Whilst hyperbole is to be expected in any free-flowing political discussion in Australia’s robust democracy, special care is needed to avoid comparing any Australian political leaders or members of parliament to “Nazis” or comparing any political party in Australia to the former Nazi regime in Germany. There is, thankfully, nothing in Australia’s history and experience that is even remotely comparable to the unique evil and horror of the Hitler period in Germany and Europe.

Yet the use of inappropriate analogies with Nazism has crept into political discourse in Australia with increasing frequency. This has the effect of trivialising Nazi totalitarianism, particularly in the thinking of younger people who have no personal point of entry into understanding the realities of life under the Nazi jackboot.
For this reason our organisation some years ago adopted an express policy against inappropriate Holocaust rhetoric (see ECAJ Platform). The ECAJ: recognised that the Holocaust, the Nazi program of genocide, was a unique historical event; noted that the Holocaust is generally recognised as the benchmark of the most extreme case of human evil; and deplored the inappropriate use of analogies to the Nazi Genocide in Australian public debate.

The ECAJ is concerned that some of the media discourse has resorted to rhetoric that has been less disciplined than it should be. In particular we seek to discourage the use of imprecise analogies with the Nazi regime. One must acknowledge that there are significant historical differences between rag-tag groups of BDS protesters outside Max Brenner outlets in Australia and a campaign backed by the Nazi state and enforced by state-sanctioned Nazi thugs who picketed shops owned by Jews in Germany in the 1930’s.  Yet Nazis commenced their campaign as purportedly private action before there was government sanction for it.

In another context which has nothing to do with the BDS issue cartoons were recently published in a syndicated newspaper depicting Greens leader Bob Brown as a book-burning Nazi, complete with swastika arm-band, Gestapo cap and SA (Sturmabteilung) uniform. Prime Minister Julia Gillard was similarly portrayed. Even allowing for the usual latitude accorded to political cartoonists, nothing can justify comment of this nature. Political leaders are fair game for all kinds of criticism, but this exceeds the bounds of fairness and diminishes the uniquely evil character of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust.

Some BDS supporters have also been guilty of making inappropriate comparisons with the Nazi era. It is not uncommon to see placards at their demonstrations which depict the Israeli flag with a swastika at its centre in place of the Star of David or contain other images which, as referred to in the Working Definition of Antisemitism, draw comparisons between Israel and the Nazis. Clearly, BDS leaders and supporters are in no moral position to accuse others of lacking rhetorical virtue.

Rejecting inappropriate comparisons between the BDS campaign and Nazi Germany does not require us to accept the claim that the BDS protesters are merely opposed to Israeli government policies and actions with regard to the Palestinians, but are not in any way animated by anti-Jewish prejudice.  The BDS protests do not have to rise to the level of seriousness of the Nazi era in order, on occasion, to qualify as antisemitic.

Further, the BDS campaign is calculated to orchestrate public hatred, an ugly and unworthy tactic regardless of the alleged target.  The fact is that an unusually high percentage of Australian Jews are survivors of the Holocaust.  Nobody should callously dismiss the reaction of Australian Jews to the sight of Jewish-owned shops once more being picketed by chanting, aggressive demonstrators many of whose faces are contorted in hate, as can be seen on YouTube and other recordings of BDS events.   Even though the parallels to Nazi Germany are an historical over-statement, those who have suggested that that reaction is contrived should be ashamed of themselves.  The reaction is entirely genuine and understandable.

Nevertheless, the ECAJ is asking all of our political representatives who count themselves as supporters of Israel and opponents of BDS, and the media, to refrain from the inappropriate use of analogies to the Nazis, and to provide moral leadership to others to exercise restraint in their rhetoric. This is the right thing to do even if it is a vain hope that supporters of BDS will exercise a reciprocal responsibility to eliminate express or implicit antisemitism from their rhetoric.

The frum hippy scene at the tent city, Rothschild Blvd, Tel Aviv

This is the conclusion to Yoram Symons‘ series, The Tent City of Rothschild Boulevard and the Coming Pogrom.  Part I can be found here.

The Other Side of Zionism

While the state-building and normalizing ethos of Zionism has fizzled into ideological atrophy for contemporary Israeli society, across the border, into the Palestinian territories in particular and the Arabic world in general, Zionism is perceived as the single most potent and powerful force in all of  international affairs. Across the borders the glorious victories of 1948 and 1967 are painted in the morbid and terrifying colors of the Nakba – the great tragedy, which causes the Palestinian people to languish in suffering and misery and the Arabic world to wallow without honor or pride.

While the calls for a solution to the Palestinian problem are almost entirely absent from the Rothschild Tent City and the protests it is mobilizing, the rest of the world has bought well and truly into the idea of Zionism that proceeds from the logic of Nakba. While the suburbanites of Ra’anana and Petach Tikva and Kfar Saba experience the suffocating banality of work, mortgage and the six o’clock news, the rest of the world sees them as imperialist conquistadors on a mission of savage occupation. Anti-Semitism, which had descended for a time into the nether regions of political incorrectness, has re-emerged in its new anti-Zionist guise as a legitimate disposition and a potent political force.

Christianity, Islam and the Jewish Problem

For almost two thousand years the peoples of Europe had been educated to hate the Jew, fear the Jew and above all, blame the Jew for the problems in their lives. By the laws of historical cause and effect, this hatred made sense.

The Jews were inextricably and undeniably linked to the Christian religion. The Christian bible was the Jewish bible and the Christian deity was a Jewish man. While the Church had managed to eradicate all of the Pagan cults of antiquity and established a single confession for all the nations of Europe, it could not deny nor eliminate the Jew. The Jew, despite his obvious heresy, was too close to Christ to suffer the same fate as the Pagans. And thus within the monolithic Christian culture the Jew was a conundrum that evaded solution.

After two thousand years of this incongruous and unsettling relationship, the people of Europe finally reacted in the inevitable fashion. The Jews were a problem and they were a problem that demanded a solution. And the solution prosecuted by the peoples of Europe was the mechanized and industrialized manifestation of every passion play, inquisition and pogrom that had gone before it.

In sixty-three years of statehood, the Zionist entity has wedged itself into the same niche within the Arab consciousness. The Nakba is for the Middle-East what the murder of Christ was for Europe; a sin of cosmic proportions that demands a historical solution. Two thousand years of passion plays, inquisitions and pogroms has been telescoped into sixty-three years of Friday morning sermons, Arab-Israeli wars and Gaza incursions.

The Convergence of History

For sixty-three years the hunger to avenge the Nakba has been held in check. Held in check by the symbiotic relationship between Israel’s military superiority and the self-interest of the US dominated International Order. Concurrently, for sixty-three years the subconscious thirst of the Jewish people for cosmic significance has been quenched by the Zionist enterprise and the Jewish need for national manifestation has been fulfilled in the State of Israel.

The world, however, is standing on the precipice. As the British dominated international order crumbled under the weight of the 1929 Crash, so too the current international system dominated by American military strength and global capitalism is beginning to unravel. Nations are defaulting, stockmarkets are crashing, London burns, Greece riots, the Arab countries descend into civil war and the Palestinians are on the verge of declaring statehood.

Zionism, in the incarnation of nation-building, has also reached its denouement. The Herzelian “state like all the others”, a slave to the prerogatives of the free-market economy, is no longer fulfilling the needs of national expression. That these two historical trajectories should converge at the same point in time is no mere coincidence.

If we are to believe that oft repeated maxim, that history is doomed to repeat itself, then the ultimate logical solution to the crime of Nakba, if allowed to manifest, will resemble in intent the final retribution for murdering Christ. If history is destined to repeat itself then the subconscious yearnings of the Israeli people for cosmic significance has not yet reached its full expression.

If, as Jung believed, subconscious desires manifest themselves in reality, then perhaps the yearnings for cosmic significance that lie at the core of the Israeli protests have not reached their true expression in the Tent City of Rothschild Boulevard. But rather, they are the harbinger of a far more radical and terrifying change.

Final Words

Akiva stood on the desolate mound that had once been home to God’s glorious temple. His colleagues wailed and moaned, they tore their clothing in grief and sat with ashes on their heads. Jerusalem was in ruins, the nation destroyed and the people sold into slavery. Yet Akiva smiled and laughed, danced and skipped.

Bewildered, his tear-stricken colleagues inquired: “Akiva, have you gone mad? A fox walks where the Holy of Holies once stood, yet you giggle like a child.”

“Friends,” began the Sage, “truly this is a terrible sight to behold. Yet all of it, the pain and the suffering, the anguish and despair, were all foretold by the Prophets of yore.”

“So,” they demanded indignantly, “what of it? Is it our lot to rejoice that the prophecies of destruction have come to pass in fulfillment of His Word?”

“My friends,” continued Akiva, “We have witnessed the fulfillment of the prophecies of destruction. Yet this can only mean one thing. We are on the cusp of witnessing the prophecies of redemption. Just as this miserable desolation has come to pass precisely as it was foretold, so too, the prophecies of joy and salvation will soon inevitably come to be.”

The sages stood in confusion. Could this be correct? Could the end of everything they had held sacred and dear be the precursor to something even greater? It seemed impossible. And then they realized. The force that guided all of history had guided them to this very spot, just as had been foretold. And this same force, that had guided all of their actions, would soon lead them to uplands of tomorrow. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the people would soon manifest in an even greater way. Soon they would fulfill their true destiny.

“Akiva” declared the group as one, “you have comforted us. Akiva you have comforted us.”
Yoram Symons is the Executive Director of Ark. His blog can be found here.

Parent Circle-Families Forum, a peace-building initiative that would be boycotted under the framework of BDS

In the wake of the NSW Greens officially backing a BDS policy against Israel, Phillip Walker, a Greens candidate in the recent Victorian election, argues that BDS is counterproductive.

For people seeking a just, equitable and peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine issue, the question has arisen of the purpose and impact of the call for Boycotts, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the state of Israel. Invariably proponents of the BDS campaign draw analogies between Israel and sanctions introduced against Apartheid South Africa. The BDS movement calls for “the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the Apartheid era. … until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law”.

In this regard imposing BDS is a tactic for exerting pressure and could, just as appropriately, be applied, for example, to China in support of the Tibetans, Indonesia in support of the West Papuans, or Russia in support of the Chechens. Tactics however must suit the context and should have some realistic chance of contributing towards the intended objective. My position is that BDS is actually counterproductive to its intended purpose and in fact could have a negative impact on achieving a just peace in the Middle East, and that the analogy between Apartheid South Africa and Israel is superficial and inaccurate.

Israel is a recognised member of the United Nations. South Africa was not regarded as a legitimate regime; the UN declared Apartheid a crime against humanity and South Africa was suspended from membership. The UN General Assembly imposed the first set of economic sanctions on South Africa in 1962, although international campaigns were required to both strengthen and enforce sanctions. No UN sanctions have been endorsed against Israel.

Sanctions against South Africa were designed to bring down the Apartheid state and replace it with one unified state with majority rule. The BDS call is to support the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination however the BDS Movement does not give any indication as to what form that inalienable right will take. In the unlikely event that the BDS movement achieves its aim of bringing Israel to its knees, it is unclear what outcome the BDS proponents foresee. Some might visualise the eventual destruction of the Israeli state. One of the founders of the BDS Movement, Omar Barghouti, is quoted as saying “a Palestine next to a Palestine, rather than a Palestine next to an Israel”.

Accordingly, the key question for BDS proponents is whether they accept the existence of the state of Israel. I do, recognising that both Jews and Palestinians have countless generations of unbroken occupancy of the land, that Israel is home for millions of Jewish people and that legitimate Palestinian aspirations are best met by the creation of their own unified state. The Australian Greens also take this position calling for “the creation of a viable state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel based on the pre 1967 borders and the right of all peoples in the region to peace”.

In Apartheid South Africa the call for sanctions was a key demand of the African National Congress (ANC) and supported by its allies. They recognised that sanctions would have an important impact driving White South Africans towards acceptance of majority rule. The same situation does not pertain to Israel-Palestine; the Palestinian authority and al Fatah, along with progressive Israeli organisations such as Gush Shalom call for a limited campaign of boycott and sanction directed against the Occupation and the West Bank Settlements. The BDS movement acknowledges this, stating that “the BDS campaign is not a Palestinian government initiative” but they then blur the distinction between the West Bank settlements and Israel by citing support from people who call for boycotts on the West Bank settlements, while also demanding boycotts of Israelis who hold the same position.

Unquestionably sanctions against Apartheid South Africa were important both economically and morally. Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery cites a discussion on the impact of sanctions with South African Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu. In 1989, the moderate white leader, Frederic Willem de Klerk, was elected President of South Africa. Upon assuming office he declared his intention to set up a multiracial regime. Tutu says “I called to congratulate him, and the first thing he said was: Will you now call off the boycott?”

While economically impacted by sanctions the Apartheid government did find ways to bypass them. Manufactured products did not display country of origin and continued to be sold throughout Africa; a government owned company called SASOL was formed that used a highly-polluting process to convert coal into oil; South Africa and Israel secretly shared military technology. But the biggest impact on South Africa was on morale – they felt rejected by the world and they were denied access to sporting links (like Australians, South Africans are sports mad, imagine the reaction here if international sporting links were broken).

While sanctions hurt South Africa the ANC cadre that I knew and worked with commonly cited three primary reasons for the fall of Apartheid:

First, internally the United Democratic Front (UDF) campaign of mass civil disobedience was making the country ungovernable.

Second, in 1986 the battle of Cuito Carnivale in Angola – when Cuban, Angolan and ANC forces fought the South African military machine to a standstill – started the strategic retreat of Apartheid.

Third, and significantly, was the collapse of Soviet bloc. The new global political climate associated with the end of the Cold War gave the South African government the confidence to boldly move into unbanning the ANC and entering into negotiations.

Many readers of this article may well have seen the movie Invictus which deals with the period in South Africa immediately after democratic rule was achieved in 1994. The movie highlights the attention Nelson Mandela gave to understanding the Afrikaner psyche, and the concessions he was prepared to make, even in defiance of his own party, to accommodate their interests so that they could learn to accept living under Black majority rule (something they had been raised to believe was unfathomable). It is a lesson many could learn including, it would seem, the proponents of BDS.

To form insights into the emotions and motives of the ‘other’ is to be able to appreciate base concerns which can lead to accommodation of interests, and in return compromise and concession from them. Without this insight it is questionable whether any resolution can be achieved. I continue to be surprised by the number of compassionate Jews who display little empathy for what the Nakba and 43 years of Occupation means for Palestinians. Political progressives often find common ground with progressive Jews and then fail to understand why there is a sudden differentiation when it comes to the Israel-Palestine question. Likewise, an unfavourable comparison between Israel and Apartheid South Africa unintentionally or otherwise antagonises many Jews. The legacy of the Holocaust makes comparison with an ideology that had fascist origins offensive and diminishes opportunities for compromise or even dialogue.

The legacy of centuries of persecution has undoubtedly impacted on the Jewish psyche. Insecurity and mistrust lead many to perceive the world as an existentialist military threat. If a just resolution to the conflict is to be achieved then it has to be premised on Israel knowing that its continued existence is guaranteed and not threatened. Israel needs to feel the sense of security to be flexible and accommodating to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for their own state. The BDS campaign is unlikely to soften the attitude of Israeli people; rather it will reinforce the view that “the whole world is still against us”. Accordingly BDS is defeatist as it despairs of the possibility that Israel can be a partner for peace.

There is another corollary from South Africa that for the Middle East context remains aspirational. The period from February 1990 (when the ANC was unbanned and Nelson Mandela was released from prison) and April 1994 (when the first all-inclusive democratic elections were held) is a positive example of how previously implacably opposed foes were able to negotiate a mutually acceptable resolution. During the negotiation period extremists from both left and right, along with an insidious ‘Third Force’ associated with Apartheid security agencies, were instigating violence and setting off bombs in an attempt to derail the movement towards democracy. On more than one occasion the country was on the verge of civil war. The South African Human Rights Commission has estimated that during this period up to 15,000 people died as a result of political violence.

In this context that South Africa was able to successfully transition to democratic rule is testament to the political will of the leadership of all the parties involved. Instead of using politically instigated violence as a pretext to cancel negotiations in fact it became a reason to push ahead and reach agreement. In the Middle East, while there have been times when it appeared that agreement has been in reach, unfortunately the political will to overcome the final hurdles has been lacking. In writing this I am not apportioning responsibility for failure (I will leave the finger pointing blame game to others), rather highlighting that it is only rarely that maturity of political leadership from all sides exists in sufficient quantity to reach a solution, and that it is achievable and we must keep on trying.

BDS extends to the boycott of joint Palestinian-Israeli dialogue promoting peace-building initiatives such as Combatants for Peace, Parents Circle and the Hand in Hand Schools. It means cutting ties with advocates of the stature of Uri Avnery. Efforts have already been made to impose a boycott on the Said-Barenboim Foundation and its associated West Eastern Divan Orchestra.

In summary, while boycotts against Apartheid South Africa contributed to pressure that led to the negotiated dismantlement of the Apartheid system, BDS against the existing state of Israel will not further peace initiatives but polarise positions and diminish opportunities for achieving a just outcome.

Phillip Walker was the Greens candidate for Caulfield in the 2010 State election and for Melbourne Ports in the 2007 Federal election. From 1991 to 2000 he lived in South Africa and was a member of the African National Congress (ANC). He is writing in his personal capacity.

Ironically, by boycotting Israel, the NSW Greens will be boycotting some of the most advanced green technology in the world, such as this really cool electricity-producing skylight

By Anthony Frosh

Last week, the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) issued a press release calling on “Australians to welcome asylum-seekers into their communities and embrace the benefits refugees can offer Australia.”  The full statement is available on J-Wire.

As someone sympathetic to the plight of refugees, I naturally welcome the statement, which is strong and unambiguous.  And to those that have criticized the ADC for only being concerned about the mistreatment of Jews, it is another sturdy example demonstrating that such critics need to reassess their criticisms.

However, the question needs to be asked as to why such a press release did not materialise sooner.  The optimal time for such a release would have been prior to the Australian federal election held this August.  Indeed, when the immigration debate was at its most heated phase, Galus Australis published an article by Mandi Katz titled “People of the Boat – A Jewish Perspective on the Asylum Seeker Issue”.  That was July 8. The ADC’s press release was precisely five months later, December 8.  Would it not have been more relevant back then, rather than now?

If this statement had been released in the lead up to the federal election, one consideration (and I have absolutely no knowledge whether this was a consideration of the ADC) for those who might have been influenced by the statement is that the most mainstream political party with a refugee policy approximating the ADC’s was the Greens.

While many Australian Jews would naturally be pre-disposed to message sympathetic with the plight of asylum seekers, it also needs to be said that a significant proportion of the Jewish Australian voting population has reservations about the Greens in terms of their perceived antipathy towards the State of Israel.  Of course, some Jewish supporters of the Greens did make the case that the Greens were kosher in the lead up to August election.

Last week, the NSW Greens officially threw their weight behind a boycott of Israel. Their official support for the anti-Israel BDS movement will only make it harder for the majority of Jews to feel comfortable voting for them.

Ittay Flescher, one of the authors of the much read Greens advocacy piece cited above, has stated that he is disappointed with the resolution, and has written a letter to the NSW Greens explaining to them why their BDS resolution is not the right way to go, and most importantly will not further the cause of peace. The Melbourne-based Mr Flescher has also pointed out that this resolution is specific to the NSW branch and supported neither by the Victorian branch of their party, nor the federal branch.

Federal senator Bob Brown, has issued a statement to the Jewish Australian media distancing federal part from the NSW motion on BDS. “The motion passed by the NSW Greens is not the position of the Australian Greens … A proposal to call for a broad boycott of Israel was put to this year’s Australian Greens National Council meeting but was not supported,” Senator Brown said.

Even Sol Salbe, a person whose fulltime job it seems is to put up links on his Facebook page to stories critical of Israel for the pleasure of his hordes of fanatically anti-Israel “Facebook friends”, wrote, “the NSW Greens position in support of BDS is the least nuanced version I’ve encountered. The fact it is allegedly unanimous tends to indicate a fairly narrow range of views within that branch which is not duplicated in other branches where a broad shul exists.”

If even someone like Sol Salbe, a relentless critic of the State of Israel, albeit one who is always careful to leave himself wiggle room, is offering this kind of nuanced reaction, one can only imagine the reaction of the vast majority of Australian Jews who resent the inexcusable attempt at the deligitimisation of Israel represented BDS.

Unless the federal branch of the Greens vocally and unambiguously (as opposed to making more discrete assurances to Jewish audienced) condemns this resolution of the NSW branch, they will be hard pressed to gain a handy (let alone top) position on the ballot paper of the vast majority of Australian Jews.

This article is a response to Deborah Stone’s recent piece in Galus Australis and her summary of the ADC special report, “Antisemitism on Campus. Contemporary Jewish experience at Victorian universities”. The article has now been circulated internationally, which may make ADC happy because it’s up there in the propaganda war; but in fact, I received a puzzled query from a professor of Jewish Studies in Canada.

As a preface, let me say that there is a problem with Australian anti-Semitism, and particularly virulent anti-Zionism that crosses into anti-Semitism. Recently I took a Palestinian organization to task for using vile materials produced by the bizarre Gilad Atzom, an Israeli now in the UK. On another occasion I have berated Palestinian protesters for marching with posters taken out of pages of Der Stuermer. I have also gotten into long online ‘discussions’ with well-meaning Anglo advocates whose stereotyping and typecasting are contemptible. I also resent simplistic and stereotypical representations of Jewishness, which the media seems to thrive on (sounds of Fiddler on the Roof).

But there is a problem with misstating or exaggerating the problem of ‘anti-Semitism’ and presenting the ‘evidence’ as authoritative. This is the case with the ADC report. As Deborah Stone says in her report, 50 students who were members of the Jewish students’ organization out of a number we actually don’t know, self-selected to respond online, and that they perceived anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism as direct anti-Semitism. These were students who were motivated and WANTED to respond.

From the start, I will admit that I am primarily a qualitative researcher who understands the ins and outs of that sort of work, but I also know a bit about statistics and validity in social science. There is a basic flaw with the methodology. For the survey to have any credibility whatsoever, it has to be constructed in such a way that the various hypotheses put forward on the basis of the evidence are defensible. The only way to do this is to construct a valid scientific poll, what is known as a random sample of a total population. Usually, in polling, you want at a 95% confidence that the results are valid with a 5% margin of error. For example, with a population of say 3000 Jewish students, you would want a poll of at least 341 students. This can be constructed for example, by phoning a sample of male/female students assuming that everyone has a phone, spread across different age groups and suburbs, as well as faculties and universities. This is the kind of methodology used in the Monash Centre for Jewish Studies 2008-9 Population Survey where it says (p. 39), “A ‘scientific’ sample is only as reliable as the database from which it is drawn”. Thus, a self-selected ‘sample’ of only 50 Jewish students, all of whom are members of the Australian Union of Jewish Students is bound to have an inherent bias because it excludes other Jewish student and working with relatively small numbers and thus making extrapolations is misleading and erroneous.

In addition, the report makes all sorts of assertions without empirical data. As an example, the causal suggestion that Latrobe is more anti-Semitic because it is in the Northern suburbs of Melbourne and closer to Muslim populations and has a training program for Muslims is made without any evidence. Could it not also be due to a strong presence of fringe leftists of Anglo or other persuasions who dominate campus politics? If the ADC’s conclusion is not true, then the ADC could be guilty of stigmatizing the Muslim/Arabic community. I see many Muslim students at Monash and if anything, they are too studious and apolitical.

It can also be argued that the poll had leading questions, because it asked, for example, whether students had seen ‘anti-Semitic’ acts (as distinct from anti-Israeli acts). A cleverer poll would have investigated student’s understandings of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and their relationship to campus politics. It would have closely examined the types of acts that were considered anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist and scaled their perceived and if possible, actual severity. How do you compare ‘Fuck Jews’ on a toilet door to a nasty banner at a rally?

Thus, the survey resembles push-polling, which results in self-fulfilling and confirming answers for the polster. Since anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism are difficult and contested terms, there is a need to unpack the terms in research and get some insight into how students, a) perceive the relationship between the two, b) see the responses of non-Jews, and particularly political antagonists in terms of the distinction, and c) if possible, deal with some real facts (the very hard stuff).

The survey has another problem, because it doesn’t look at how students perceive Israel’s actions (good, bad, ugly) and how actions at particular times lead to activity on campus. Instead, the survey works from an unproblematicized picture of Israel, that is a ‘Zionist approach’, which again, excludes or marginalizes legitimate and /or extreme critique.

Another issue that the survey fails to address adequately is that of identity on campus. The report claims that students live in fear on campus and that they play down their identity. But again, the survey only looks at the responses of the most highly motivated of students who responded to the survey. I suspect that on campus, many Jewish students who come from a relatively cloistered and privileged existence are somewhat shocked to be in contact with the rest of the population. Unquestioned Zionism comes into strong conflict, and assertive and not very polite debate with very different sorts of people with elements of a culture clash. But again, this is just a hypothesis that has to be tested through much more careful forms of research.

The ADC report is a very sloppy self-fulfilling report that should not be called research. Yes, there is a problem with ultra leftists and a few others on campus and over-enthusiastic embrace of the Palestinian cause at all costs, but the effects of what they do (and what Jewish students do in response) are not well analysed.

Reading

Anthony Lerman, Sense on Anti-semitism

Very little subtlety here.

As the ADC releases its report on Antisemitism on Campus in Victoria, Deborah Stone reflects on the increasing grey area between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

I’m a Jew. I’m not an Israeli. I could have been an Israeli. Like many Jews of my generation I had the gap-year Israel experience and chose, for all sorts of reasons, to live in the Diaspora.

Though I love the place, my feelings about Israel are inconsistent, rather like my Hebrew-language skills that include the odd sophisticated metaphor while balking at simple verb-preposition constructs.

But I’m quite clear on my Jewish identity and my rights as a Jew to be free from hate speech. I’m also clear on my responsibility, as a Jew and as a human being, to advocate for respectful pluralism in Australia. So when an opportunity to use my media and research background came up at the Anti-Defamation Commission, it seemed a good fit.

Opposing antisemitism and racism is a task I can approach with moral clarity, particularly so as I am by nature a bridge-builder with a genuine belief that interfaith engagement and shared experience is the way to handle differences. For the same reasons, I can stand firm against vilification of any sort.

I don’t have the same moral clarity about Israel. I care about Israel. I care about Palestinians too. I care more about Israel for the same reason I care more about my son than yours, but that doesn’t give me the right to advocate for my son at the expense of yours.

I believe in the right to a Jewish state and I get a buzz out of the place that’s unparalleled by any other place on earth. But my positions on given issues may be wildly at variance with the decisions of the Israeli government of the day – not to mention some of the decisions of the past.

My ambiguity is caused by the fact that advocates for Palestinian causes and opponents of Israel’s policies outside the Jewish community rarely make such distinctions. Attacks on Israel are habitually vilifying and their targets are anyone with Israel attachment of any sort. Read Jews. So although I’m in my role to defend Jewish people from vilification, I often find myself criticising Israel’s critics – even when I think they have a point.

It would be easier if our interlocutors were clearer in their discourse. When they yell “Israel is a terrorist state” do they mean “Israel made some wrong decisions in Gaza” “or do they mean “Israel is an illegitimate entity – Jews have no rights to self-determination”? Are they critics of Israel or antisemites?

I’m happy to be a voice of moderation and to argue that we need to be very clear about what constitutes legitimate criticism and the ways in which attacks on Israel are now frequently used to stereotype, demonise and delegitimize  – tropes which any student of antisemitism will recognize.

But I’m struggling to put the boundaries on the grey area of antisemitism and anti-Zionism because so much of the criticism of Israel is intemperate, delegitimizing and comes so close to the essential experience of being Jewish in the 21^st century.

There was a time when political Zionism was a controversial ideology within Jewish thought. History has moved on and Israel is now a key part of Jewish identity and experience for most Diaspora Jews.

Certainly it is possible to be a cultural or religious Jew with no attachment to Israel. But Bundists and Neturei Karta are marginal sects. Their existence says little about the experience of most Jews.

It is also possible to be a biological Jew and dedicate a successful media career to a narrative that paints Israel as pure aggressor. But if being Jewish means anything it’s about being part of a historical and continuing community and such a position puts one outside the community.

The real experience of most Diaspora Jews is that Israel is a significant, though not necessarily a defining part of our Jewish consciousness. While there’s clearly a continuum here, the language, religious, and historical connections are deeply ingrained. For many of us, these links are reinforced by gap year or summer programs, attachment to family or friends living there, engagement with Israel-based charities, business or cultural interactions. We begin to feel that that “when they say Israel they mean us”.

My recent work on antisemitism on campus has made it clear to me that most Jewish university students experience attacks on Israel as if they were traditional antisemitism. In response to increased reports of antisemitism on campus and intimidation of Jewish students, the ADC recently invited Jewish students in Victoria to fill in a questionnaire about their on-campus experiences. Fifty respondents completed the questionnaire. This group is clearly self-selecting and it is probable that students who have experienced antisemitism or who more strongly identify with the Jewish community were more likely to respond.

But the results, available in the ADC’s Antisemitism on Campus report, give a clear indication that Jewish students do feel intimidated and attacked and that Israel is at the core of that experience. Their reports range from informal harassment – for example, verbal abuse of a student wearing a souvenir Israel t-shirt – to more considered political attacks – for example, academics using their positions to deliver polemics attacking Israel, sometimes in courses unrelated to political issues.  Students in settings as diverse as architecture and psychology have reported being subject to anti-Israel harangues during classes.

More than two thirds (68 per cent) of respondents reported experiencing or witnessing some form of antisemitism. The students defined as antisemitism many broad anti-Israel messages such as “Israel is a terrorist state”. The situation was particularly bad at La Trobe University, where all the respondents said they had experienced or witnessed antisemitism.

In an effort to judge whether students saw these attacks as purely about their attachment to Israel or also about their Jewishness we asked students whether they or their friends ever hid their Jewishness or Israel views. Few students admitted to hiding themselves (possibly this smacks of disloyalty) but many said their friends did. Significantly students were just as likely to hide their Jewishness as their Israel views.

There are, of course, a number of other reasons that students might hide their views about Israel: they may disagree with Israel’s actions but feel disloyal expressing this disagreement; they may be ambivalent; they may agree with Israel but feel insufficiently competent to defend their position; or they may wish to avoid conflict.

But the consistency of their willingness to identify as Jews and their willingness to identify as having opinions on Israel suggests none of these factors is overriding the perception that being Jewish and supporting Israel will attract pretty much the same degree of opprobrium on campus.

The tone of protests that characterise Israel as a violent and oppressive regime create an increasingly uncomfortable environment for Jews because most of us feel attached to Israel, whether or not we agree with a given policy. We feel uncomfortable or worse because Israel is on the outer and that puts us on the outer. That sense of being unwelcome in the wider world is the experience of antisemitism.

Deborah Stone is executive director of the Anti-Defamation Commission

Free speech vs. hate speech - a delicate balance

By Larry Stillman

Hate speech is often characterized as ‘words that wound’, words that are deliberately intended to cause severe discomfort, stigmatization, a feeling of being sullied, and humiliation in the face of others.”

Within the Melbourne Jewish community, there appears to be a well-established tradition of encouraging public hatred through the denunciation of people, mostly for political sins, some of which may be true, more often than not (in my opinion) fabrications.

Recently,  on  Galus Australis, I was accused by an observant Jew of being part of a group of “whores who would let their own nation perish,”  with a suggestion that a tree and rope as  part of the solution for dealing with people with opinions such as mine. Others used the word ‘traitor’.  The president of the JCCV has now said that the AJDS is engaged in ‘vilification’ against Israel, and a number of brave pseudonymous individuals continue to regularly interrupt reasonably polite online conversations  on this site with the intent of causing discomfort and stigmatization. Alex Fein suffered such a fate on ‘Sensible Jew’, with simply appalling behaviour by a number of people who clearly delighted at inflicting pain and hurt.  Someone associated with AJDS has been called a ‘capo’ in the pages of the Jewish News, and the list goes on and on and on of insults which are clearly examples by hate speech.

Of course, many Jews and Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation Commission are highly critical of what they claim are expressions of hate speech by artists or actors, Palestinians activists, politicians such as Julia Irwin, Antony Lowenstein (who I think is often wrong), and even journalists (at the Age and Sydney Morning Herald in particular). Getting close to the bottom of the anti-Semitic sewer, there are people like the truly horrible egomaniac known as Frederick Toben, of the Adelaide ‘Institute’ a promoter of neo-Nazism and holocaust revisionism, and self-martyrdom for his cause.  For his sins, he has spent time in a German prison, and been pursued in the courts by the ECAJ. The ECAJ has also pursued the obscure Tasmanian Olga Scully as well as Muslim extremists.

We also know that manifestations of hatred of Israel which at times melt into anti-Semitism are manifested in chants of ‘Israel out of Palestine’, and the Israeli flag has been burned on the steps of Parliament by Palestinian extremists.  Fortunately, more intelligent Palestinian advocates deplore and have nothing to do with such material, but in an environment of strong political anger, things do go awry (as we see with settlers burning Korans).   And of course, there are plenty of people who hate other minorities such as Muslims, with a hate pamphlet being circulated in Elwood recently.

Locally, in 2004, Joseph Gutnick won a landmark lawsuit for libel for material published online in the US but available in Australia, albeit to very few people.  The magazine article made a connection between his business and religious associations that Gutnick particularly objected to.  While there were no grounds to bring suit in the US, a judgement was sought in Australia because of tighter libel and defamation laws.  The case has major free speech implications because it is made it possible to sue for online materials published in one place and read in another.  There is now a case before the courts in which Andrew Bolt, the nasty and quite vindictive Herald Sun commentator has complaints made against him by a number of indigenous Australians, and the judgement when made, could also have significant implications for free speech.

Whether in the case of Jews slandering each other, others slandering Jews, or others slandering others (indigenous Australians, gays), what are the limits to free and particularly hateful speech in today’s environment when language and symbols are in endless play in different contexts?   I understand that a very recent case has ruled that a swastika graffiti done in a workplace was not necessarily offensive—but just graffiti. In fact, it is getting harder and harder to draw a boundary between critical remarks and hate speech, given the free use of swear words, and a culture of confrontation in the media and politics.

My solution is that in the age of the internet, we increasingly need thick hides and ear-plugs, and at the same time, deal with invective as rationally as possible, thereby isolating those who write or speak drivel from their supporters.  Pursuing such people legally only gives them oxygen, and banning their material only sends them onto another website.

The Gutnick case, and potentially the Bolt case, are warnings about the dangers of bringing about lawsuits for viewpoints and statements that disturb people, because they can limit free speech.

Thus, in the case of the Jewish community, which has by and large supported strong legislation against hate speech, I do not think that it has been considered that members of the community could in fact be guilty of encouraging hatred, yet Jews as much as anyone else can be vitriolic haters.

What is the solution?

I think we need to err on the side of free speech rather than censoring people.  If they rant, there is no need to lie down and play the victim, because the new media allows us to hit right back.  We need to counter with rational argument and public excoriation that shows what fools the haters are.   We also need to educate the community, particularly kids about the dangers of prejudicial thinking and action.

Michael Gawenda, the author of Rocky and Gawenda: The Story of a Man and his Mutt, opened up to Galus Australis last week about his time as editor-in-chief at The Age. In an extensive interview, Gawenda defended his decision to pull the controversial Leunig cartoon, criticised the publication of the recent Backman article, and flagged his concern for increasing anti-Jewish sentiments in some sections of the media.

As a three-time Walkely Award winning journalist, Gawenda is renowned for what he has published, but during his time as editor of The Age from 1997 to 2004, he also became renowned for what he didn’t publish. Gawenda famously pulled a controversial cartoon by Michael Leunig in 2002 on the grounds that it was racist against Jews. His refusal to publish the cartoon, which compared ‘Auschwitz 1942′ with ‘Israel 2002′ in reference to the situation in Gaza, generated a backlash from some sections of the media, who saw it as an attack on free speech.

Seven years on, Gawenda is unapologetic. “The cartoon in my view suggested there was some sort of equivalence between the Nazis and the Israelis.” Whilst he strived to ensure the Age presented a range of views, this was a clear limit for him. “(I wouldn’t run) anything that I thought smacked of racism on either side of the conflict. I didn’t run any commentary that suggested there was an equivalence between the Nazis and the Israelis.”

Being Jewish added to the pressure surrounding the incident, as some commentators argued this was the reason he chose not to publish it. “Leunig certainly saw it in those terms. I don’t think that was the reason. I think that most editors wouldn’t have published it at that time- they might now- but at that time they wouldn’t.”

Gawenda being Jewish, in his view, only became a significant issue around the start of the Second Intifada in 2000, which marked the point where the Arab-Israeli conflict became an increasingly ‘hot’ issue. From this point onwards, Gawenda felt that his actions and motivations were becoming progressively more scrutinised, with news website Crikey even calling for him at one stage to ‘declare’ his Jewishness, or else ‘remove himself’ from commenting on the Middle East.

For Gawenda, it was a challenging time, with attacks coming from both sides. “I think it was difficult for all editors… but it was particularly difficult for me because I was Jewish. So that you had very passionate views on both sides of that conflict, and in a way, both sides of that conflict saw me through a Jewish prism.

“Some saw me as a Jew who was betraying his people. Some saw me as a Jew whose coverage was coloured by the fact that I was Jewish, that I was… bending over backwards to be fair and was actually being biased. On the other side I had Palestinian supporters who thought, you know, I was a Zionist, a ‘secret’ Zionist.”

More recently, Gawenda has seen a worrying rise in anti-Jewish sentiment in small sections of the media, with the Backman article an extreme example. The article, written by Australian-born journalist Michael Backman and published in the business section of The Age in January 2009, suggested that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians inspired a number of international terror attacks, and criticised the actions of Israeli travellers abroad. The current editor of The Age, Paul Ramadge, later apologised and said it was published ‘in error.’

Gawenda maintains that the article was a sign of the boundaries at The Age having becoming blurred. “The Age’s coverage of the Middle East, including its cartoons, get away with and do things that I wouldn’t have allowed in the paper… Clearly they ran that piece… because they were unclear of where the line was, for what was a robust article about Israel, and what was clearly anti-Semitic stereotyping of Jews and Israelis.”

He is concerned about the growing tendency for some media outlets, more so in Europe and Britain, but increasingly in Australia, to suggest an equivalence between Jews and Nazis. “(It) has now become a widespread trope that you can find in the mainstream media in some places… I’ve got no doubt that there is an increasing sense in some sections of the media that you can write and argue things that you would have been careful about in the past.”

He believes the reason for this shift is an increasing view in some sections of the Left that a one-state solution is the only possibility, that Israel is a ‘failed experiment,’ and that more journalists and commentators are arguing this point. “Its nonsense, I think it’s not true, but increasingly that’s a widely held view… A one state solution is a nightmare, not just for Israelis but for the whole region. There is no path to a peaceful one state solution. You would have to have a cataclysm for that to happen.”

Having said that, Gawenda believes that Jason Koutsoukis – the current Middle East foreign correspondent for The Age – is a better journalist than his predecessor Ed O’Loughlin, who held the post from 2003 to 2008. He believes O’Loughlin had a skewed view of the Middle East, and whilst he discounts the idea of objective reporting as “bull,” he believes that a journalist can be fair. Koutsoukis’ coverage is more fair and more nuanced, and what’s more, he writes about the every day lives of Israelis and Palestinians, rather than just about the conflict that besets them.

“I think Jason has tried hard to give us a sense of the place… He did a story some time ago that stuck in my mind about hummus, about what was the difference between the hummus you could buy in Israel and the hummus you could buy in Damascus, and Ed O’Loughlin never did a story like that.” In Gawenda’s opinion, these sorts of stories should be published more often, to show that there is much more to the region than war and conflict.

There is no doubt that Gawenda’s time at The Age coincided with a significant turning point in the development of the Middle East, and in Australia’s relationship with its Jewish population. He has always been proud of his Jewish heritage and proud to be a member of the Jewish community, but he strived to provide balance and fairness. “I was appointed to The Age as a mainstream paper of the whole community, and my goal was to represent the community as best I could.”

Gawenda is currently taking a well-deserved break from the high pressure of the newsroom, instead turning his talents to writing his well-received book, and to his appointment as Director of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Advanced Study of Journalism.